How many of you actually realize

[Narrock]

investor confidence is even lower now (stock exchange) because they don't trust barry's stimulus plan.

You really have no idea what you're talking about. haha.

What are you on about now, dipshit? Every time Barry gave a speech about the economy and/or the porkulous package, the stock market plunged. Do your homework, then get back to me.

[Ginzburgh]

Do my homework? I live on the gold coast of connecticut and half the people I know are brokers. First of all, the economy has been "plunging" since late 2007. There are dozens of factors that have contributed to the current recession, which we have been in two years prior to obama even being elected. The biggest one being is that investors have crossed their arms, stopped investing and are pulling out, similar to what Japan went through in the 1990s. This has been going on here long before obama announced his stimulus plan.

So again, you really have no idea what you're talking about. Quit trying to link every fucked up situation in the world to Obama when all he is trying to do is clean up the fucking mess left behind by the previous administration.

[Evermore]

But Ginz...


Mindia said so....


it HAS to be true.

btw douchbag. Obama has YET to spend the 11.7 trillion dollars (and counting) the previous bunch of cockpullers has.

[Drem]

cockpullers lol

[Ginzburgh]

http://money.cnn.com/2009/03/13/markets ... 2009031315

[Nusk]

he promised change after 8 years of bush fiscal irresponsibility and is now spending 1 billion dollars an hour

yes change for sure, let's go from irresponsible to reckless

[Drem]

yeah and after the stimulus and the time needed to see results that some of you seem to not be expecting, let's see how much he spends

[KaiineTN]

How much time do you think is needed to spend our way out of a problem caused by excessive spending?

How much more does the government have to do before investors become stupid enough to start risking their money when the government keeps changing the rules and bailing some out while letting others fail?

Government spending isn't a good way to get capital flowing again. Sure, the stimulus money will get spent, but it wont get the ball rolling, so to speak. It wont restore confidence or make the beneficiaries better, more efficient businesspeople. Would have been much better if they just divided up all the stimulus money and just sent out checks to citizens, or just temporarily suspended the income tax to give everyone a pay raise.

[Nusk]

what i dont get is why "a company too big to fail" isnt broken up into peices so parts of it can fail

[Lueyen]

what i dont get is why "a company too big to fail" isnt broken up into peices so parts of it can fail

The biggest problem I can see is in outstanding debts. Your suppliers aren't going to be very willing to extend you any terms except COD if part of your company has already defaulted on them regardless of what division it was.

[Nusk]

and aig is giving its management a retention bonus.... bush owns the aig bailout but obama should tell aig that if they give the bonus he is not going to give them any more bailout money

[Drem]

How much time do you think is needed to spend our way out of a problem caused by excessive spending?

How much more does the government have to do before investors become stupid enough to start risking their money when the government keeps changing the rules and bailing some out while letting others fail?

Government spending isn't a good way to get capital flowing again. Sure, the stimulus money will get spent, but it wont get the ball rolling, so to speak. It wont restore confidence or make the beneficiaries better, more efficient businesspeople. Would have been much better if they just divided up all the stimulus money and just sent out checks to citizens, or just temporarily suspended the income tax to give everyone a pay raise.

because government spending is what got us out of the last depression. and that took about 11 years. one of the many benefits is that more regulation means more government jobs. during the depression gov't workers went from like 500,000 in 1929 to over 1,000,000 by 1939. 500,000 new jobs would be pretty damn nice right now. so give it time and let obama do whatever he's got planned. yeah there's room for human error. he could totally fuck us. but i doubt it'll ever be worse than how far we got bent over over the last eight years. i know you're against keynesian economics but his ideas ushered us into the biggest era of economic boom the country (world) has ever seen. and you're the only person i see constantly bitching about this so why don't you just go move to some country with a free economy and see how that treats you if it's so bad here

[brinstar]

flink how much do you pay per year in taxes?

[Lueyen]

Drem you're completely ignoring WWII and the changes to the gold standard. Beyond that the situation today is vastly different than the Great Depression, the dynamics of a world economy have changed, technology has changed, hell our economic system in general is significantly more robust. Of course your view also disregards the depressions of 1907 and 1920, something we don't hear much about today because as examples go it would suggest that government do what it did in those years, which was nothing, and the economy recovered on it's own within a year.

[Arlos]

You don't even have to look at WW2 though to see the arc of economic improvement during Roosevelt's terms, as compared to what happened during Hoover's.

-Arlos

[Lueyen]

You don't even have to look at WW2 though to see the arc of economic improvement during Roosevelt's terms, as compared to what happened during Hoover's.

