So, we're fucked, right?

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eh, we'll get over it.

what we won't get used to is unemployment that's going to be between 7-10% for the next decade no matter who is in power.

the good old days are gone forever. it's all about managing worldwide decline.
 
eh, we'll get over it.

what we won't get used to is unemployment that's going to be between 7-10% for the next decade no matter who is in power.

the good old days are gone forever. it's all about managing worldwide decline.

Way I see it is that capitalism died in 2008 but then it was resuscitated and now it has died again. Or something.
 
Obama's to blame for your credit rating being downgraded. You should be cutting public spending. We have had to do it in the UK and have kept our AAA credit rating cos investors are seeing that we are trying to cut our debt.
 
OBAMA 2012

Obama-logo-712332.jpg


THE GOOD OLD DAYS ARE GONE FOREVER, IT'S ALL ABOUT MANAGING WORLDWIDE DECLINE

:up: jeez you've nailed it.
 
:up: jeez you've nailed it.



and we have W and his bankrupting tax cuts and needless/endless wars to blame. :up:

we'll look back and we'll realize that the worst decision made in the past 50 years was when the SCOTUS gave the presidency to W in 2000.
 
what we won't get used to is unemployment that's going to be between 7-10% for the next decade no matter who is in power.
Most of that unemployment rate allocates to frictional and structural unemployment, people who have been laid off and out of work for a while but willing and able to work, and workers that will get their jobs destroyed and others created based on innovation and changes in demand for labor.

The natural rate of unemployment of about 4% to 5% will soon be visionary given that consumer spending increases to avoid cyclical unemployment.
 
Obama's to blame for your credit rating being downgraded. You should be cutting public spending. We have had to do it in the UK and have kept our AAA credit rating cos investors are seeing that we are trying to cut our debt.



if you read the reasoning for the downgrade it was because of political intransigence surrounding something as simple and necessary as raising the debt ceiling and the lack of the US government's ability to raise revenue.

The political brinksmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America's governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed. The statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips in the debate over fiscal policy. Despite this year's wide-ranging debate, in our view, the differences between political parties have proven to be extraordinarily difficult to bridge, and, as we see it, the resulting agreement fell well short of the comprehensive fiscal consolidation program that some proponents had envisaged until quite recently. Republicans and Democrats have only been able to agree to relatively modest savings on discretionary spending while delegating to the Select Committee decisions on more comprehensive measures. It appears that for now, new revenues have dropped down on the menu of policy options. In addition, the plan envisions only minor policy changes on Medicare and little change in other entitlements, the containment of which we and most other independent observers regard as key to long-term fiscal sustainability.

Our opinion is that elected officials remain wary of tackling the structural issues required to effectively address the rising U.S. public debt burden in a manner consistent with a 'AAA' rating and with 'AAA' rated sovereign peers (see Sovereign Government Rating Methodology and Assumptions," June 30, 2011, especially Paragraphs 36-41). In our view, the difficulty in framing a consensus on fiscal policy weakens the government's ability to manage public finances and diverts attention from the debate over how to achieve more balanced and dynamic economic growth in an era of fiscal stringency and private-sector deleveraging (ibid). A new political consensus might (or might not) emerge after the 2012 elections, but we believe that by then, the government debt burden will likely be higher, the needed medium-term fiscal adjustment potentially greater, and the inflection point on the U.S. population's demographics and other age-related spending drivers closer at hand (see "Global Aging 2011: In The U.S., Going Gray Will Likely Cost Even More Green, Now," June 21, 2011).

[...]

Compared with previous projections, our revised base case scenario now assumes that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, due to expire by the end of 2012, remain in place. We have changed our assumption on this because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues, a position we believe Congress reinforced by passing the act.
 
Obama's to blame for your credit rating being downgraded. You should be cutting public spending. We have had to do it in the UK and have kept our AAA credit rating cos investors are seeing that we are trying to cut our debt.

You want to cut the deficit you have to raise taxes. There's no way around it. Cutting spending as well, but taxes have to go up. The Bush tax cuts which ate away the surplus we had 10 years ago have to be repealed.



Obama's not to blame. Congress is responsible for passing the budget. The blame lays with Congress.

