G
Guns Guns Guns
Guest
Obama did not end America's decades-long division between retail and investment banking, exposing bigger parts of more financial institutions to the subprime crisis.
That was Bush. And it was Bush who decided to bail out the banks after the fall of Lehman Brothers, not Obama.
It was Obama whose fiscal stimulus less than one month into his term probably avoided an even worse recession in 2009.
And Obama's healthcare reform promises to give 30 million more Americans regular access to health care when these benefits will be more desperately needed than ever.
But none of this is helping Obama today. All that matters is that the US and the world seem closer to a second global financial crisis and a double-dip global recession than at any time since the Lehman debacle.
The official US unemployment rate remains above 9 per cent.
After losing 30 per cent of their value between 2006 and 2008, US house prices have been flat since. Nervous Americans aren't spending.
US corporations are accumulating mountains of cash, but they will continue to sit on it until the American consumer comes back.
Obama has repeatedly tried to jump-start the economy, through his own fiscal stimulus and convincing the Federal Reserve under Ben Bernanke not only to keep near-zero interest rates but also to buy more than a trillion dollars of US Treasury bonds.
No surprise that debt and deficits are high and rising fast.
Over the last decade, we have spent trillions of dollars on war, at a time of rising debt and hard economic times.
Now, we must invest in America's greatest resource - people.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts-arc/winter-of-us-discontent/story-e6frg8nf-1226126453301
That was Bush. And it was Bush who decided to bail out the banks after the fall of Lehman Brothers, not Obama.
It was Obama whose fiscal stimulus less than one month into his term probably avoided an even worse recession in 2009.
And Obama's healthcare reform promises to give 30 million more Americans regular access to health care when these benefits will be more desperately needed than ever.
But none of this is helping Obama today. All that matters is that the US and the world seem closer to a second global financial crisis and a double-dip global recession than at any time since the Lehman debacle.
The official US unemployment rate remains above 9 per cent.
After losing 30 per cent of their value between 2006 and 2008, US house prices have been flat since. Nervous Americans aren't spending.
US corporations are accumulating mountains of cash, but they will continue to sit on it until the American consumer comes back.
Obama has repeatedly tried to jump-start the economy, through his own fiscal stimulus and convincing the Federal Reserve under Ben Bernanke not only to keep near-zero interest rates but also to buy more than a trillion dollars of US Treasury bonds.
No surprise that debt and deficits are high and rising fast.
Over the last decade, we have spent trillions of dollars on war, at a time of rising debt and hard economic times.
Now, we must invest in America's greatest resource - people.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts-arc/winter-of-us-discontent/story-e6frg8nf-1226126453301