Obama Promises 600K Stimulus Jobs

The "invisible hand" you're referring to were the pillaging bankers, greedy credit card companies, thug unions strong arming unreal contracts and market speculators that gassed everyone for their own gain. The thing that GOADS me is HOW MANY OF THESE CORPORATE CRIMINALS ARE GOING TO JAIL?!? None, because we'd have to throw most of Congress in jail as they set up all these licenses to steal. Reply

Snowleopard - the unqualified candidates mortgage is a Democrat initiative. Try and push it onto Bush, but your opinion is built on lies. You cannot find 1 example of Bush pushing this totally liberal agenda. It was Clinton and Albright that held a gun to the private institutions heads by threatening to charge them with unfair business and discriminatory business practices if they did not provide these mortgages. They did this claiming that it was everybody's right to own a home....I don't recall seeing that in the Bill of Rights, but doesn't matter, the damage is done. As for bankrupting the government, what do you think this bailout is doing? We are going to be paying $10 trillion + for the current bailout plan, and that is from Obama's own people. Wait until we see the real $ amount. That's not bankrupting us? Talk abut a warped dream. Reply

No Snowleapord, the $10 trillion is not something I pulled out of the air. It is what they way will be the cost when interest is applied over the course of paying it off. And that is coming from Obama's people. As for your the link, give me something that is objective, not something that obviously was written by a Bush hater. The housing crisis was created by Clinton. It came to roost during the end of the Bush years. Deregulation, which caused the crisis to expand beyond the housing/banking industry, was signed by Clinton. I never said that the economic woes were entirely the Democrat's fault. But it started in the Clinton house. Bush's administration kept holding off the recession by dropping interest rates, but that was only a bandaid, not a solution. As for the bailout that he started, it was supposed to be a one time thing. The fact that it was rushed has more to do with a Pelosi led Congress and a Reid led Senate than it has to do with Bush. They wrote it, not him. Reply

Oh, and snowleopard, Bush doubled the deficit in 8 years, Obama in 4 months. No comparison. Obama has done more harm than Bush did in 1/24th of the time. Reply

SPH, never said Unions were not allowed in a free market. But what we have now is a market where the Unions are too powerful, so businesses cannot reduce workforce where necessary. I have no problem with Unions being around. You need them around to keep the owners in check. But when 1 side gets too powerful then the other side cannot survive. That is a big cause of the problems in Detroit. Not the only cause....mismanagement has a lot to do with it as well. Reply

Oh, and SPH, is namecalling really necessary? As for the Clinton mortgages, what came around and caused the problems was the baloon payments. The mortgage industry was failing by 2004, however Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were able to keep up their promise of covering those mortgages until they got overwhelmed in 2008 with ever increasing records in failed mortgages. So yes, we are still feeling the effects of the Clinton era mortgages. Try studying economics before you start talking about them. My first degree is in Economics (one of 3 degrees....hated business, so I have 2 engineering degrees now and I am starting on a 4th degree in the fall....) Reply

Here you go Snowleopard....a link to a site that actually lays the START of the housing crisis at the feet of Jimmy Carter....I have read a little on this, as I heard this before, but I have not had time to study it in earnest....interesting stuff. http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2009/02/08/barrons-editorial-bush-had-nothing-do-financial-crisis Reply

Hey SPH, since it was in September 1999 that Fannie Mae eased the credit requirements to encourage banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, those mortgages baloon payments came to roost in 2006, which is when mortgage defaults started rising steadily. It was in December 1999 that Clinton deregulated the banking industry. Everything points to the start of our mess happening during the Clinton years. I don't make this stuff up. These are cold, hard facts. I don't ask Keith Oblermann to explain financial data to me....I want an expert. The non-partisan experts look back 10 to 14 years for reasons that we are in the mess that we are in. This type of morass takes time to build. Reply

You're obviously pretty set in your opinions and have a strongly partisan view so I don't really want to waste time arguing about who's to blame on this. But will I agree with you that the community reinvestment act was a bad idea. However, most serious economists don't really believe that that was the root of the problem since most of the lending institutions who lent out the most bad loans and got in the most trouble were not even affected at all by that legislation. Also the legislation didn't apply to investment banks such as Bear Sterns and Lehman Bros. It was their own foolishness that led them too become over-leveraged on debt, and to take on too much of the toxic assets. But I realize that line of though about the CRA is such a popular attack by the right wing that most of you have accepted it as the root of the crisis. I like that you are blaming Clinton (which should also imply the Republican house and senate) for dissolving glass-stegall, since most republicans don't acknowledge the importance of this kind of government regulation. If this legislation were in place, the size of the greater credit bubble would certainly have been reduced simply because it limited the amount that banks can leverage debt. But if I were to blame just one person for this (and he really doesn't deserve all of the blame, since the problem was institutional/systematic), it would probably be Greenspan for keeping interest rates too low for too long. He should have seen this asset bubble occurring and "took away the punchbowl": http://www.thedigeratilife.com/images/homepricesL.gif Here's another article about bush and subprime loans: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/presidentbush/2008/10/blame-bush.html Reply

HOW THE STIMULUS PLAN HAS BEEN WORKING ALREADY AND WHY IT IS BOUND TO GATHER PACE The stimulus plan in of itself has halted the dramatic plunge in business and consumer confidence with the very likely threat of an economic depression earlier in the year, and businesses and consumers taking a less weary and more upbeat attitude to the future. Maybe more than anything else this will be the most significant impact of the stimulus package in the long-run enabling a spectacular recovery from the real possibility of depression before its passage. Businesses and consumers have become more and more confident that spending from the stimulus in the upcoming months will provide a solid environment for economic activity thus encouraging investment, reducing the pace of job losses and encouraging consumer spending. In other words, the stimulus package has avoided “a cycle of economic downturn to depression” and is now about to engender “a cycle of economic upturn to recovery”. The stimulus package cash handouts and other social initiatives have played no minor part in lessening the burdens on individuals of the economic downturn and the consequent increase in the number of people unemployed thus palliating its effects with regards to mortgage, health coverage and consumer spending. The stimulus package has halted the lost of jobs in in the areas of education and other state level services and enabled States to avoid budget bankruptcy (caused by the fall in revenues due to the economic downturn) with the result of avoiding indirect job losses in the private sector as well. The stimulus package is bound to lead the way for new jobs creation to be followed suit by direct private sector investments with the consequence of increasing spending in the economy and accelerating economic recovery. It should be noted that jobs created by the stimulus will have a multiplier effect in the creation of jobs by private enterprises. Perhaps more fundamental for long-term economic recovery, given the areas of investment of the stimulus package (infrastructure, energy and green jobs, education. etc.), it is the type of government investment required for renewing long-term economic growth. As was the case with FDR's New Deal in the 1930s and Eisenhower building of interstate highways and investment in the sciences in the 1950s, the stimulus package is bound to restructure the foundation of the US economy within which private enterprise will thrive. The fundamental element in the criticisms levied against the stimulus package that it will increase the US deficit is the total disregard by most critics of what would have happened without the stimulus with respect to avoiding the real threat of a depression, raising business and consumer confidence and restructuring the economy. Thus providing a good foundation for real growth in the long-run (boostered by the Stimulus and led by private enterprise) with economic growth by itself and healthcare reform allowing... Reply

It's OK people, Newsweek has declared the bama, "God". Reply

Sorry, that was Stephen Colbert. Reply