Cynical Nation

Well, this IS the "honeymoon period."

Just as I've always seen G W bush as a perfectly nice guy, who was thrust into problems a bit over his head, I pretty much see Barack Obama as the same thing.

In Bush's case, he DID confront international terrorism (Reagan retreated from Lebanon, Bush Sr. and Bill Clinton never confronted it, either)...and he DID begin his administration with a set of classic Supply Side across the board tax cuts that have INCREASED tax revenues in each year since....BUT other than that, he's had as big a soft-spot for Keynesianism as his father did. The outrageous spending on, what SHOULD have been a "no-cost" NCLB Act, the prescription drug boondoggle, were mere harbingers to his all-out capitulation to and cooperation with the Keynesian Pelosi-Reid Congress - supporting the McCain-Kennedy "SHAMnesty Bill," the ill-conceived spring "stimulus package" and the current Pelosi-Reid devised Trillion Dollar bailout package.

We've moved toward increasingly Keynesian policies since 2007 and with the very Keynesian over-regulation (the turbo-charged CRA) has proven to be primarily responsible for the credit crisis, those policies have FINALLY overwhelmed the benefits of the increased revenues the Bush tax cuts had provided.

The Misery Index for 2008 is inching up around 10.0 and if it does stay above 10 for the year, this would be the first year since 1992 we've had a double digit Misery Index.

Should the Misery Index get even worse in 2009 (and the general consensus is that it will), and get worse still, in 2010....that would pretty much put the nail in Keynesianism's coffin and very possibly return the House and Senate back to the GOP, which would make Barack Obama about as popular with the Liberal media as the last Keynesian to disgrace them - Jimmy Carter.

So, I think these days should be documented, because they don't look like they'll last and by late 2009, depending on how bad the economy gets, a lot of people may forget how popular Barack Obama once was.

Misery index?? There's a Carteresque blast from the past. Kinda irrelevant these days since (a) inflation is and will likely stay tame (if it didn't skyrocket over the past year with oil prices going sky-high, it never will) and (b) no serious observer pays attention to the unemployment rate anymore (kind of as arcahic an economic indicator as the prime rate). Actual job creation (or loss) is what's watched.

JMK tried to hide the fact that Clinton created a record number of jobs and Bush destroyed a record number of jobs in his war against the middle class.

Bush practiced Corporate Cronyism, like most Republicans and even some Democrats.

Unregulated "free trade" is a disaster. I worker in China or India don't make as much as we pay in taxes in a year. Nobody could compete head to head with those countries, and that exactly why our government protects our corporations against them ... just not our workers, under Bush.

It's actually very relevant Fred. Especially given that the inflation rate, which stood at 2.2% in January of 2007, when the Keynesian Pelosi-Reid Congress took office, now stands at 4.94% 20 months later!

Friends at the Foundation for Economic Education have been keeping that data for years.

When the Gingrich Congress shut down the federal government to force Clinton into accepting massive government spending cuts and a Cap Gains rate cut, those Supply Side actions not only virtually single-handedly created the budget surpluses of the late 1990s, they also delivered some of the lowest Misery Indexes in over four decades!

The WSJ among others whoooped it up over 1998's 6.05 Misery Index, "the lowest Misery Index since 1956!"

The unemployment rate, interest rates and the inflation rate remain the key economic indicators, our economically illiterate media not-withstanding.

Inflation hasn't been "tamed." I'm not sure where you get that idea from. It’s just that inflation has been brought under control, largely by our adherence to Supply Side (low tax, smaller government) policies over most of the past quarter-plus century.

We just haven't had much of a real deviation from Supply Side policies since January of 1981.

It (the inflation rate), along with the Misery Index roared back when Bush-41 cooperated with Ted Kennedy to break his "Read my lips" pledge - 4 straight years of double digit Misery Indexes.

Clinton suffered through a rough first two years fighting off a Keynesian Democratic Congress, until Gingrich rescued him from that, forcing deeper federal cuts than Clinton was initially willing to accept.

Cap Gains revenues rose dramatically when the Gingrich Congress cut that rate from 30% to 20%.

Cap gains revenues rose again when G W Bush cut that rate from 20% to 15%....in fact, the ONLY Supply Side policies Bush-43 engaged in were those incredibly successful tax cuts! U.S. income tax revenues skyrocketed when those tax rates were slashed across the board.

In fact, it's the increased revenues from those tax cuts that have masked the effects of the intervening over-spending (the inane spending that accompanied what should've been a relatively no-cost NCLB Act, the prescription drug boondoggle, etc).

The Misery Index remains perhaps the best single snapshot for how the economy is treating the people.

Don't tell me, next you're going to argue that income tax rate increases really do hike income tax revenues, right?

I'm kidding, no one has argued that and I'm sure you wouldn't either. Although, I would certainly find it impressive if you did try and make such an argument.

Bill Clinton was and remains a diehard Free Trader....Hillary Clinton, as well, Barely.

She didn't get on Walmart's Board just because of her looks and personality. She brought government OKs for Walmsrt's unfettered access to China's burgeoning manufacturing markets.

You didn't know that?

Well, now you do.

Bill Clinton, like Rahm Emanuel supports unfettered Free Trade. Clinton TWICE upped the H-1B Visa limits and the number of H-1Bs swelled form just under 50,000 in 1992 to just over one MILLION by 2001.

Dopey G W actually TWICE cut the H-1B limits during his tenure, over the protestations of the financial services industry and the likes of Bill Gates.

