The End of American Optimism (Mort must be hearing it from his liberal friends)

Wall Street Journal Opinion ^ | August 16, 2010 | MORTIMER ZUCKERMAN

[Hojczyk]

Our brief national encounter with optimism is now well and truly over. We have had the greatest fiscal and monetary stimulus in modern times. We have had a whole series of programs to pay people to buy cars, purchase homes, pay off their mortgages, weatherize their homes, and install solar paneling on their roofs. Yet the recovery remains feeble and the aftershocks of the post-bubble credit collapse are ongoing.

We are at least 2.5 million jobs short of getting back to the unemployment rate of under 8% promised by the Obama administration. Concern grows that we are looking at a double-dip recession and hovering on the brink of a destructive deflation. Things are bad enough for Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to have characterized the economic outlook late last month as "unusually uncertain."

Are we at the end of the post-World War II period of growth? Tons of money have been shoveled in to rescue reckless banks and fill the huge hole in the economy, but nothing is working the way it normally had in all our previous crises.

[Frantzie]

I was pretty optimistic when Bush was President except when he was spewing that amnesty sh*t.

Hey Mort Zuckerman - F off.

[dirtboy]

nothing is working the way it normally had in all our previous crises.

This has been tried once before - during the Depression - and it didn't work then either. It's just that liberal revisionist history wants to pretend it did.

What does work is cutting taxes and then having government get the heck out of the way.

[The Pack Knight]

Yeah. Maybe this is why most serious economists abandoned Keynesianism over 30 years ago.

Of course, as with most liberal doctrines, the proper response when it doesn’t work is to blame it on something else - hence the “new normal”.

[JPG]

Mort voted for Obama. Thanks a lot, Pal.

[Steely Tom]

Frequently, persons who are experiencing malaise are not optimistic.

[dirtboy]

Even Keynes realized you had to save during the good times to have revenues to spend during recessions.

But now the new Keynesians think we can borrow our way out of our problems (never mind that is how we got into our problems in the first place).

Absurd at all levels.

[griswold3]

and the politicians say ‘more taxes will solve everything’..
and the band played on.
round and round and round we go
where the world’s headed
nobody knows
Ball of confusion (still today)

So Mort thinks Obama’s ‘government guided invisible hand’ isn’t working so well? Imagine that!

[benewton]

I think that allowing foreign exchange student in to get an M.A. in hard science is a neat way to generate college funding.

The rest of us poor grunts had to settle for M.S,’s.

Not that I’m complaining...

[ruination]

it furthermore makes no sense that we have reversed the traditional American policy of welcoming skilled immigrants and integrating them into our economy.

Reversed? We take in as many legal immigrants each year as we ever have, and the rules haven't been changed in a long, long time.

[VRW Conspirator]

series of programs to pay people to buy cars, purchase homes, pay off their mortgages, weatherize their homes, and install solar paneling on their roofs.

Does this bother anybody? That the FedGov can tinker, poke and prod the behavior of the taxpayer with the tax code. I prefer that the FedGov NOT have this right.

[jazminerose]

This is what happens when libtards manage to get power.

[JaguarXKE]

Somehow I missed out on any brief encounter with optimism when Bamby was elected.

[Freedom_Is_Not_Free]

I was pretty optimistic when Bush was President except when he was spewing that amnesty sh*t.

You were optimistic while Bush was spending us faster into a deep hole than any other President since WWII? You were optimistic that nothing was done to prevent Social Security or Medicare spending from overtaking the entire US budget? You were optimistic when Bush added to Medicare with prescription drug giveaways? You were optimistic when our trade deficits were skyrocketing and millions of good jobs sent overseas, neer to return? You were optimistic we were fighing a war on 2 fronts without paying for it?

Uh, OK. I have been pessimistic since Clinton's 2nd term, and I acknowledge I was way late to the party.

[RobRoy]

My optimism disapeared about 6 years ago when my wife, a real estate agent at the time, came home from work and said the rules had changed, allowing people to take out a mortgage that would result in a payment equal to half their monthly income. That was when I realized the whole thing was a ponzy scheme and we were in BIG trouble.

[RobRoy]

>>Frequently, persons who are experiencing malaise are not optimistic.<<

Yes. Frequently. :)

[Luke21]

Zuckie is advocating for amnesty. He bemoans unemployment, then wants to give the few jobs that exist to foreign laborers. Typical know nothing liberal skunk.

[New Jersey Realist]

For good or bad, chickens will ALWAYS come home to roost. The point is, what do we do about it?

[Frantzie]

Dud - I do not disagree and the Bushes are RINOs. At least he was an American.

Bush is like the drunkard husband versus Obama is the drunkard husband who also beats the wife. The American public at least wasn’t getting beaten up.

Americans who watch TV support all this s*it because every TV network who owns every TV channel supports the muslim. So if you watch TV or ball games - you support it ALL.

[Freedom_Is_Not_Free]

I agree that Obama is far worse than Bush. Far worse on 2 levels.

Politically he wants a hard Socialist government, maybe a Communism government system. Bush was no conservative but he didn’t want outright Socialism.

That is my long term fear. Becoming an immediate fear, is that Obama is repeating the mistakes of the Great Depression and is poised to repeat the mistakes of Weimar Germany.