While The Economy Falls Further Apart, President Announces 'Main Street Tour'. Yeah, That'll Help.
It's like deja vu all over again. Despite the fact that we know the causes of deficits are more important than the actual deficits, despite the fact that most top economists are calling for more economic stimulus and jobs programs, the New York Times has raised the anti-deficit banner in much the same way they did the "weapons of mass destruction" rationale for invading Iraq. (And look how well that all turned out!) This, of course, from the same paper who looked away while Bush trashed the economy.
And now our anti-deficit president's going to do another symbolic tour - in Allentown, of all places. Too, too ironic!
WASHINGTON — As Democrats renew their push to create jobs, they are at odds over the timing, cost and scope of additional measures, with the White House’s concern about high budget deficits pitted against the eagerness of many in Congress to spur hiring before next year’s elections.
After months in which his focus has been on a health care overhaul and foreign policy issues, President Obama will pivot later this week to the economy, convening a White House forum on Thursday to discuss ideas for job creation and then traveling to Allentown, Pa., for his first stop on a “Main Street Tour.”
Congressional Democrats return from a holiday break intent on packaging new proposals for tax incentives and construction projects to promote employment, with the House, where every member is up for re-election next year, on a much faster track than the Senate or the White House.
While the political rationale for additional government action is clear, it is an open question whether it would have any substantial economic effect. Still, the impetus for the activity will be underscored on Friday when the government releases figures for job losses and the unemployment rate for November.
With joblessness, which stood at 10.2 percent in October, likely to remain high through 2010 even as the economy recovers, the stage is set for what could be a yearlong tussle between deficit reduction and government incentives for job creation, and between the politics of Wall Street and Main Street.
An "open question" on whether it would have "any substantial economic effect"? Gee, you'd think a New York Times reporter would read Paul Krugman at least once in a while.
he's just babbling at this point.
He'll be standing at the unemployment office wearing a sideways hat and butt-crack trousers when the truth finally manifests with or without the "experts" opinions and spin.
Professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton.
Centenary Professor at the London School of Economics.
Nobel Memorial Prize winner in Economics .
He's written or edited more than 25 books, 40 scholarly articles and 750 columns at The New York Times dealing with current economic and political issues.
Can I join that nuthouse?
Krugs old school . . ain't gonna happen.
Worn out, obsolete, unsustainable.
trolling for hire, that is where the money is at... right?
LOL
building custom, high-end, zero-energy, hypoallergenic homes in a city leveled by foreclosures where housing prices have plummeted and nearly one in six people are unemployed.
that much demand for pup tents?
Hasa Diga Eebowai
are in demand.
Wow, right... why should I listen to some "random" Princeton professor, when I can simply have some anonymous poster in a blog make up his or her own numbers.
Maybe you will save us with all that energy you generate from the hot air you spell from your soap box?
the hard way.
right?
All you do, all day long, blah blah blah... random chatter. Sometimes answering your own posts like some sort of demented schizophrenic babbling. Yeah, yer making a real "difference" there...
Like that somehow is supposed to instill confidence in your estimation of Krugman, right? LOL
You notice how people respond with delusional smug self-confidence about how someone with a paper trail that can be traced is so wrong?
It's like those people so sure science is wrong about the climate or evolution, because they know better, and if you ask them how they know they essentially say, "Wouldn't you like to know?"
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
Paul Krugman is the go-to guy for me. He saved my ass back in 2006. Remember when every talking head was still celebrating the housing bubble a few years ago?
I couldn't make any sense of what was going on. Nothing seemed to add up? The Professor explained in his articles that it would all crash soon enough, heightening my fears. He accurately said of our economy back then: "americans make money by selling houses to each other on money borrowed from China."
Thanks to him, I dumped my rental properties and made a slight profit. A few month's later the whole Real Estate thing unravelled.
I also got out of my super low 5 year arm loan against the advice of my financial advisors, and got a decent 30 year fixed.That saved my home for me.
Reading Krugman's books from years ago is a real eye opener. Nearly everything he predicts happens precisely as he theorized. He is just the opposite of the neoclown's who are never ever right about anything.
People who trash Krugman need to read his books and articles from years ago and do a little research to find out just what an economic Svengali he truly is.
If I were a psychopath, I would join the republican party, and get in on the gravy train taking the Teabircher morons to the cleaners.
he has been getting proven wrong big time on this crisis, he didn't even see it coming and said so in his Oct 26th 2007 blog. The Austrian school has this right, and as predicted gold and silver are going up, the dollar down.
Anyone want to take a stab at how you fix debt crisis by going further into debt? Krugman can't even answer that. I know the painless solution looks great but the truth is were going to make this a whole lot more painful by denying the medicine. We need to let the correction occur, the weak need to fall and let the strong buy them.
Goodnight, Frau Blücher
Krugman is wrong as much as he is right.
He is no tome - no soothsayer and not a good predictor of future events.
He has shown a complete lack of understanding of real world politics that anybody never elected to any office has - a massive ego and arrogance about what elected officials should or should not do in HIS mind.
He is right at times and that is why he is a columnist.
