Gallup Unemployment Reaches 10%

NigelTufnel said:
I think it's funny that being accurate is being a hack whereas lying about (or misremembering) what someone said is not.
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you're trying to minimize kerry's claims about the economy...as if he is solely focusing on jobs...yep...thats real accurate

Q: Do you agree that the economy is recovering?
A: It's a recovery for the people in the corporate boardroom. It's a recovery for corporations, to some degree, by compacting, by increasing productivity. But if you go across America, it's not a recovery This recovery is a recovery for those people who have stock. It's a recovery for those people who are able to walk away with the highest salaries. But workers have only seen a three-cents-an-hour increase in their wages.
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Yurt said:
you're trying to minimize kerry's claims about the economy...as if he is solely focusing on jobs...yep...thats real accurate
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You do realize that the discussion centered around what was being compared to the Great Depression....right?
 
Onceler said:
My problems with Bush on the economy were twofold:

1) I didn't think he had an economic plan or vision, and I was basically right. "Cut taxes" is not a "plan." And the wild growth we were supposed to have experienced from those cuts never materialized.
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Agreed on the fact that 'tax cuts' is not a plan. You have to have spending cuts in order for those to be viable long term, though short term they do stimulate the economy.

That said, the tax cuts of 2001 came before 9/11 and the subsequent two wars. Yet the market still rebounded from the trough in Oct 2002 of around 7200 to the peak of the market in 2007 of around 14k. That is a pretty good return in five years.

Unfortunately the Dems took control of Congress in 2007 and subsequently tanked the markets and the economy. :)


2) Once Iraq kicked in, he had tunnel vision on foreign policy. He was a really bad domestic policy Prez from 2003 on; he seemed almost disinterested at times (imo).
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The REALLY sad part is that his tunnel ran him smack into a rock face. They forgot to tell him the opening to the tunnel had to have an exit strategy.

To address your point above, if anything, the "real" # is probably worse now than it was during the Bush years (as it relates to the # that is reported). Where we disagree, as always, is the effect of the stimulus, and the effect of the bailouts. Trying to prove that, however, is like trying to prove what causes global warming.
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There is NO question the number is worse now.

As for the stimulus, it was a collection of stop gap measures. Measures that simply pushed the problems into the future. We are nearing that point where they will either need more stop gap measures or REAL solutions. The stimulus did stop the fear from taking over and creating a panic. In that it was a success. But then Obama charged into health care rather than focusing on economic growth. That was a colossal mistake.

His idea now for $50B for infrastructure is the right one... though the amount should be greater. That is money we have to spend regardless. Thus, it may take future spending and shift it to the present, but it is doing so at a time that corporate and individual spending are down. THAT is the type of government spending that can snow ball the economy back into the correct direction.

No one will ever convince me that we wouldn't be in the teens on the reported #, with a stock market well below 10K, if it wasn't for the efforts the gov't made, both in the last few months of Bush's term & the beginning of Obama's term.
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I would agree with that. But I would also argue that instead of the so much focus on stop gaps, we should have focused on infrastructure. That instead of $50B to GM prior to a reorg, we should have simply kept the $50B and let them reorg. We also should not have seen the government play favorites with stockholders.
 
Superfreak said:
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As for the stimulus, it was a collection of stop gap measures. Measures that simply pushed the problems into the future. We are nearing that point where they will either need more stop gap measures or REAL solutions. The stimulus did stop the fear from taking over and creating a panic. In that it was a success. But then Obama charged into health care rather than focusing on economic growth. That was a colossal mistake.

His idea now for $50B for infrastructure is the right one... though the amount should be greater. That is money we have to spend regardless. Thus, it may take future spending and shift it to the present, but it is doing so at a time that corporate and individual spending are down. THAT is the type of government spending that can snow ball the economy back into the correct direction.

I would agree with that. But I would also argue that instead of the so much focus on stop gaps, we should have focused on infrastructure. That instead of $50B to GM prior to a reorg, we should have simply kept the $50B and let them reorg. We also should not have seen the government play favorites with stockholders.
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I don't disagree with a lot of that, though I think GM was worth the investment; to me, that pays much higher future dividends for the economy than an infrastructure project that will only last for a finite period. The U.S. needs to focus both on keeping what remains of its manufacturing base, and increasing that base exponentially in future years. The service-based economy is way too flimsy, imo.

And I think views on the stimulus all depend on expectations. I never expected it to be anything more than a stop-gap, and a way to not only stop the bleeding, but "stall" until businesses got back on their feet, Wall Street improved & people were ready to hire again. Toward those ends, it has more or less succeeded thus far, though we're still teetering on the fence much more than I would have expected by this point.

I knew the stimulus wasn't a perfect measure, and that there would be loads of waste. At that time, they could have either erred on the side of timeliness, or efficiency, and I thought the former was much more important.
 