What's happening now is people's 401ks are being wiped out. They're destroying the middle class and the Republicans are playing the fiddle while the country burns.
 
You want to cut the deficit you have to raise taxes. There's no way around it. Cutting spending as well, but taxes have to go up. The Bush tax cuts which ate away the surplus we had 10 years ago have to be repealed.



Obama's not to blame. Congress is responsible for passing the budget. The blame lays with Congress.

What's happening now is people's 401ks are being wiped out. They're destroying the middle class and the Republicans are playing the fiddle while the country burns.
yes, yes, 1000x yes.

i never had much in any 401k but i'm so glad i cashed mine out. they'd probably have time to rebound seeing as i'm young and all, but yeah.

this whole thing angers me so much even though i'm not even in the country now. it affects me though because my student loans are worth less now than they were last semester, thanks to the exchange rates. a minor complaint compared to people out there who've been unemployed for years, of course. it's so shitty for everyone except...the rich. of course. they'll somehow get richer.
 
Obama's to blame for your credit rating being downgraded. You should be cutting public spending. We have had to do it in the UK and have kept our AAA credit rating cos investors are seeing that we are trying to cut our debt.

OBAMA 2012

Obama-logo-712332.jpg


THE GOOD OLD DAYS ARE GONE FOREVER, IT'S ALL ABOUT MANAGING WORLDWIDE DECLINE

:up: jeez you've nailed it.

The two of you should read beyond the headline and read the actual report.
 
You want to cut the deficit you have to raise taxes. There's no way around it. Cutting spending as well, but taxes have to go up. The Bush tax cuts which ate away the surplus we had 10 years ago have to be repealed.



Obama's not to blame. Congress is responsible for passing the budget. The blame lays with Congress.

What's happening now is people's 401ks are being wiped out. They're destroying the middle class and the Republicans are playing the fiddle while the country burns.

Yes...

Thank you tea baggers. Your desire to take this country backwards has fucked us over, and for a long time. But when history reveals this your reading comprehension skills, your love of revisionist history, and your overpowering selfishness will not allow you to understand.
 
my god... how do intelligent Americans cope with the Tea Party lunatics trying to trash their country??? the Tea Party is the subject of so much derision and ridicule this side of the pond! i wouldn't be able to cope with the prospect of such people vying for power in my country! seriously! i complain about the leaders here, but it's just nothing in comparison... petrifying!
 
Obama has to take his share of the blame. Whatever happened to "the buck stops here"? That's what a leader does.

I voted for the guy but all I can see right now is such a disappointing lack of leadership. Right now I don't feel like he's a leader at all-just a laid back follower who points fingers and blames everyone but himself. Bush, S&P, ________. He is limited in what he can do because of Congress and the whole political mess we are in. But beyond those limits I want him to display at least the leadership qualities that I thought he had when I voted for him.
 
They're all fucking losers IMO. Obama is in bed with Wall Street, (as is everyone else). And you're right, he's a poor, poor leader. Congress will make/pass the budget, but he really needed to just take ownership.

He's great at giving an inspirational speech, and I think he meant well with the Health Care, but the fact is he isn't some grand chess player. He's out of his league.

But.......

I'll still take this over McCain and Sara Palin.
 
He's great at giving an inspirational speech, and I think he meant well with the Health Care, but the fact is he isn't some grand chess player. He's out of his league.

But.......

I'll still take this over McCain and Sara Palin.

I'll take ending DADT, the beginning of the end of DOMA and some other good things from Obama.
But, not cleaning up our fiscal house both on Wall Street, in the banks and in our tax code will make the lives of millions, possibly hundreds of millions, miserable.
Obama really is looking like the lesser evil versus the HOPE from the 2008 election.
 
But I think you do have to ask yourself would this person or that person have done better given the same circumstances? In some instances yes, but in others his back was up against the wall. I think obama's biggest fault has been spelling out the issues. This debt debacle wouldn't have been if he just spelled it out, same with healthcare. The majority of Americans support the individual mandates of the healthcare reform, but the right has done such a great job hijacking the conversations.

Would Reagan as a leader been any better if the opposite were taking place? What if there were a liberal equivalent to the tea party that had such a loud voice?
 