To pretend he is more is a little silly.
"I know that there are people who do not love their fellow
man, and I hate people like that! " ~ Tom Lehrer (1928 - )
"...He has shown a complete lack of understanding of real world politics that anybody never elected to any office has - a massive ego and arrogance..."
Compared to exactly WHO? Bernake, Summers, all the others who didn't notice Maddoff's con? AIG?
at one of the top universities with a Nobel price in his field to boot.
Good grief, suddenly those are not credentials worthy of consideration... that seems to have happened right after he dared speak openly about what he thought of Obama's policies.
Have you read all of his books? All of his Times articles? Done research on his prognostications? I have, and you couldn't be more wrong. Krugman knows exactly what he is talking about on almost any issue.
When was he wrong? I don't recall him being wrong from the writings I have read. Paul and Molly Ivins were my two favorite writers. Both for their ability to see into the future with clarity, and their ability to show just how evil republican's are.
If I were a psychopath, I would join the republican party, and get in on the gravy train taking the Teabircher morons to the cleaners.
.
Your middle class on a whole whopping $3500.00 a year over there.
...the drummer.
. .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V188B3-pcBc
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
a very Bad Jam that's the bottom line.
UNITED ANTIWAR MOVEMENT TELLS OBAMA:
No Escalation!
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/48050
Join V for Peace and others TODAY!!
Veterans for peace
Working Together For Peace and Justice since 1985
www.veteransforpeace.org
{ Edited. Please do not post in all caps. Thank You. SiteMonitor}
Y'know, I was just going to scroll on down and ignore this post, but then I noticed the exclamations and caps... and dammit, they won me over. Now I simply MUST!!! click on your LINKS!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcgIxfNim7o
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
I'm shaking my fist at you for making me click on that link!
;)
Perhaps a 'Cruz' with talent?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80O-NpuaNms&fe...
I'm Boycotting NewsCorp! Heres what not to buy: http://www.cjr.org/resources/index.php?c=news...
The horn section is amazing. Thanks, real_earl!
'nite, Ms C.!
I'm Boycotting NewsCorp! Heres what not to buy: http://www.cjr.org/resources/index.php?c=news...
I hope you're having a fine evening, earl!
meant to add: Yes, the horn section, and whole band are incredible.
Makes me want to buy tickets for Veradero right now ...(or Sosua ;-) or anyplace where people still know how to have fun!
I'm Boycotting NewsCorp! Heres what not to buy: http://www.cjr.org/resources/index.php?c=news...
I could go for that :)
anybody still reads the NYT and other clownact ragsheets.
I guess people still hope the guys who got us into this mess are somehow going to us out of it and back to the Malls.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpuNE1cX03c
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
support for a second term again Susie?
Hasa Diga Eebowai
that this tour along with "calling out" lenders who won't modify mortgages will be just the fix we all were waiting for. Perhaps Obama can give the Taliban a stern look and they will lay down their arms. And I voted for Obama.
Will he be wearing a flak jacket and have low hanging helicopters?
That might explain his close cropped haircut on such a tall guy.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
...jobs. Must be willing to relocate to Afghanistan and be of approved sexuality.
Actually, they are having no trouble with getting their recruitment numbers lately. Thank you suck-ass economy.
the have mores on wall street are doing just fine
bush jr knew how to keep them as the have mores now obama knows who butters the bread come reelection time
the have mores always know more than the have nots
the have nots whine and make careers out of the military while the have mores make a ton of money off the have nots fighting in their wars for profits.
check history the rich have always been able to fleece the middle class and the lower classes until of course there is no middle class to fleece.
then they just invade third world countries and fleece their resources and cheap labor with the have nots as the soldiers.
and the soldiers line up to fight in these wars for profits as the have mores call them heroes.
give credit where credit is due. they play the middle and lower class like a fine violin and make a ton of money doing it.
ok go back to your whining and your political parties that keep you thinking that they are working for you.
the demos and the repubs two sides of the same coin.
A hat trick. That's not a good thing here btw.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
Maybe I'm just slow on the uptake this evening...but with all due respect, what's so particularly "ironic" about launching the Main Street Tour in Allentown? I happen to have family members who live in Lehigh Valley, one of whom has lived there almost all her life. That area has been in an economic decline for a long time due to the gradual demise of the domestic steel industry, which is why Billy Joel wrote the song. Wouldn't it have been much more ironic for the Main Street Tour to have been launched in some place like Newport or West Palm Beach?
Never trust anyone who insists that patriotism requires you to blindfold yourself with the flag.
Yeah, I didn't get it either. It'd be ironic if they kicked off the tour in Beverly Hills, but Allentown would be exactly the right place to start, symbolically.
Maybe C&L figures Obama isn't aware of the town's symbolism or the Billy Joel song, and that its residents are the most easily fooled or placated? I dunno. That's the best I can come up with.
Or maybe they think Obama's giving us a free ride, when we've already paid.
;)
Everyone is equally entitled to the pursuit of happiness. Wasn't that once self evident?
Isn't Allentown part of the Rustbelt, that outsourced their good middle-class producing jobs overseas years ago?
