APP - Obama needs to shout his achievements out loud

NigelTufnel said:
Facts? You're claiming the "stimulus hasn't done anything" and calling that a "fact?"
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I sometimes think that these clowns would have been happier if the world had fallen off a cliff, just so long as it didn't affect them. The analogy I like most is that the economies of the world have come off the critical list, are now in intensive care and on a drip feed, which if removed, would cause certain heart failure.
 
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NigelTufnel said:
Facts? You're claiming the "stimulus hasn't done anything" and calling that a "fact?"
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why do you continue to misrepresent what i say? why are you incapable of honesty?

it hasn't done anything when you consider the overall economy and what has been spent
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tell me then, as to the overall economy and what has been spent, how much has stimulus really done?
 
tom prendergast said:
I sometimes think that these clowns would have been happier if the world had fallen off a cliff, just so long as it didn't affect them. The analogy I like most is that the economies of the world have come off the critical list, are now in intensive care and on a drip feed, which if removed, would cause certain heart failure.
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Tom I think one of the big questions about the stimulus was how effective was it for the money we spent? I believe only about 1/3 of the money has been spent so far and it can strongly argued we needed to spend a lot more of it quicker. Republicans and Democrats both agree infrastructure spending would not only stimulate the economy but give long term benefits to the U.S. in terms of much needed infrastructure upgrades. Yet my understanding is only 7% of the stimulus money went to infrasturcture projects.

Critics of Obama have spoke out against him for basically handing off the stimulus package to Pelosi and Reid to put together which in the hands of Congress became a package of pork and not necessarily the best use of the money.
 
cawacko said:
Tom I think one of the big questions about the stimulus was how effective was it for the money we spent? I believe only about 1/3 of the money has been spent so far and it can strongly argued we needed to spend a lot more of it quicker. Republicans and Democrats both agree infrastructure spending would not only stimulate the economy but give long term benefits to the U.S. in terms of much needed infrastructure upgrades. Yet my understanding is only 7% of the stimulus money went to infrasturcture projects.

Critics of Obama have spoke out against him for basically handing off the stimulus package to Pelosi and Reid to put together which in the hands of Congress became a package of pork and not necessarily the best use of the money.
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Yes, I agree that it is not being spent fast enough but unfortunately the politics of pork always seem to get in the way. It would have been exactly the same whoever was in power, there are a lot of snouts trying to get into the trough.

The trouble with infrastructure projects is that they need to be planned well in advance, you can hardly design and build a road or a bridge overnight. The Hoover Dam took over four years to build.
 
tom prendergast said:
Yes, I agree that it is not being spent fast enough but unfortunately the politics of pork always seem to get in the way. It would have been exactly the same whoever was in power, there are a lot of snouts trying to get into the trough.

The trouble with infrastructure projects is that they need to be planned well in advance, you can hardly design and build a road or a bridge overnight. The Hoover Dam took over four years to build.
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you make a claim and yet cannot answer a simple question:

as to the overall economy and what has been spent, how much has stimulus really done

you call me a clown, yet you can't answer that simple question. seems i am right about you, you can't debate or discuss issues with me, all you have are solely insults. why are you afraid to debate me? whats the matter, can't have one single post without insulting me?
 
Yurt said:
you make a claim and yet cannot answer a simple question:

as to the overall economy and what has been spent, how much has stimulus really done

you call me a clown, yet you can't answer that simple question. seems i am right about you, you can't debate or discuss issues with me, all you have are solely insults. why are you afraid to debate me? whats the matter, can't have one single post without insulting me?
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Who do you trust for economic analysis? I can post the CBO studies if you want a non-partisan source. I can post the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities if you want a left-leaning source. And I can post an assessment from the American Enterprise Institute if you want a right-leaning source.

Take your pick.
 
NigelTufnel said:
Who do you trust for economic analysis? I can post the CBO studies if you want a non-partisan source. I can post the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities if you want a left-leaning source. And I can post an assessment from the American Enterprise Institute if you want a right-leaning source.

Take your pick.
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post them all or just give me the links, because so far i haven't heard boo about how much the stimulus has done, rather, it has been the bailouts
 
NigelTufnel said:
Who do you trust for economic analysis? I can post the CBO studies if you want a non-partisan source. I can post the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities if you want a left-leaning source. And I can post an assessment from the American Enterprise Institute if you want a right-leaning source.

Take your pick.
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I am reminded of the quote by Cecil Baxter.

You don’t get anything clean without getting something else dirty.
 
