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oh my

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http://blog.american.com/2012/05/if-obama-was-a-stock-this-chart-would-make-you-want-to-short-it/

This is very interesting. Chances of Obama winning re-election are falling.

Topic

Oh, my.

In reply to oh my

Leaving us stuck (presumably) with money-bags Romney. It’s a sad day in America….

It can go either way

In reply to oh my

There is still a lot of time before the election, but Obama hasn’t been able to pull the economy out of the slump with his policies. Maybe Romney can do it. He’s not my favorite either, but worth a try. Its not like we have many options.

AV

my thought too

In reply to It can go either way

Romney is definitely not my favorite either, but as you said, we don’t have many options. Plus, the President is basically powerless without Congress, so I’m not too worried about the Presidential pick. There are a lot of seats up for grabs in congress. That’s where the power is at.

Personally

In reply to my thought too

I can’t take another four more years of Obama. He just has no idea how to fix the economy. All I have to do is look around where I live at all the empty buildings that used to be thriving businesses. Its all gone. He’s had almost four years in office and I don’t see any recovery. Its pure fiction.

Our Congress is even more pitiful. We need new people in Congress that are willing to work together without the political theatre and just concentrate on the problems. Getting rid of the embedded politicians, on both sides, in Congress would be a step in the right direction. The time is now to address our debt problem and reform our entitlement programs, as ugly as that might be. It sure beats ending up like Greece.

Yeah, Congress has the power, but right now all they do is take potshots at each other. Nothing is being addressed.

AV

No president ever has an idea about how to fix the economy, though.

In reply to Personally

It’s the job of the market to clean their own sandbox, and lately they’ve been more interested in pooping in it, then stealing the government incentives.
Ultimately, this is not the Government’s mess to fix. Sure, not repealing the laws that embody hard-learned lessons would help, but that’s done with and the price is being paid. The president can also muster the People, by being “inspirational” and whatnot, but in the end, it’s the market players who have to shape up. All the government could do is send in the National Guard, and I don’t think y’all are quite ready for that.

The president and the congress cannot change the basic economy

In reply to No president ever has an idea about how to fix the economy, though.

Stimulus packages and bailouts are temporary measures. When they end, the market will do what the market will do. The government (taxpayers) cannot afford for the government to be interventionalist all the time. Bailing out banks and auto companies may have saved some jobs in the short term, but not the long term. The effect was more psychological than fiscal.

The government can influence the economy but not direct it. Consumer confidence is a far bigger actor in economic matters, and that is what the government can do, is influence consumer confidence. But there are limits to that as well.

Sorry James, I HAVE to disagree, the legislators have a huge affect

In reply to The president and the congress cannot change the basic economy

on the economy. The first area where the Federal Congress and the President can have a huge effect is the laws on all the direct and indirect federal taxes paid by businesses. The second area is federal laws that affect employment as they often add an indirect cost to employing people and can even discourage some businesses from employing people. The third is the federal laws on the conduct of business, such as the laws on patents, IP and the like or the laws on how to deal with people. The fourth is the federal laws and agreements on International trade. Fifth are the long term federal economic support activities like the Land Bank etc.

All these can, and do, affect the way businesses operate and if they will be a commercial success as they add significant indirect costs to the running of the business.

But those are more “Don’t”s than “Do”s, aren’t they?

In reply to Sorry James, I HAVE to disagree, the legislators have a huge affect

Government can mess things up, but they can’t Fix the way the market is working, can they?
As long as the financial sector is monkeywrenching the economy for short-term profits, helping businesses skip a number of costs won’t do much overall. The money irrigation system is shot, that’s the big problem, money doesn’t flow right, and it’s being siphoned at the source.
And in the partisan atmosphere of the One-Two Party system, I don’t think anyone can repeal anything simply. There are riders and provisions, and unwanted consequences, and of course, any new bills will need pork to be passed.
That’s another shot system.

Reply top Ansu,

In reply to Sorry James, I HAVE to disagree, the legislators have a huge affect

There is a lot the government can do to stop the short term profit behaviour. I don’t know what the various tax laws are in the USA, but here in Australia we did have past tax laws that actively encouraged businesses to reinvest in their operations as it help reduce their tax liabilities a lot. That’s one way.

Another is to amend the existing laws and to ensure future laws do not inhibit business operations or expansion. I can give better examples from the Australian laws than I can the US laws due to familiarity; the the current US laws on IP do work against the consumer and the creator while favoring corporations are one area of US laws.