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
as a 3 year old, being driven to the site that would one day be the Century Mall in Pittsburg, PA to watch the red hot slag get dumped down a huge hill at sundown.
From our new house on Ridge Road in McKeesport, we would watch in awe as the glow of the steel mills in the distance would light the sky all night long.
Sounds like Gahenna.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuqX3S18i6Y
(About 3:00)
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Q8G5AQpuxM (3:48)
another hope feeds another dream
another truth installed by the machine
a secret wish the marrying of lies
today comes true what common sense denies
...or the reason why C&L perceives it as ironic is because that area has been hurting for such a long time. As in, "they're only realizing that Allentown's in trouble now??? Where have they been for the last twenty or thirty years??"
That's the only possibility I can think of...
Never trust anyone who insists that patriotism requires you to blindfold yourself with the flag.
Obama has bought into globalism and the axiom that "those jobs are gone" in manufacturing. So it's a rather macabre dance of death to start off the jobs tour at an icon that once-upon-a-time had been ground zero for American manufacturing. Time will tell whether he pulls a phoenix out of his hat or whether this is hypocritical theater worthy of the Republicans.
Great , Obama is making a "main street tour" to blow some sun shine up our asses . How about the main street help and representation you promised Barack ? Oh that's right , can't afford it , all the money went to bail out Wall Street , sorry I forgot .
Insanity , it is what it is , there is no understanding it .
Maybe that's the irony? That he's going to go to Allentown to tell everyone everything is okay?
I dunno.
Anyway . . .
I can see his speech now:
My fellow Americans. Please understand. While yes, we still can, change is hard. I know you're hurting, but there are wars to pay for, and we can't pay for both you and the wars.
Everyone is equally entitled to the pursuit of happiness. Wasn't that once self evident?
the tenor of comments on these threads rather disturbing. Did anybody seriously expect a full scale revolution when Obama was elected? His record clearly showed him to be a center moderate and in any case this is all about bending the political curve which is an arduous and painstaking task. Doesn't mean you can't bitch but if so many people bail on the Democratic Party in 2010 by way of "showing Obama" then I can only hope whatever health insurance you have covers bullet holes in the feet. That would be, ( what's the word I'm searching for?), STUPID.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
that this is bigger than a government or a party or a country?
What's stupid is to believe that turning on Obama will help anyone. He's already said that this is going to be tough.
If you want a good nightmare, imagine that the election went any other way. eeecchh.
"What's stupid is to believe that turning on Obama will help anyone." is what I just said. If people think getting anything done is difficult now then imagine what happens if you turn either the Senate or the House back over to the Republicans.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
I must have missed what you meant.
It's late, I've already done a 10 hour shift - I'm fried.
See ya' tomorrow.
no foul.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
This up coming election is huge. The blue dogs need to be voted out and replaced with a more progressive minded person.
While it is true that Omama is falling short of our expectations.
If the blue dogs were gone, it would be easier to get what we want.
All this not voting stuff will only hurt the nation.
Unless, people don't mind going back to the way things were.
The thought of having more Pure NeoCons is more than disturbing.
What is your conceptual, continuity?
is electable and progressive at the same time?
.
Need more info.
What is your conceptual, continuity?
The people at Firedoglake have this right. Get the right people in the tent. Back bluedog replacements but only when you've got a decent shot at winning a seat. It would be bizarrely tragic if the Democrats started competing with the Republicans to see who can make their tent the smallest.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
Coming from the GOP is to be expected. They're pulling out all of the stops because so many GOP Senators are up for reelection.
They're scared. That's why we have the teabaggers, birthers and all the rest.
Now is the time to push them out the door.
An even more progressive House and Senate should be the goal. An even larger Majority. That way, the Prez will have to be more progressive.
What is your conceptual, continuity?
while the Republicans are pulling their lemming act the Democrats decided to join them for a swim.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
Snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory.again.
And we'll have no one to blame but ourselves.
What is your conceptual, continuity?
in that swim how many will pretend it isn't happening already? The problem is not the Democratic voters dissing Dem politicians but that the Dem politicians have long ago dissed the Democratic voters in favor of their corporate sponsors. Vote Progressive and Green party candidates into office or continue to watch the Dem and rethug politicians turn this country into a third world shithole.
so we can all see our future. His support of Wall Street over Main Street has been a huge disappointment if not that big a surprise. GWB lite is not nearly good enough for what's needed.
They SHOULD be reduced and it CAN be done - Barack Obama is just doing it wrong. I'm sorry, but get rid of the Bush tax cuts. The rich have done nothing but benefited from these wars by not having to pay for them but they'll sure as hell support them. Also, we have soldiers in 177 countries? Seriously? What's the cost on providing them with supplies and whatever they need? How many of those countries REALLY want us to have military forces in them either?
Seriously, a lot of domestic stuff could be paid for if we were actually willing to make cuts from the defense budget. We already have enough munitions to probably destroy the whole planet 6 times over, do we really need more?
Because the pro-illegal war, pro-illegal torture, pro-illegal surveillance, anti-rule of law Obama is about as welcome here as his cousin Darth Cheney!
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