NigelTufnel said:
Well, then you having been paying any attention. And I lied, I don't have anything from CBPP. They cite to the CBO. But here are the other two:

CBO:

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/106xx/doc10682/11-30-ARRA.pdf

AEI:

http://www.aei.org/outlook/100928
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just as i said, hardly any of the stimulus has been spent, and its "estimated" not actual, impact is likely only 1% to the overall economy....one of the biggest factor of its success was the cash for clunkers, which there is much debate about whether that actually helped or merely delayed economic growth. i find the report laughable as it claims saved or created. then it admits that unemployment actually rose....

at the time of the report approximately only 14% had been spent....yet you want to tell me that that that 14% had a big impact on the economy....and that this impact is lasting....

and since you want to cite CBO, let's see what CBO said about its lasting impact:

President Obama's economic recovery package will actually hurt the economy more in the long run than if he were to do nothing, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday.

CBO, the official scorekeepers for legislation, said the House and Senate bills will help in the short term but result in so much government debt that within a few years they would crowd out private investment, actually leading to a lower Gross Domestic Product over the next 10 years than if the government had done nothing.

...

The agency projected the Senate bill would produce between 1.4 percent and 4.1 percent higher growth in 2009 than if there was no action. For 2010, the plan would boost growth by 1.2 percent to 3.6 percent.

CBO did project the bill would create jobs, though by 2011 the effects would be minuscule

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/feb/04/cbo-obama-stimulus-harmful-over-long-haul/

seems they were somewhat accurate on the growth, i wonder if you'll admit then that the stimulus actually hasn't done squat except give us a drunken buzz that will wear off in the morning....
 
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tom prendergast said:
Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, has welcomed President Obama in his bid to rein in the worst excesses of Wall Street and the City of London.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8480457.stm
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Obama takes Wall Street by the horns (Source)


Hurrah! The devil will be in the detail, but on the face of it the US Treasury has begun the long march back to Glass-Steagall in today’s “common sense” reforms to protect taxpayers from future financial crises.

The two key measures announced by President Barack Obama are first to stop banks from engaging in proprietary trading, private equity, or any other activity for their own profit unrelated to serving customers, and second to take further steps to limit the balance sheet size of banks so that they cannot in future acquire “too big to fail” status.

There’s precious little flesh on these bare bones yet, but it is no wonder that bank shares have been plunging on the back of them on both sides of the Atlantic. A key aspect of of the “universal banking model”, under which banks used their customers’ money to play the markets on their own behalf, is about to be outlawed.
This is not Glass-Steagall as such. That piece of legislation, dating back to the Great Depression, not only enforced a rigid separation between commercial and investment banks, but it also stopped commercial banks engaging in underwriting and other financial market activity that might legitimately be regarded as a service to clients.

But it is getting there and demonstrates that policy makers are finally beginning to get serious about the reform agenda. I always thought we would get there in the end, but it has happened sooner than I would have anticipated. Could the Obama Administration’s crushing electoral setback have had anything to do with the renewed sense of urgency? Or was it just the unconstrained chutzpah of the bankers in returning to their old ways so soon after the worst financial crisis in history?

Whatever the explanation, Obama is right to characterise his proposals as a victory for common sense. The relationship between Glass-Steagall and banking crises is self evident. Back in the 1920s, there was no Glass-Steagall resulting in unchecked credit growth and the abuse of ordinary deposits by the hot money men of Wall Street culminating in a banking crisis of monumental proportions and the Great Depression. Result: Glass Steagall and no banking crisis of anything like a similar magnitude until it was removed again in 1999. There followed another period of let rip capital market expansion followed inevitably by another almighty crash.

But it is not just a victory for common sense. It is also a victory for Paul Volcker, the grand old man of central banking who has been advising the Obama administration on banking reform. He’s long been in favour of what’s now proposed, but found himself shouted down by a cautious US Treasury and a powerful banking lobby. It might also be counted as a victory for Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, who found himself dismissed as an irrelevance by the UK Treasury when he suggested something similar.

We are not there yet, but the process of serious reform has at least now finally begun.
 
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tom prendergast said:
The US has pulled out of recession which would have never have happened without the bailouts and the stimulus plan which is still needed until at least 2012.
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First, there is no way anyone can claim the "stimulus" package did shit. Bailouts restored minimal confidence in the banking system, but on the other hand billions of dollars went down a black hole while GM filed for the bankruptcy the bailouts were supposed to prevent.

Stimulus has had no demonstrable effect. The "It would have been worse" claim has no supporting data so it's so much cheer leading hubris.

And the real spending figures are even worse than the 1/3 that is shown by the federal figures. 1/3 represents money that has been distributed, not necessarily spent. Much of what has been distributed is still in state coffers, waiting for whatever project was approved to get the allotments. The state of Montana has received about 198 million out of 876 million allotted for Montana programs. Of that, less than 5 million has actually been spent.

