The goal of the Republicans is two-fold.
1. Damage Obama and the Democrats politically.
2. Fuck up the economy.
They achieved both.
The good news, of course, is that we (and by we, I mean me and John) profit from a bad economy. The nation may be headed into a severe deflationary spiral, and we'll simply have more buying power when prices drop.
The bad news is what happens to everyone else.
The Republicans have managed to strip out a lot of needed spending, and have watered down the bill to be sufficiently worthless in what it's supposed to do. They'll be able to point at Obama when it fails to turn things around, and claim it was all his fault.
Obama, for his part, failed. He failed to be bold. He failed to stand up to the people who trashed our economy in the first place.. and he failed to get a bill passed that will actually do some good.
Lovely
/adding
This is what spending in downturned economic times does. Frequently, you'll see the Loon Brigade lying about this.. criticizing FDR.. but it is just that, flat out lying. Some are simply stupid as fuck, but most of them are just lying.
The mistake FDR made was to try and balance the budget too suddenly. It caused a downturn, but tossing it out allowed the economy to grow tremendously, which continued during World War II, which was a massive public works program.
This is beyond dispute.
3 comments:
Unfortunately Moody's Investor Service requires registration, but Rachel Maddow liked in her show the other day...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28936707/
The gist is...
And they say that every dollar spent on food stamps generates about $1.73 in economic activity. Every dollar spent on infrastructure about $1.59 on economic activity. Tax cuts, which Republicans are ideologically committed to, they can have stimulative effect on the economy but not nearly as much, about $1.03. When you start talking corporate tax cuts specifically, you are down into negative territory. Every buck you spent to do that stimulates the economy about 30 cents.
Yes, that's true. I've seen similar statistics.
The reason the Republicans keep pushing tax cuts is so that wealthy individuals become more wealthy. That's all there is to it.
That is something that Krugman has been writing a lot about lately.. that gap. Some economists think of debt and spending in a 1 to 1 ratio, when it is not. This is deficit spending, designed to boost the economy resulting in a larger economic impact, well beyond the 1:1 ratio.
Once the economy is settled again, spending is eased back slowly while taking in additional revenue that didn't exist before because more people are employed and paying taxes.
FDR truly did usher in the post-war properity that created America as a super-power. He was bold.
I don't think Obama has that in him.
I think FDR had help from European infrastructure being totally destroyed...we were kind of the only people anyone could deal with, but I get your point.
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