You're right BVS and it's a struggle. The risk of having someone like McCain was too great, so giving Obama the nod was the right way to go.

but there really isn't anyone who would be right to fix this. Reagan would not have as well, considering he really started this whole joining up with Wall Street crap anyway (or at least was a lot more visible considering who he put on his staff).

I'm not sure we could find anyone who would be the liberal tea party. You'd have tea party who are against taxes, versus the liberal party who would be for 100% taxes. I just don't think you could find anyone towards that spectrum, or the financing to go with it.

Just imagine if the Left were as organized, and committed to getting things done as the Right. Obama may have gotten his policies past the first two years with no problem, but there's always bickering within the Left. Where the right is so afraid of the extreme, they all fall in line despite quite a few disagreeing with the method.

I'm starting to feel that Obama doesn't stand a chance in 2012. We've wiped out our 401k gains that had started to come back. We're in another war with Libya, that seems to be forgotten. We just had one of the most tragic losses of life in Afgan, and who knows how Iraq will be in the next year.

I think this 2012 cycle will be one of the ugliest in American history, and I don't know if Obama can weather it.
 
I'm starting to feel that Obama doesn't stand a chance in 2012. We've wiped out our 401k gains that had started to come back. We're in another war with Libya, that seems to be forgotten. We just had one of the most tragic losses of life in Afgan, and who knows how Iraq will be in the next year.

I think this 2012 cycle will be one of the ugliest in American history, and I don't know if Obama can weather it.

It will be interesting to see if unemployment improves or if 401Ks regain anything before the 2012 elections. It's a pretty deep hole for Obama at this point.

I think trotting out getting Bin Laden is just going to look desperate at that point, too.
 
No one cares about Bin Laden (that was a short lived time that's already done and gone)-just like they don't care about our single greatest casualty day in Afghanistan. Don't care isn't accurate, I have to believe that people care about those deaths. But what dominated the news? 401k losses. When only 3% of people think that terrorism is our number one concern right now, all of that doesn't seem to matter. Tragically it's war that's out of sight, out of mind :| Except for the families of those people.
 
my god... how do intelligent Americans cope with the Tea Party lunatics trying to trash their country??? the Tea Party is the subject of so much derision and ridicule this side of the pond! i wouldn't be able to cope with the prospect of such people vying for power in my country! seriously! i complain about the leaders here, but it's just nothing in comparison... petrifying!



they're more or less the American version of the Front National, but obviously culturally specific and more tied to idealistic notions of "freedom" rather than notions of what "France" or "French" means.

it's not a perfect comparison, but it's about the only one i can make.

FWIW, they are mocked and ridiculed over here as well, but the difference is they were able to make enough noise in 2010 that more mainstream GOP congresspersons and senators now fear being taken out in the primaries by someone from the Tea Party, so everything has shifted rightward and intransigence -- an esteemed characteristic in the eyes of these people -- is now a virtue.

and that's why we were downgraded.
 
Right now taking it over McCain and Palin is minimal solace. I know what you mean but it is.


and what's sad is that Obama's campaign in 2012 is going to be about how scary the alternative is. and, when it comes to pretty much anybody but Romney, they are absolutely right.

it's going to be a replay of Bush in 2004. how depressing.

how much do i blame Obama? i first remind myself of his considerable accomplishments. and if you look at his resume, they are substantial.

but he's been ineffective on the biggest issue -- unemployment -- which is also something he has little power to do much about. and he has to deal with fanatics holding a gun to the head of the country.

would someone else have been better? no idea. i will say that HRC would have galvanized the Right as much as Obama, if not more, and we all know what a disaster McCain/Palin would have been.

we get the government we deserve.
 
they're more or less the American version of the Front National, but obviously culturally specific and more tied to idealistic notions of "freedom" rather than notions of what "France" or "French" means.

it's not a perfect comparison, but it's about the only one i can make.