Example of legislative restrictions affecting business. Small business wants to expand but changes to employment laws makes it almost impossible to fire unsuitable employees, and even then it’s very expensive – even when they steal from the business. Other changes include the entitlements for people who are part-time or casual employees for more than a few months. The results are that most small businesses are extremely wary of hiring new staff no matter how much they need to hire staff – the owners end up working longer hours or turning away business due to their inability to handle the extra work load. When the time limits for the casuals and part-timers approach they aren’t offered any work for a few months to reset the legislative timers on their work status. This means less work for the people too.

There are numerous such examples within the laws where the legislators can make a difference.

Influence versus change

In reply to Sorry James, I HAVE to disagree, the legislators have a huge affect

All businesses say taxes are too high and that the government is impinging on them. Canada dramatically lowered it’s corporate tax rates, and at best it has served to slow the loss of businesses, not reverse the trend. Likewise when personal taxes were cut in the late 90s, it didn’t mean a huge improvement in the economy.

The government economic levers are really long term. Improving economic infrastructure and creating a more welcoming business environment are not things that happen overnight.

All of these are overshadowed by the rapidity of change in the private sector.

Coming from a conservative, that’s sobering…

In reply to Sorry James, I HAVE to disagree, the legislators have a huge affect

I do agree that many businesses being in most direct competition with compatriots, the impairments will be equally distributed…

There’s of course no point in pointless obstructions to business, but on the other hand, the effect of these hindrances are often overestimated, since companies do in fact want to make a profit – they would like to be more free, but they’re not going to stop doing their thing just because there are some nuisances.

I still think Obama could have done very well if he had harnessed his oratory skills and worked more on being inspirational than on politicking. That’s what a crisis president is for, stopping the buck here.

If those taxes were sky-high, maybe. But they’re not.

In reply to Sorry James, I HAVE to disagree, the legislators have a huge affect

Although we have a high nominal corporate tax rate, we have big loopholes to go with it. End result is that few companies pay anything close to 35% of their profits in taxes. You need to compare current tax rates on companies and wealthy individuals in the U.S. against times when we had prosperity, and against times when we were successfully recovering from recessions. If we were prosperous then, or fought our way back up to prosperity then, what makes you think we need to lower taxes below the levels of those earlier times?

There’s something screwing us up, but it’s not taxes. Lowering taxes with the goal of firing investment and spending is just a case of pushing on a string. All we’ll end up with is more deficit, and a bigger gap between the super rich and everybody else.

Consumer confidence is a big problem

In reply to The president and the congress cannot change the basic economy

Our economy is largely based on consumerism, but since the economic collapse in 2008, people either have no money or they are hoarding it because of uncertainty about where the economy is headed.

The stimulous package that Obama introduced was temporary and did nothing to get the economy moving again. The bailout for the auto companies was successful, but not anything the government should have ever been involved in. It worked because there was no private capital available to provide a bailout under Chapter 11 reorganization laws.

If the government could provide more long-term certainty to businesses about their policies and what incentives they can expect, I think private businesses would feel more confident about investing and banks would be comfortable lending money to businesses. Our government hasn’t done that, so right now, we are at a standstill.

Obamacare is part of that equation too. No one knows the true cost of the program because it doesn’t fully go into effect until 2014.

AV

AV, I think you hit the nail on the head

In reply to Consumer confidence is a big problem

in your first paragraph. An economy based on consumption simply cannot thrive if nobody is consuming.

It’s a giant feedback loop: somebody starts a business, people buy his product, he hires people to make more product, more people buy his product, he hires more people, and so on. By allowing money to concentrate in the hands of a very few consumers, rather than allowing it to distribute to the hands of the vast majority of consumers (the middle class), our current tax code cuts out half the loop.

Regardless of what party you support or if you like the candidates,

In reply to oh my

from my perspective you just HAVE to vote against Obama as he’s threatened to take unconstitutional action has done 180 degree turns on promises that affect the US economy (made promises for deals that would help then rejected the promised deals to organise ones that hurt the US economy), and has become angry when people challenge legislation he’s pushing that is dictatorial in nature and probably unconstitutional. It’s clear he has no respect for the US Constitution or the due legislative system of the US people as a whole.

After that, you can get into his various comments on specific religions and his disdain for US traditions.

agreed

In reply to Regardless of what party you support or if you like the candidates,

I could not have put that any better myself. Regardless of who i DO vote for, it WONT be Obama

Both interesting…and scary

In reply to Regardless of what party you support or if you like the candidates,

This same post would have made sense in 2004 with Bush’s name in it… :0

Any moment now…

In reply to Both interesting…and scary

Someone will ask why the Emperor has no clothes…
And then the MIB will show up, and everything will go back to being perfect, like it is now.

Profoundly disagree. Obama’s no dictator, and has not hurt the economy.