-Arlos

And then you look at the economic growth after we got involved in the war and the growth previous to that pales in comparison. WWII gave a badly needed boost to our economy to get it back on track. Some historical authors have even taken the stance that the New Deal (1 & 2) policies hindered the economic recovery, this is not a view I myself hold, I simply don't believe it was the primary deciding factor. If you look at the economies of various nations throughout the world during the Great Depression, you find that the US was not the only country suffering. There is a direct relation between when countries went off the gold standard, how severe the depression hit them and how quickly they recovered from it. In 1933 the Roosevelt administration and Congress took steps to move us off the gold standard with the notable exception of foreign exchange. I believe this had a much greater impact then the New Deal ever did. That is not to say that the New Deal did not have it's place, as where it may be questionable as the the economic success, the political success can not be denied. The political success was due to the New Deal's impact on helping the average Joe to weather the depression. That factor does justify government spending in any depression to the extent that it will help people stay a float, even if it has no impact on the economic growth. It does not however translate into a silver bullet to fix or jump start the economy.

Side Note: I put in bold the part above to draw the attention of the Ron Paul fans here. A return to the gold standard may not be the bliss that many see it as.

[Arlos]

I'm not arguing that WW2 was the final nail in the coffin of the Great Depression, but I think it unarguable that the keynsian economic policies followed by FDR did contribute to improving things. Just look at the unemployment numbers from when Hoover took office to when he left, and then the arcs through FDR's terms, and remember Hoover did the Ron-paul'ian hands off sort of policies, and FDR did the opposite.

-Arlos

[Nusk]

hoover is much maligned for his deep belief in non government intervention of the economy. in my oppinion he gets way too much blame for something at the time he really could not do anything about without violating his constitutional authority. FDR did it anyway and his policies for the most part did not work (look at social security).

[Arlos]

Huh? Social security works fine. The only major problem with social security is that Congress in the intervening years has been borrowing from the money that was SUPPOSED to specifically go ONLY to social security. If not for that later intervention and diverting of money, there'd be no solvency problem.

Not to mention, the collapse in people's 401k's in this latest downturn show why Bush's plan to put all of social security into the stock market was so idiotic. Just imagine how bad seniors who live only on social security would have it right now if social security had been tied into the stock market. You'd have old people being evicted in droves, others that wouldn't be able to afford food, etc. Yeah, that would be SO good for the national confidence, to have a mass wave of elderly homeless people....

Oh, yeah, as for Hoover... Unemployment when he took office was at 5%. When he left office, it was at 25%. I think we can pretty safely lay blame on him and his policies for drastically worsening things, when you go that dramatically downhill. And funny, I seem to have missed the SCOTUS rulings that declared Social Security, the TVA, etc. to be unconstitutional, which is what you seem to be implying...

-Arlos

[Nusk]

no scotus has not ruled on social welfare. the general belief pre FDR was a more "hands off" government. heck inthe previous 3 recessions the us of a did nothing and the country did just fine

[Arlos]

Yeah, and Hoover did nothing, and unemployment went from 5% to 25%. FDR did something, and it fell to 14% by the end of his first term. I know which method history is telling us was the more efficacious....

-Arlos

[Lueyen]

I'm not arguing that WW2 was the final nail in the coffin of the Great Depression, but I think it unarguable that the keynsian economic policies followed by FDR did contribute to improving things. Just look at the unemployment numbers from when Hoover took office to when he left, and then the arcs through FDR's terms, and remember Hoover did the Ron-paul'ian hands off sort of policies, and FDR did the opposite.

-Arlos

I'm not saying keynsian policies did nothing, but their major impact was to soften the blow to the average American, hence the overwhelming popularity. Many other countries however recovered from the same Depression without employing the same policies. The one thing that nearly all countries affected by the great depression had in common however is they were on the gold standard to start with and moved away from it. In 1933 the US went off the gold standard and started a dramatic recovery. This does coincide with New Deal legislation. However when you start to look at other countries, as they went off the gold standard they experienced an immediate dramatic improvement. Those countries that delayed in this saw declines in their economies while the rest of the world was recovering. Then you have countries like China which was nearly un-affected by the depression, however China never was on the gold standard, it was on a silver standard.

That pretty much points to a root cause being the rigidity of currency tied to gold, and the removal of that root cause started dramatic recovery world wide. This recovery was then given a shot of adrenaline with the introduction of WWII, and as an interesting side note there are a lot of factors that point to the Great Depression having set the stage for WWII.

In the end though like I stated originally we are not seeing the exact same situation as the Great Depression. True there are some similarities, but it's a much different world now. I don't even have a problem with some Keynsian economic policy at this point, what I do take issue with though is the idea that it must be done not for the purposes of softening the impact of depression, but to get us out of one when using the Great Depression as evidence.