In fact, Bill Clinton got little done his first two years (yes, probably a good thing, all in all), but he cooperated as well with the Supply Side Gingrich Congress as G W Bush has with the Keynesian Pelosi-Reid Congress.

The ONLY area Clinton seemed to have had serious disagreements and misgivings with the Gingrich Congress was over, the amount of federal spending cuts. He seemed OK with the major reform and overhaul of our welfare system, with the Capital Gains rate reduction. There were only a handful of major disagreements I had with Clinton's tenure and few economically.

By comparison, G W Bush has ONLY done TWO GOOD things during his entire tenure - the across the board income tax rate cuts and confronting radical jihadism on a military level.

A++ on BOTH those!

The Bush tax cuts have increased revenues each year since and the military WoT was long overdue.

James Fox, at the time the Director of the FBI's New York Office had pretty much waved the white flag of surrender after the first WTC bombing, saying, "The American criminal justice system is inadequate to the task of dealing with state sponsored international terrorism."

There's no doubt that Director Fox was right. The FBI is set up as a domestic agency, with neither the means, nor the access to deal with international incidents like that. In fact, during the Clinton era, one of the most egregious errors was Jamie Gorelick's "wall" that barred information-sharing between the various federal agencies - the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, etc.

Today, that wall is down and we're all better off for that.

The CIA could theoretically get information from a German source about a domestic terrorist, say an ALF or ELF member and now freely hand that off to the FBI.....good stuff.

The Keynesian over-spending on things like the prescription drug boondoggle and the (what should've been a no to low cost) NCLB Act, supporting the ill-conceived Kennedy-McCain "SHAMnesty Bill" and the like, have been pretty disastrous.

Free Trade, reductions in government spending and tax cuts, those are almost always sound policies.

Well, watch what Wall Street reacts to on the first Friday of each month--it's job creation data, not the unemployment rate.

Wall Street is a commercial exchange, where stocks are bought and sold, Fred, not an economic depository of information.

Wall Street is looking at the health of various enterprises, in order to value their stock shares.

NONE of the exchanges, not the NYSE, not the NASDAQ. not the Mercantile Exchange (or “The Merc”) is run on traditional economic indicators.

For the Merc, weather, is almost always the primary indicator or predictor of a commodity's value.

The primary economic indicators remain; GDP, the inflation rate, the unemployment rate, short-term and long-term interest rates and the APR.

http://www.fuzeqna.com/GHCU/consumer/kbdetail.asp?kbid=657

There really isn't any "new economy.”

That weird dot-com period when people speculated that "We've entered a new economy, one not predicated entirely on profit and loss, supply and demand," was, THANKFULLY, proven to be unfounded. Unfortunately for a lot of people, that kind of wishful thinking cost them their investments when the dot-com bubble broke.

There are only two economic systems that have ever existed - the market-based economy and the command economy (feudalism, agrarian communism, etc. are all versions of the command economy.....and one of those (the command economy) has (1) never worked anywhere and (2) has always (at least in modern times) required mass murder, in order to implement.

In fact, one of the reasons the command economy fails is because it's not based on profit and loss, it's not based on supply and demand and it's worker-centric, rather than consumer-centric.

All I'm saying is that thinking things like, "The Fed will never again let interest rates and inflation get out of hand," is based on a very temporary observation and a lot of wishful thinking.

There are pressures that may ultimately force interest rates upward and allow inflation to spiral upwards - far more than its doubling over the last 20 months.

The idea that "Keynesianism (big government liberalism) didn't fail under Carter, we just went through a bad cycle and then, lucky for Reagan, we went through an improving one under Reagan," is based only on wishful thinking.

Keynesian overspending, coupled with high tax rates and wage and price controls tanked the economy in the 1970s.

Reagan's improving economy was, in turn, caused by sound, sensible, Supply Side (market-based) economic policies.

We had about a quarter century of largely unbroken Supply Side dominance (roughly 1/1981 to 1/2007), and even the last few years, the many Keynesian moves made by Bush have been masked by the increased revenues from those earlier across the board tax rate cuts (income and Cap Gains).

Bad economic policies tend to have bad economic consequences.

Everybody is saying this is the honeymoon for Obama, bla bla bla... What this is is the liberal illuminati trying to get the approval rating for Obama as high as possible so that when he actually is president is will be harder for it come down. It's all a scheme. i think we all know that by now.

The MSM is certainly infatuated with Barack Obama, but they're infatuated with ALL Liberals.

Our MSM is entirely Corporately owned. GE owns NBC, Disney owns ABC and Viacom (an entertainment conglomerate) bought CBS from Westinghouse.

Corporations ALWAYS support big government and ALWAYS oppose market-based solutions.

Big government = bailout monies for those companies "too big too fail," and it also regulates competition from new companies with newer ideas out of the market.

The Corporate media and an equally pro-big government academia have combined to influence a lot of people to reflexively think that economic Liberty (free and open markets) give advantage to predatory people over allegedly "non-predatory" people....go figure.

This all baffles me but i do like what JMK is saying about big government. It's true, the liberal illuminati want it big and for that to fix all the problems but money is going to ix the problems it's going to end up getting up into more problems. i

"It's true, the liberal illuminati want it big and for that to fix all the problems but money (isn't) going to fix the problems it's going to end up getting us into more problems." (roadwarrior)


Throwing money at problems almost always results in more of the same problems.

Throwing government (TAXPAYER) money at poverty has created more dependancy.

Throwing money at the "war on drugs" has only seen illicit drug use increase.

Government is like a sledge hammer...a tool, with very limited uses.