Also, look at the stimulus spending in action:
http://stimuluswatch.org

How about this one:
http://stimuluswatch.org/2.0/awards/view/41106/small-turkey-deli-breasts

Jenny O has been contracted to produce and deliver small, cooked turkey breasts. (where they have not bothered to say....) Reported jobs: 286. Reality: The number 286 represents the full time work hours needed to produce the turkey breasts. No extra employees were hired at that plant, and since Jenny-O in Willmar, MN had no plans to lay anyone off prior to receiving the stimulus, it saved no jobs either.

There are literally thousands of other examples of how much good (NOT!) the stimulus package is doing our economy.


Second, as liberals pointed out correctly for 8 fucking years, the measure used to determine recession has no bearing to reality. Democrats stated (again, correctly) the economy was in poor shape, while the republicans kept pointing out the technical definition of recession, and lousy growth numbers showing no recession.

Democrats also pointed out correctly that UE figures of 5% or below did not reflect reality because the numbers did not account for people without jobs who were not, for various reasons, registered; nor did it account for underemployment. Now that the democrats are in charge, the same methods to determine UE are just fine, even though they report UE at twice the levels with NO appreciable indications of coming down anytime soon.

UE is still high, wages are stagnant, loan defaults still through the roof, numbers of people living below the poverty level growing. The reality is the economy still sucks worse than it did 5 years ago when liberals were saying the economy sucked, and is still getting worse. Meanwhile liberals are now using the same government lies that were used under Bush to tell us everything was fine - in order to tell us things are not as bad as the COULD be. What a fucking crock.
 
Good Luck said:
First, there is no way anyone can claim the "stimulus" package did shit. Bailouts restored minimal confidence in the banking system, but on the other hand billions of dollars went down a black hole while GM filed for the bankruptcy the bailouts were supposed to prevent.

Stimulus has had no demonstrable effect. The "It would have been worse" claim has no supporting data so it's so much cheer leading hubris.

And the real spending figures are even worse than the 1/3 that is shown by the federal figures. 1/3 represents money that has been distributed, not necessarily spent. Much of what has been distributed is still in state coffers, waiting for whatever project was approved to get the allotments. The state of Montana has received about 198 million out of 876 million allotted for Montana programs. Of that, less than 5 million has actually been spent.

Also, look at the stimulus spending in action:
http://stimuluswatch.org

How about this one:
http://stimuluswatch.org/2.0/awards/view/41106/small-turkey-deli-breasts

Jenny O has been contracted to produce and deliver small, cooked turkey breasts. (where they have not bothered to say....) Reported jobs: 286. Reality: The number 286 represents the full time work hours needed to produce the turkey breasts. No extra employees were hired at that plant, and since Jenny-O in Willmar, MN had no plans to lay anyone off prior to receiving the stimulus, it saved no jobs either.

There are literally thousands of other examples of how much good (NOT!) the stimulus package is doing our economy.


Second, as liberals pointed out correctly for 8 fucking years, the measure used to determine recession has no bearing to reality. Democrats stated (again, correctly) the economy was in poor shape, while the republicans kept pointing out the technical definition of recession, and lousy growth numbers showing no recession.

Democrats also pointed out correctly that UE figures of 5% or below did not reflect reality because the numbers did not account for people without jobs who were not, for various reasons, registered; nor did it account for underemployment. Now that the democrats are in charge, the same methods to determine UE are just fine, even though they report UE at twice the levels with NO appreciable indications of coming down anytime soon.

UE is still high, wages are stagnant, loan defaults still through the roof, numbers of people living below the poverty level growing. The reality is the economy still sucks worse than it did 5 years ago when liberals were saying the economy sucked, and is still getting worse. Meanwhile liberals are now using the same government lies that were used under Bush to tell us everything was fine - in order to tell us things are not as bad as the COULD be. What a fucking crock.
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How can you prove something that didn't happen? Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
 
Good Luck said:
First, there is no way anyone can claim the "stimulus" package did shit. Bailouts restored minimal confidence in the banking system, but on the other hand billions of dollars went down a black hole while GM filed for the bankruptcy the bailouts were supposed to prevent.

Stimulus has had no demonstrable effect. The "It would have been worse" claim has no supporting data so it's so much cheer leading hubris.

And the real spending figures are even worse than the 1/3 that is shown by the federal figures. 1/3 represents money that has been distributed, not necessarily spent. Much of what has been distributed is still in state coffers, waiting for whatever project was approved to get the allotments. The state of Montana has received about 198 million out of 876 million allotted for Montana programs. Of that, less than 5 million has actually been spent.

Also, look at the stimulus spending in action:
http://stimuluswatch.org

How about this one:
http://stimuluswatch.org/2.0/awards/view/41106/small-turkey-deli-breasts

Jenny O has been contracted to produce and deliver small, cooked turkey breasts. (where they have not bothered to say....) Reported jobs: 286. Reality: The number 286 represents the full time work hours needed to produce the turkey breasts. No extra employees were hired at that plant, and since Jenny-O in Willmar, MN had no plans to lay anyone off prior to receiving the stimulus, it saved no jobs either.

