11 posts
I've been trying to keep my big mouth shut about Obama's start to his Presidency, but I can't any longer.
The very concerns I had with him seem to be slowly coming true. I would really like to give him a fair shot and I will, but this is simply crazy.
The guy gives pretty speeches. That would be the end of his progress so far.
Obama has shown horrible choices of friends, or whatever, in his personal life that turned out to hurt him politically. Rev. Wright, etc. Now it seems his Presidency is taking the same road with his appointments. And you all know what I mean by that.
We have the Dem's and repubs divided, just as we did with bush. We have this crazy spending bill with all kinds of bullshit in it while Obama stands before us saying it doesn't, lying his ass off to get his way. Just as he did with Wright.
We have this bailout thing that uses the same method to supposedly help fix the problem we have......that got us in this mess to start with. Interest rates remain low, spending is out of control, borrow borrow borrow, worry about paying the debt back some other time. Damn.
He's lost his poise and is loosing the confidence Americans has in him little by little everyday. His inexperience in Washington is showing.
I hope like hell this bailout thing works and he proves me wrong. But right now I'm pissed as hell I let some of you alter my initial judgments of him.
His pretty speeches, his lack of experience, lying again, poor judgement of character and lack of ability to check his guys out, bullshit in the bailout deal, etc. WTF? Damn sure hasn't made one bit of change so far. ANd his first bill is shit right off the bat. Fucking politicians. Lying fuckers. ;)
>:( >:(
Im still pissed that I was lied to about God, I think Im going to file a lawsuit against the catholic church. :D
I think you need to step back and chill out, Hook. I think radical times require radical solutions, and the stimulus bill is one. As far as lying, I don't think he is. I think if you watched his press conference the other day, you saw him take a stand and show his mettle.
Here's what I see:
The guy won the presidency by the biggest popular vote margin in modern history. He got a far bigger percentage of the popular vote than even Reagan. He came into office with popularity just a shade short of JFK. He was in a spot to make a decisive stand, and could have claimed a mandate, if ever any modern president could.
Instead, he reached out to Republicans and tried to get their input on everything... he appointed three Republicans to his cabinet... he went to Capitol hill and sat down with Republicans to get their input on the stimulus. A lot of Republicans submitted ideas that were added to the original house bill, then not a SINGLE ONE voted for it. That was a direct slap in the face to him. Yet, he still wanted to include Republicans in the Senate, so he got significant input from all of them on what was needed. And their ideas made it into the final Senate bill. In the end, by crossing the aisle, he came up with a compromise that ensures that no one is happy, not the Pubs, not the Dems, and not the people. However, I truly believe he has some great ideas in there, and I think this is a step that is absolutely necessary. If anything, I have heard many economists saying not that this is too large a bill, but too small. So I think you need to step back and chill for a minute, let the guy do his work, don't expect a miracle in three weeks, and don't expect everything to be fixed by next January.
But if you doubt you voted for the right guy, take a look at Palin's latest press conferences, or watch McCain dodder around on the floor, and I assure you, you made the right choice.
Your probably right Charger.
I'm just sick of politicians bullshit. If I hear Obama pointing out that he didn't make this mess, he inherited it......one more time, I'm gonna puke.
He's correct, he didn't make it. But he damn new what he was signing up for. So to hell with looking bck, lets look forward. Damn, that's a change. A change that we need right now. Sure, look back to see the past mistakes to make sure we don't repeat them. After that, get to work creating the change you started off claiming you would make. Do some homework before appointing anyone. How many mistakes does it take to realize you ain't doing something right.
No pork in this bill, bullshit.
Anyway, your right. I need to chill and give the man a few years to do his thing. It really doesn't matter if I don't like what he does, it matters what the result of his work will be. So, your right. I need to give him a fair chance. But I'm getting kinda worried about this whole mess. Not sure things aren't worse than we know.
:)
Oh, things ARE worse than we know. Ask fingers, he knows something about finance. But we are making the moves to keep it from going further downhill. It might not work, but at least the economy isn't going to collapse without a fight...
What is certain is that things can get far worse than we know.
This is not a self limiting crisis, it is a global and systemic one.
As the recession gets worse the stability of the financial system will be tested further making the recession even worse in a self reinforcing downward spiral that would end with a total economic collapse.
This Obama deal - it won't solve the problem or change anything soon, but it will have an effect over a year or two.
So long as worldwide there is a coordinated action, it might work.
The central and most important thing is that confidence in the financial system holds, without that start reading your survivalist manual.
I think that governments worldwide should simply stick the money into recapitalising the banks with powerful strings attached.
Plan A - Use the banks to push a stimulus through their vast existing infrastructure.
But that is impossible to sell politically - so you get these half ass pork barrel solutions the voters can swallow.
Plan A is political poison - the vast majority of the population will not understand it and will protest.
So we are doomed to Plan B
While being entertained with the politics of Plan C - where opposition politicians try to play the populist card and play to the ignorance.
Things ARE beginning to look eerily like the political and economic landscape that Ayn Rand painted in Atlas Shrugged though...
I haven't read the book, but looking at a synopsis, it describes a picture around 50 years ago.
It paints a picture where the rest of the world is reliant on US aid, which describes the Marshall plan, except that "aid" was actually loans for post war reconstruction.
In the current crisis this "dependent" world she describes is far more concerned with the problems caused by US bad debts.
Not a situation she could imagine back then.
Guess you need to read the book then if that's what you think! ;D
The book looks interesting and I may read it sometime.
Her theory is based on fundamentally wrong assumptions,
But it is interesting to imagine a world where those assumptions were correct.
Ok, I haven't read the book - but it is based on the assumption that the market works perfectly and any imperfection is a result of socialist forces.
That the economically creative people go on strike as they don't want to be slaves to socialism.
Except that markets have never been left more free than they have been in the last decade
And that socialism has never been so in decline as it has over the last decade.
Yet the market failed spectacularly, this credit crunch is an example of a systemic market failure.
The perfect market theory - or more precisely - the "efficient market hypothesis" is only approximately correct in most situations most of the time.
Economic theories are at best approximate.
The belief in it as an absolute, well that is just like a religious belief.
For example
Markets have always been regulated over the tendency for Monopolies and Cartels to corner the market
The market does not self regulate the behaviour of winners, who tend over time to grow too large and suffocate the competition.
It is like ecology - to work efficiently and be stable, it has to be diverse.
Once the market has fewer but larger dominant players it becomes increasingly less perfect and more unstable - it becomes a monoculture.
So much for perfect markets - left alone the only thing you can say for certain is that the market will ultimately collapse through it's in built contradiction.
It is seen in nature, populations swarm and then abruptly collapse.
Markets are inherently unstable - they work in normal times, when things are operating in around the centre of the bell curve.
Once you get a "tail" event then it freezes and collapses.
I don't think you realise the extent of the market failure involved in this credit crunch.
It is not theoretical, many markets have simply stopped functioning and the system would have simply collapsed without government intervention.
If the market was perfect then it would not simply fail to make a rational price or any price at all.
Making money in finance is actually pretty easy if you have the patience for it, just make bets against the believers in perfect markets and wait till the tail event hits them in right in their assumptions.
Interesting Fingers.
I really don't understand what's going on right now......the seriousness of it. If that's a word. ;D
So, i guess if the right attempt was made by Obama or government, I wouldn't know it.
It's a shame that I, or Americans, I'll just speak for myself here.....don't understand more of governments function and the moves they make. :)