In reply to Regardless of what party you support or if you like the candidates,

I can’t figure what unconstitutional action you’re talking about. Guaranteeing everyone’s access to health insurance, maybe? About a sixth of the country has no insurance coverage, and it all just keeps getting more expensive. The country needs a solution. I don’t think Obamacare is a very good one, but it’s a start.

His “disdain for US traditions?” I’m unaware of anything in his actions or statements that correlates to that. It’s tea-party goofiness.

Nothing Obama has done has sabotaged the economy. When he came in to office, he inherited the biggest financial crisis we had seen in 80 years. He had to borrow a lot of money to fight it; apart from any “stimulus”, when people are out of work, they stop paying taxes, and start asking for benefits. Those are two big, inescapable forces that automatically make deficits bigger. He should have borrowed more, and spent more on public works that would have created jobs and confidence, instead of labeling unemployment benefits and tax cuts as stimulus. He made the mistake of believing that it wasn’t as serious a recession as it turned out to be, just as his economic team (Wall Streeters, all of them) and the Republican opposition believed, and held back.

We don’t have 20% unemployment, like in the Great Depression. But we’re a long way from 6%, and we don’t have a recovery in housing prices, and the banks are afraid to lend because they don’t know what trouble is around the corner.

Augh; that’s a good example of how Blogging Makes Everybody Stupid:

In reply to oh my

Now, I don’t mind if Obama fails to re-elect… it doesn’t seem like the republican adversary is going to be a prohibitively destructive one (Not-The-Michael, for instance), and Obama has let “Intellectual Property” ghouls have a heyday, appointing them and their cronies to government office, so he’s off my Christmas list.
But! Look at that curve! It’s FULL of jumps up and down, and the latest dip is in NO WAY extraordinary. In fact, it’s a dip from a high point, yes, it moves out of the movement curves, so it’s a notable dip, but it doesn’t take the value to an all time low, or even set a trend toward such a low. This tendency of ABSOLUTE IDIOTS to grab whatever they can find and then blog about it as if they know anything at all (saying at the same time “Now, I’m no expert, but…”), is making the whole world dumber!

I want to tell all those bloggers right now; [i][b]If you don’t know something, DON’T SAY IT!!! SHUT THE FLUCK UP ALREADY!!! Just because a gazillion partisan idiots will “like” your crap on FacePalm, doesn’t entitle you to open the floodgates to your inner Sea of Stupid!

Actually, Ansu

In reply to Augh; that’s a good example of how Blogging Makes Everybody Stupid:

Based on the people running his campaign and giving him his policy briefings, we’ll get George W all over again.

Who is Romney’s “pulling-his-cheney”?

In reply to Actually, Ansu

Or will it be a headless chicken act?
I heard about the Russia remark, and that sure wasn’t very clever… at least, if he’s working for the Chinese, I’d expect him to hide it better.

purposes, orientation

In reply to oh my

I suggest that the first thing to get clear is what the purpose of government is (I don’t mean give a list of functions of government). Next should be determined what the governments of concern are doing contrary to that purpose (not what they are doing that one disagrees with, nor how they are failing in that purpose).

After those two steps one can look at the candidates and decide which is most likely, if elected, to end the activities contrary to the purpose; secondarily, one can reflect on which candidate is most likely to get the government doing the things it should be doing.

The third way

In reply to purposes, orientation

One can look at how one might use one’s vote to disturb and menace the candidates and parties as much as possible, in order to suggest that future candidates be picked more better 😉
Isn’t that what Darth Nader is for? :^0

or fourth or fifth or nth way…

In reply to The third way

The best way to disturb the parties into choosing better candidates in future is precisely to follow my recipe above. Of course, in some states, e.g. South Africa, my recipe does not work because there are no candidates, just lists of candidates, so that my recipe has to be amended slightly. Where I voted (I have lost my rights due to long absence abroad) I used to send the candidates short questionnaires based on my recipe; their responses were frustrating, especially the inability to answer question 1: What is the purpose of government?

Ah, interviewing the prospective hires…

In reply to or fourth or fifth or nth way…

Yes, having to attempt communication with the polytickal mobs must be rather frustrating.

Well

In reply to oh my

It’s not like the American Enterprise Institute doesn’t have an agenda…

Gotta keep the faithful entertained. If we don’t, they might start reading on their own….

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Enterprise_Institute

Someone crafted a terriffic burn into that wikipedia article :D

In reply to Well

“Some AEI scholars are considered to be some of the leading architects of the second Bush administration’s public policy.”
That there is some finely distilled verbal napalm.

Ain’t it, though

In reply to Someone crafted a terriffic burn into that wikipedia article :D

I believe it falls in the category of “damned with faint praise”…

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