FWIW, they are mocked and ridiculed over here as well, but the difference is they were able to make enough noise in 2010 that more mainstream GOP congresspersons and senators now fear being taken out in the primaries by someone from the Tea Party, so everything has shifted rightward and intransigence -- an esteemed characteristic in the eyes of these people -- is now a virtue.

and that's why we were downgraded.

i utterly despise the Front National and all they stand for, but Marine Le Pen is incredibly well educated and that is frightening on a whole different level altogether, and i am very very worried for the next French elections - we already had a close shave last time with JM Le Pen although that was a protest vote as the left votes were completely fragmented, and the French population pulled together and made sure the FN didn't get thru in the second round... but the Tea Party are just just stupid brainless clowns! they would be laughed out of town here! as a European i am baffled as to how they have managed to get such a loud voice and be given the time of day in the political arena...

and yeah, re. being downgraded, the whole debacle really jittered the ROW... it's just awful...
 
No one cares about Bin Laden (that was a short lived time that's already done and gone)-just like they don't care about our single greatest casualty day in Afghanistan. Don't care isn't accurate, I have to believe that people care about those deaths. But what dominated the news? 401k losses. When only 3% of people think that terrorism is our number one concern right now, all of that doesn't seem to matter. Tragically it's war that's out of sight, out of mind :| Except for the families of those people.

I agree.
I was just thinking of what Bush might have done and what might spark a few of the knuckle-dragger minds.
 
Obama has to take his share of the blame. Whatever happened to "the buck stops here"? That's what a leader does.

I voted for the guy but all I can see right now is such a disappointing lack of leadership. Right now I don't feel like he's a leader at all-just a laid back follower who points fingers and blames everyone but himself. Bush, S&P, ________. He is limited in what he can do because of Congress and the whole political mess we are in. But beyond those limits I want him to display at least the leadership qualities that I thought he had when I voted for him.

Could you elaborate on that a little? How might he have better shown leadership with this recent crisis?

Would leadership have been refusing to sign the agreement Congress finally came up with because it didn't have any revenue increases, thereby pushing the country into default? If not, then what should he have done differently? How would you propose he work with people whose sole goal is to ensure that he is not re-elected next year no matter what the cost to the country?
 
but the Tea Party are just just stupid brainless clowns! they would be laughed out of town here! as a European i am baffled as to how they have managed to get such a loud voice and be given the time of day in the political arena...



well, we might think the same thing of the blatant racism of the FN. :shrug:

understanding some of the nuances of the Tea Party (there are some! at least in their veneration/deification of American history) might be a step beyond what an average European could get, simply due to different histories.

all i'm saying is that there's context and history to understand where the Tea Party comes from, and it might be (understandably) lost on non-Americans. what seems obvious to you is more complex to us, and vice versa.

and in no way is this a defense of the Tea Party! :wink:



the whole debacle really jittered the ROW... it's just awful

a lot of people were talking about Italy being the bigger worry, actually, to the global markets. it's European debt that's just as worrying as American political inefficacy.
 
Would leadership have been refusing to sign the agreement Congress finally came up with because it didn't have any revenue increases, thereby pushing the country into default? If not, then what should he have done differently? How would you propose he work with people whose sole goal is to ensure that he is not re-elected next year no matter what the cost to the country?

I understand that and the position he's in. For me he could start by no more blaming the mess he inherited (which he just did again Monday) and no more arguing over S&P and just accept what they did. Take your share of the blame, voice it, maybe get some new people to work for you to give you advice. Cancel your vacation and get Congress back to work too. Get working on job creation and inspiring some confidence instead of blaming and excuses.
 
well, we might think the same thing of the blatant racism of the FN. :shrug:

actually maybe the FN is worse in that when a highly educated person, a successful lawyer, is at the helm of such offensive ideologies, then "stupidity" in the intellectual sense isn't so much of an excuse and it is more sinister...

understanding some of the nuances of the Tea Party (there are some! at least in their veneration/deification of American history) might be a step beyond what an average European could get, simply due to different histories.

all i'm saying is that there's context and history to understand where the Tea Party comes from, and it might be (understandably) lost on non-Americans. what seems obvious to you is more complex to us, and vice versa.

yeah i think it is pretty lost on me lol!!

a lot of people were talking about Italy being the bigger worry, actually, to the global markets. it's European debt that's just as worrying as American political inefficacy.

definitely, Italy is a huge worry, but i think Spain might be the elephant in the room...

let's face it, the whole world is fucked! :wink:
 
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