Onceler said:
I don't disagree with a lot of that, though I think GM was worth the investment; to me, that pays much higher future dividends for the economy than an infrastructure project that will only last for a finite period. The U.S. needs to focus both on keeping what remains of its manufacturing base, and increasing that base exponentially in future years. The service-based economy is way too flimsy, imo.

And I think views on the stimulus all depend on expectations. I never expected it to be anything more than a stop-gap, and a way to not only stop the bleeding, but "stall" until businesses got back on their feet, Wall Street improved & people were ready to hire again. Toward those ends, it has more or less succeeded thus far, though we're still teetering on the fence much more than I would have expected by this point.

I knew the stimulus wasn't a perfect measure, and that there would be loads of waste. At that time, they could have either erred on the side of timeliness, or efficiency, and I thought the former was much more important.
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Didn't Bush sign a stimulus package as well as Obama. I don't see how I can blame one and not the other or reward one and not the other for this measure. I still am not sure whether I approve of either president's stimulus bill but I think both did one.
 
leaningright said:
Didn't Bush sign a stimulus package as well as Obama. I don't see how I can blame one and not the other or reward one and not the other for this measure. I still am not sure whether I approve of either president's stimulus bill but I think both did one.
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Bush did the bank bailouts (equally as vital, if not moreso at that time, imo)....
 
leaningright said:
Didn't Bush sign a stimulus package as well as Obama. I don't see how I can blame one and not the other or reward one and not the other for this measure. I still am not sure whether I approve of either president's stimulus bill but I think both did one.
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TARP was different, and has been paid back. There may even be a profit from it. The Stimulus was 814 billion more passed by this President. I call it the "Moment that Obama Bought the Great Recession"...
 
Damocles said:
TARP was different, and has been paid back. There may even be a profit from it. The Stimulus was 814 billion more passed by this President. I call it the "Moment that Obama Bought the Great Recession"...
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It has been paid back... yet the national debt did not decrease as a result and the money is somewhere in limbo...

We need to all be asking where that money went.
 
Superfreak said:
It has been paid back... yet the national debt did not decrease as a result and the money is somewhere in limbo...

We need to all be asking where that money went.
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True, especially after the bipartisan vote that it should be used to reduce the deficit dollar for dollar.
 
Damocles said:
TARP was different, and has been paid back. There may even be a profit from it. The Stimulus was 814 billion more passed by this President. I call it the "Moment that Obama Bought the Great Recession"...
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Too much of it was used for tax cuts. I don't even like to think about what the cons did. Well, of course, Obama actually opened up negotiations by giving them everything he thought they might dream of. An incredibly stupid negotiation tactic. That's Geithner and Summers, with an assist from Rahm, but the buck stops with Obama and he apparently (according to unnamed aides) considers himself the smartest person in any room, so he must have signed off on this shit.

And then after opening with "here take one third of the stimulus in those tax cuts you guys love" he let them begin negotiations and that's when they gutted actual stimulative monies like infrastructure spending, state aid, food stamps, etc.

And then after they got the bill filled with as much repuke stuff as they could...they refused to vote for it.

And all of us saw it coming. So it's not like they are so stealth and you can say, oh they really fooled him.

My point being that the stimulus was not as effective as it should have been because it was a conservatively-crafted bill. And you people call Obama a marxist. Or a socialist. And that is what is so funny. Talk about celebrating ingnorance.
 
Darla said:
My point being that the stimulus was not as effective as it should have been because it was a conservatively-crafted bill. And you people call Obama a marxist. Or a socialist. And that is what is so funny. Talk about celebrating ingnorance.
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I've lost count of how many times I have heard on here or nationally that "Obama should have put tax cuts into the stimulus."

I have even been ridiculed a few times for suggesting he did. Some of the biggest critics of the stimulus have no idea at all what was actually in it.
 
cawacko said:
What discussion are you referring to? One where Kerry made the comment?
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Yep. Yurt thought he had nailed Nigel by posting a quote about JOBS being akin to the Great Depression, when Nigel had already made that distinction.

So, he scurried frantically around the internets, and was only able to come up w/ comments where Kerry was talking about the economy being bad; but NOT like the Great Depression.
 
Onceler said:
Yep. Yurt thought he had nailed Nigel by posting a quote about JOBS being akin to the Great Depression, when Nigel had already made that distinction.

So, he scurried frantically around the internets, and was only able to come up w/ comments where Kerry was talking about the economy being bad; but NOT like the Great Depression.
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?

my post had nothing to do with nigel...how you got that is beyond me...i was simply quoting dems on the economy during that era...i saw where nigel said kerry said that about jobs....but when i simply posts quotes that support nigel's claim....i'm trying to nail nigel

wow...and you call me a lunatic....you're a "legimate" lunatic....LOL
 
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