Danny Boy
Rock n' Roll Doggie FOB
-630 at the close. Ouch.
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.
jeez you've nailed it.
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.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.
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.
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.
yes, yes, 1000x yes.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.
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
THE GOOD OLD DAYS ARE GONE FOREVER, IT'S ALL ABOUT MANAGING WORLDWIDE DECLINE
jeez you've nailed it.
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.
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'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.
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!
Right now taking it over McCain and Palin is minimal solace. I know what you mean but it is.
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.
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.
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.
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...
the whole debacle really jittered the ROW... it's just awful
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?
well, we might think the same thing of the blatant racism of the FN.
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.
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.