The Watering Hole

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/21/AR2009022100911_pf.html

smoke and mirrors....

sounds good to me.

did you miss the part where he just spent close to a trillion?

If someone gave you $1 a second it would take a little over 11 and a half days to have a million.  At the same rate it would take 31.7 years to make a billion.

To get to a trillion would take almost 32 thousand years...

chase — Feb 22, 2009did you miss the part where he just spent close to a trillion?

huh? he hasnt spent that much..

Even before Congress approved the stimulus package this month, congressional budget analysts forecast that this year's deficit would approach $1.2 trillion -- 8.3 percent of the overall economy, the highest since World War II. With the stimulus and other expenses, some analysts say, the annual gap between federal spending and income could reach $2 trillion when the fiscal year ends in September.

Obama proposes to dramatically reduce those numbers, said White House budget director Peter Orszag: "We will cut the deficit in half by the end of the president's first term." The plan would keep the deficit hovering near $1 trillion in 2010 and 2011, but shows it dropping to $533 billion by 2013, he said -- still high but a more manageable 3 percent of the economy.

What's your solution, chase?  

I've seen an awful lot of Republicans who have no answers, and only wish to obstruct the process of stabilizing the economy, but very little put forward as a positive.  People can only listen to negative shit for so long before they realize that, a, it's negative, and b, it's shit.

Oh, that's not exactly true.  I have seen a bunch of Republicans who want to cut taxes and let that solve the problem.  Since that worked so well during the Bush presidency.

eliminate capital-gains taxes so that the income tax would be transformed into a de facto consumption tax that encourages investment
dramatically cut or eliminate business taxes so that U.S. companies could better compete globally
index Social Security benefits to inflation and extend the retirement age, allowing a big cut in payroll taxes for the middle class

these are just a few ideas i like off the bat instead of wasting 800 billion which most of is either pork, or welfare-esque tax cuts. the 4 million jobs he wants to create will hopefully be enough to counteract the .5% constriction of the gdp annually that the increased debt will bring us.

and dont start on tax cuts... you did see how obama just passed 145 billion in tax cuts, right? hows that $13/week gonna help you? i thought only republicans were stupid enough to use tax cuts? we all need to quit thinking along party lines

I don't see why we can't address the big problems first.

Start with the housing industry and banks. Let the car people go. Fuck em.

And all the shit in the bailout needs to go also. The roads and healthcare have very little to do with our failed economy. The dems are using this bailout to spend money needlessly. Now to be fair, the repubs would do this also. Doesn't matter though, change has not come close to starting in Washington, as promised.

I kind of agree hook.

Put the weight behind banking system, it has the infrastructure into every part of the US to work quickly.

The recession is down to a banking system failure, kick the shit out of senior bankers - put them in stocks if vengeance requires it,

But 99% of the financial system is economic plumbing, sort that out.

Start new banks - do something about that and the rest follows.

throwing all the money in the world at this isn't going to help in the long term. even if all this "stimulus" does turn the economy around this/next year were setting ourselves up for trouble beyond that. with all the $ the fed pumped into the economy they are going to jack interest rates back to reasonable levels causing another recession down the road.

we need to fix our core problem which is that we have stopped producing. we are a nation of consumers that finances the money with which to consume overseas products, from overseas treasuries. we need to become a producing nation again. sadly now it looks like obamas cap and trade policy is going to kill whats left of our manufacturing base by sending it overseas where they dont give a fuck about carbon emissions and can sell the shit back to us at wal-mart further fucking us

Nothing's going to change without a fundamental new approach to banking.  All of this started when financial institutions forgot whose money they were holding.  Once they began to think it was theirs and not ours the downhill slide started.  How many remember when you had a savings account that earned real interest?  Something substantial like 7 or 8%?  The banks would then lend that out and get 9 to 11% in return.  At 8% your money would double in nine years (using the rule of 72).  That's still a long time, but I closed out my previous savings account once my bank got the interest all the way down to 0.15%(!) - a return that would require 480 years just to double your money!  So what did the banks do with all that saved outgoing interest?  Jack up what they get for consumer loans to astronomical levels (I have two credit cards that went over 31%!!!).  It's no wonder we're in the state that we are now with those kinds of numbers.

So what punishment did these bankers get for their mishandling of OUR money?  They were rewarded with $350 Billion...

chase — Feb 23, 2009eliminate capital-gains taxes so that the income tax would be transformed into a de facto consumption tax that encourages investment

Fantastic idea, especially for the 95% of us who never have any capital gains.  Boy, is that capital gains tax painful to the average person!

dramatically cut or eliminate business taxes so that U.S. companies could better compete globally

pointless.  Businesses are always going to look to make more profits, so they are going to make things overseas regardless.  You want to give them more profit, thereby concentrating power more in the hands of the wealthy?  Doesn't sound like much different from the last 50 years to me.

index Social Security benefits to inflation and extend the retirement age, allowing a big cut in payroll taxes for the middle class

Wonderful.  Because there are so many companies out there looking to hire 60 year olds, and so many jobs for them to have, right?  

I know Ron Paul = Love, whatever that means, but really, have you thought these through and come to the realization that they will actually work, or are they just ideas that attract you because they are really different from anything else out there?

chase — Feb 24, 2009we need to fix our core problem which is that we have stopped producing. we are a nation of consumers that finances the money with which to consume overseas products, from overseas treasuries. we need to become a producing nation again. sadly now it looks like obamas cap and trade policy is going to kill whats left of our manufacturing base by sending it overseas where they dont give a fuck about carbon emissions and can sell the shit back to us at wal-mart further fucking us

Amazing.  Now I learn that Obama is actualy responsible for that fact that all of our products are manufactured in China, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Taiwan.  I've been buying chips and parts manufactured there for at least ten years... fucking Obama with his irresponsible time-traveling and policy implementation.

charger — Feb 24, 2009[quote author=chase link=1235274706/0#9 date=1235433618]we need to fix our core problem which is that we have stopped producing. we are a nation of consumers that finances the money with which to consume overseas products, from overseas treasuries. we need to become a producing nation again. sadly now it looks like obamas cap and trade policy is going to kill whats left of our manufacturing base by sending it overseas where they dont give a fuck about carbon emissions and can sell the shit back to us at wal-mart further fucking us

Amazing.  Now I learn that Obama is actualy responsible for that fact that all of our products are manufactured in China, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Taiwan.  I've been buying chips and parts manufactured there for at least ten years... fucking Obama with his irresponsible time-traveling and policy implementation.


quit taking this personally. it has nothing to do with obama or bush. this trend started a LONG time ago and has zero to do with partisan bullshit. america as a unified country has a problem. it doesn't matter in the least which of the 2 political parties are in power.

charger — Feb 24, 2009[quote author=chase link=1235274706/0#9 date=1235433618]we need to fix our core problem which is that we have stopped producing. we are a nation of consumers that finances the money with which to consume overseas products, from overseas treasuries. we need to become a producing nation again. sadly now it looks like obamas cap and trade policy is going to kill whats left of our manufacturing base by sending it overseas where they dont give a fuck about carbon emissions and can sell the shit back to us at wal-mart further fucking us

Amazing.  Now I learn that Obama is actualy responsible for that fact that all of our products are manufactured in China, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Taiwan.  I've been buying chips and parts manufactured there for at least ten years... fucking Obama with his irresponsible time-traveling and policy implementation.


that didn't come from ron paul.... nice try though