Martin Wolf of the Financial Times has a pretty good diagnosis of why the folks have lost track of the context when it comes to the economy. Obama was just too damn cautious when he needed to be bold.
Unfortunately, the Republicans have succeeded in persuading a large enough portion of the American public that if the patient had been left entirely alone, he would be in perfect health today. This is surely a fairy story. But voters naturally pay little attention to calamities averted. They focus only on how far experience falls short of what they desire. Mr Obama gains no credit for the former and much blame for the latter. His aspirational rhetoric no doubt worsened the disappointment.
The president’s willingness to ask for too little was, it turns out, a huge strategic error. It allows his opponents to argue that the Democrats had what they wanted, which then failed. If the president had failed to get what he demanded, he could argue that the outcome was not his fault. With a political stalemate expected, further action will now be blocked. A lost decade seems quite likely. That would be a calamity for the US – and the world.
And in about five days, we are about to be raped by the same folks who put us in this position to begin with. Have some drinks and lie back and try not to think about it……………..
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/78718/four-myths-about-the-tea-party
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/27/predicting-the-midterm-elections-a-freakonomics-quorum/#more-45291
Can I steal a trillion$ from you and your kids and grandkids and great grandkids and win praise from you too?
Your kids and grandkids will be just fine-assuming the Tea Partiers don’t fuck it all up for them. Tell them to get off the couch and go to work. Thanks to the desire of the Teabag nation to take the country back to the early 1900’s they will be able to go straight to work once they are 7 years old.
Skippy, I just read that back on Oct 3, Germany made its final payment on its WW1 debt from the Treaty of Versailles. 96 years later. So I guess you and the rest of the Dems figure if the Germans can do it, and have the lowest unemployment rates in Europe, we should do it too. And 96 years later we will be fine.
After all we may be through with the past, but the past ain’t through with us (in terms of the money we owe).
But you can never reduce the debt-as long as you refuse to raise revenue. That is why Grover Norquist deserves to be burned at the stake. He is the author of the idea that you can never raise taxes-no matter how many wars you are fighting at once.
Also Germany hada 20 year intermission in reparations payments. They stopped paying in 1933 and did not pick up again till the fifties. It is a debt they never should have had to pay either.
And just like Germany-we would not have been in such a bind had we not started stupid wars-and then refused to pay for them. The money is out there.
she’s only 7 and she tells me she doesn’t owe anybody anything. charming little revolutionary!!
skippy,
did you see what other country paid off “their debt” this year? Haiti. Final payment to France in September; 200 years after the slave revolt that seized the plantations and kicked the frogs out. The Monroe Doctrine appears to have sold out those folks because otherwise they would have wriggled off the hook without fear of French naval bombardment.
skippy,
Yes Germany did have a 20 year break. BUt even after they were split in half, they still made the payments. I guess the East Germans won out on that one. But then again, that is the mark (no pun intended) of a true socialst, letting someone else pay the bills for you.