There are literally thousands of other examples of how much good (NOT!) the stimulus package is doing our economy.


Second, as liberals pointed out correctly for 8 fucking years, the measure used to determine recession has no bearing to reality. Democrats stated (again, correctly) the economy was in poor shape, while the republicans kept pointing out the technical definition of recession, and lousy growth numbers showing no recession.

Democrats also pointed out correctly that UE figures of 5% or below did not reflect reality because the numbers did not account for people without jobs who were not, for various reasons, registered; nor did it account for underemployment. Now that the democrats are in charge, the same methods to determine UE are just fine, even though they report UE at twice the levels with NO appreciable indications of coming down anytime soon.

UE is still high, wages are stagnant, loan defaults still through the roof, numbers of people living below the poverty level growing. The reality is the economy still sucks worse than it did 5 years ago when liberals were saying the economy sucked, and is still getting worse. Meanwhile liberals are now using the same government lies that were used under Bush to tell us everything was fine - in order to tell us things are not as bad as the COULD be. What a fucking crock.
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Montana, isn't that where they grow the best dental floss?
 
President Obama's economic recovery package will actually hurt the economy more in the long run than if he were to do nothing, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday.
 
tom prendergast said:
Yes, I agree that it is not being spent fast enough but unfortunately the politics of pork always seem to get in the way. It would have been exactly the same whoever was in power, there are a lot of snouts trying to get into the trough.

The trouble with infrastructure projects is that they need to be planned well in advance, you can hardly design and build a road or a bridge overnight. The Hoover Dam took over four years to build.
Click to expand...

I agree that the politics of pork would have been similar regardless of who won.

That said, many of the infrastructure projects are shovel ready. They have been planned for years, but lacked the funding to proceed.
 
tom prendergast said:
How can you prove something that didn't happen?
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You can't. Events which did not come about can be implied, but only if the data supports the implication. But since so little of the stimulus funds have actually entered the economy, any claims that it has avoided a worse situation have no data to back the claim.

tom prendergast said:
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
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Now you sound like you're defending your religion. (maybe from your POV, you are....)

There is data (EVIDENCE) available in analysis of the effects of the stimulus package. Just because the data available is not evidence supporting your claims does not mean data is not available.

Look at just a few of the thousands of instances where those funds actually spent have NOT had the effects on UE originally projected or claimed. Then look at the fact that less than 1/3 of the funds have been even allocated, and less than 1/4 of the funds allocated have actually been spent. That is data (evidence if you will) showing that the economy's "recovery" (to use the lie spread by the liberals) is in no way related to the U.S. government buying a half million dollars worth of turkey breasts and other useless, meaningless, but very expensive spending projects. Ditto the fact that the government spent billions of dollars on GM, yet it still took bankruptcy to allow GM to reorder their finances to get their feet back under them. But then, the bailouts did get the federal foot in the door of government takeover of a private company. NOT exactly a good thing in the Land of the Free.

Data IS available. But it points to a conclusion you do not like.
 
Good Luck said:
You can't. Events which did not come about can be implied, but only if the data supports the implication. But since so little of the stimulus funds have actually entered the economy, any claims that it has avoided a worse situation have no data to back the claim.


Now you sound like you're defending your religion. (maybe from your POV, you are....)

There is data (EVIDENCE) available in analysis of the effects of the stimulus package. Just because the data available is not evidence supporting your claims does not mean data is not available.

Look at just a few of the thousands of instances where those funds actually spent have NOT had the effects on UE originally projected or claimed. Then look at the fact that less than 1/3 of the funds have been even allocated, and less than 1/4 of the funds allocated have actually been spent. That is data (evidence if you will) showing that the economy's "recovery" (to use the lie spread by the liberals) is in no way related to the U.S. government buying a half million dollars worth of turkey breasts and other useless, meaningless, but very expensive spending projects. Ditto the fact that the government spent billions of dollars on GM, yet it still took bankruptcy to allow GM to reorder their finances to get their feet back under them. But then, the bailouts did get the federal foot in the door of government takeover of a private company. NOT exactly a good thing in the Land of the Free.

Data IS available. But it points to a conclusion you do not like.
Click to expand...


Could you cite to some folks that actually support your conclusion, my friend? Christ. Pretty much every economist agrees that the stimulus package helped the economy. Here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/21/business/economy/21stimulus.html

Or here:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125964003843970851.html?mod=article-outset-box

Or here:

http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2010-01-25-usa-today-economic-survey-obama-stimulus_N.htm

Or here:

http://www.aei.org/outlook/100928
 
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