Posted on 08/20/2009 4:26:09 PM PDT by chuck_the_tv_out
President Obama, once considered as politically agile and deft as a gazelle, is now looking increasingly like a deer caught in the headlights.
His poll numbers on everything from job approval to his handling of the economy, health care, taxes and bailouts are dropping faster than a cement shoe in the Hudson River. Perhaps even more worrisome, Rasmussen Reports shows that fewer Americans consider him “trustworthy.”
His popular support is hemorrhaging because all of his major initiatives are either failing in execution or in the legislative process. According to a new USA Today/Gallup Poll, 57 percent of Americans say the $787 billion economic stimulus is having no effect on the economy or is making it worse.
An even higher percentage -- 60 percent -- doubt the stimulus will improve the economy in the years ahead. A new Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll shows a whopping 72 percent of Democrats, Republicans and independents would like to see the balance of the unspent stimulus money -- about $600 billion -- returned to taxpayers.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
I coulda’ told them that a year ago.
Hmmm...reminds me of Pres--ent Whats-his-name.
The emperor hath no clothes!
Paging Jimmy Carter...Jimmy Carter please pick up a house phone. The American people would like to inform you that you have been surpassed as the most spectacularly inept POTUS.
Union members and gov't check lay-a-bouts aka freeloaders. Purge the DEAD WOOD from the economy.
LOL. Returned to the taxpayers. What a joke. What are people thinking? This money was never collected from the taxpayers. It was borrowed mostly from the Chinese or simply printed up in the basement at the Fed. But of course the taxpayers are right in principle - the money should either be returned to the Fed basement and burned or sent back to China.
what scares me is not the dumb people who still believe, but the smart people who do. thinking about some friends on facebook, etc.
Finally, some good news!
What portion of the net new treasuries in existence since March of 2007 before the crisis hit - a total of $3.19 trillion by the way - went to the Fed?
minus 1.5%. $50 billion lower.
What portion went to mainland China?
11%. $348 billion of it - and more in the past year, by the way, than in the year plus before that.
What portion went to domestic US private sector purchasers?
65%. $2.07 trillion of it.
Even that may understate it somewhat, since another $100 billion plus went to the carribbean banking centers that are mostly used by US investors. $225 billion all told went to those plus Switzerland, Luxembourg, and Ireland.
So something like 2/3rds of it is owned by US households or for their benefit.
US household net worth is over $50 trillion. Debt does not equal negative net worth.
Perhaps you are right. So we should take the money and let the Treasury buy back $600 billion in bonds and burn them. It’s all the same.
But sure, all the policy actions needed to "right" the economy from the results of last year's crisis were put in place before Bush left office. TARP was necessary and the activist Fed was necessary, they have actually been implemented and they did the job. The economy is already recovering and nobody needs more policy fiddling.
Least of all do we need giant new tax increases or trillion dollar entitlements for the middle class, as this administration has proposed.
LOL. You are right about that. There is NO MONEY. This whole stimulus program nonsense is being played out with Monopoly money. That's the same stuff we would be using to fund ObamaCare. Watch out. We are going to have Jimmy Carter levels of inflation in 2011+
Stop slandering the country and its institutions, it is not necessary to oppose wrong-headed policy.
Really no inflation? What ever happened to five cent candy. You gotta be kidding. The Fed prints money. They call it CREDIT and it works just as good as money. Plus you have to pay the Fed interest on that phony “credit”. The Fed and the fractional reserve banking system is THE cause of inflation. Period. They know it. I know it. And I think you know it.
Yes really no inflation. Consumer prices are 2% lower than a year ago. Producer prices are 5% lower. Commodity prices are off more like half, etc.
"What ever happened to five cent candy."
Um pops, Jimmy Carter was once president, too. Money is worth more today than last year, and basically the same as it was worth in 2005. Fed policy has been entirely correct over that span.
"You gotta be kidding."
I'm informed, you are a mere doom-monger smearing much better men than yourself.
"The Fed prints money."
Technically no, and not recently even in a non-technical sense, and the value of any commodity depends on the demand for it as well as the supply, and the demand for money is not a constant, and it rises in financial crises, and producing more of any commodity when demand for it increases adds net value.
"you have to pay the Fed interest on that phony “credit”."
I don't pay the Fed anything actually, and there is nothing phoney at all about a particle of it. Your allegations are phoney, that is about it.
"the fractional reserve banking system is THE cause of inflation."
In the long run, the value of money has fallen because more money has been created than new demand for it sure. The Fed does not cause new money creation, it restricts it. Free bankers acting in their own interests, voluntarily and with the consent of their counterparties, both lenders and borrowers, create new money. In which there isn't the slightest wrong to anyone.
That's right Virginia, you have no prior right to the value of any commodity remaining the same. If you did, you'd have a right to prevent all meaningful economic action by anyone else, but you don't. Instead you just have the right to engage in economic action yourself, and you and you alone are responsible for the consequences to yourself from anything that happens to any commodity you freely choose to hold.
Do you really understand how fractional reserve banking works and the role of the Fed in this money creation scam? I'm starting to wonder.
And how you can claim that letting banks create money from nothing and in the process raise the cost of everyday goods while depreciating the value of cash savings is not causing harm is simply laughable. Of course it causes harm. It causes harm to all of us. How many people have retired with a $40,000 annual income that looked great at the time? Most are back working again. Don't tell me that increasing the money supply doesn't hurt. I know better.
I’m in a big argument on Facebook with some friends of a liberal friend I consider to be a dear friend even though I haven’t seen her in years. They want this healthcare sooo badly. I try to explain that those of us who have good healthcare don’t need his plan but I’m all for helping people who don’t have it, but not this way. They completely pass over the part where I say help others. They think I’m selfish, me-me kind of thing. Grrrr. I’m staying off her facebook for a while. She called us Sarah Palin loons.
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