American Politics

[Member #4698]

A debt that can't be repaid, won't be repaid. <snip> So long as USA can continue to beat back efforts to supplant its dollar as world reserve currency, the game will keep rolling along.

True, but how long do you predict the dollar can remain the world reserve currency. 10 years, 25 years more? The idea used to be unthinkable. Not any longer.

[EihTooms]

To quote Dick Cheney: "Ronald Reagan proved that deficits don't matter ".

Ronald Reagan TRIPLED our National Debt. Last I checked, he was still the Patron Saint of all things "Conservative Republican. " And, sure enough, the country has not been destroyed by that wildly out of control typical Republican spending spree some 30 years ago. Not totally anyay.

And he did so after inheriting from Jimmy Carter better economic conditions than any incoming Democratic president inherited from an outgoing Republican president ever; back-to-back quarterly GDP growth rates of +7. 5% and +8. 5%, a moderate and reasonable debt-to-GDP ratio, a steadily declining unemployment rate, a steadily declining inflation rate, taking the Oath of Office right after one of the best 4 year annual average private jobs creation records in USA History, our being stuck in not two, not even one stupid ground war quagmire.

Of course, that didn't prevent Reagan from getting his stupid Republican-style Supply-Side / Trickle-Down economic agenda going (fast-tracked into the system in year one by Congress out of sympathy for his taking a bullet from a nut with a gun out to impress actress Jodie Foster), whereupon we immediately reversed that declining unemployment rate into a skyrocketing one to a point where we had a 10%+ headline unemployment rate for a whopping 10 consecutive months during Reagan's second and third year in office (the BLS calculated the now popular "real" U6 rate then just like they do now, but, haha, nobody talked about it then. Must have hit somewhere around 25-30% during the Reagan years). We got under Reagan then record post-Great Republican Depression era business closures and job losses. Beginning in his second year in office we found ourselves in the worst economic downturn since that Great Republican Depression of the late 1920's / early 1930's.

Which, of course, was a notable standard quite handily surpassed by Reagan-wannabe George W. Bush right after his version of Reaganomics got cooked into the system. Trump's proposals for the economy look no different than what those guys proposed or what the Republicans proposed and passed in the mid/late 1920s in the lead up to the Great Republican Crash and Depression. Only "Yuger!" and "Greater!!" lol.

[Golfinho]

And to get what little Obama got he doubled the National Debt to 20 Trillion Dollars by borrowing more money than all other Presidents combined. If nothing is done to reduce this debt it will one day destroy us. a

A debt that can't be repaid, won't be repaid.

No need for you to lose any sleep over your being destroyed by budget deficit.

So long as USA can continue to beat back efforts to supplant its dollar as world reserve currency, the game will keep rolling along.

[D Cups]

Like a dog returns to eat its own vomit. Vile, mangy, flea-infested stupid dog.

I'll also go on record .

.

[Member #2041]

To quote Dick Cheney: "Ronald Reagan proved that deficits don't matter ".

[D Cups]

You got to excuse for this, too, democraps?

Member #2041,he doubled the National Debt to 20 Trillion Dollars by borrowing more money than all other Presidents combined. If nothing is done to reduce this debt it will one day destroy us.

.

.

[D Cups]

actual merits of Obama's Presidency,

Worthless.

[D Cups]

worthless.

Sums it quite nicely, 2041. Cry some more. Eventually some other democrap will change your the-I-a-p-e-are for you.

[D Cups]

Funny stuff. ].

Meanwhile, check out the crime in the ex-president's hometown of Chicago. That's real funny, too. Who you going to blame for that, GE? Al Capone? Lawlessness and disrespect for people and property blossumed under obummer. Real funny.

[Member #2041]

Waaaaa waaaa waaaaa more excuses from the crybabies. Get your mama to change your

You can join the substantive part of the discussion which people on both sides are engaged in, or you can continue to act like the worthless douchebag you are. We know what we're expecting.

[D Cups]

Sorry Natty, .

Waaaaa waaaa waaaaa more excuses from the crybabies. Get your mama to change your [CodeWord132].

[D Cups]

You guys and the entire democrapic party are chock full of excuses. You'd rather blame than take responsibility. That is your party line MO. That's what the American people finally realized and voted in opposition. Cry and whine all you want, it is all moot now.

Obama not having even the bare minimum 60 Democratic seats.

.

[EihTooms]

It just blows my mind when progressives say Obama did good vis a vis the economy or foreign affairs. The truth is he presided over the worst economic expansion in modern US history. The economy under Obama never grew at 3%. Furthermore, it is economic history that the more severe a downturn, the faster and more robust the economic recovery will be.

I'll take a slower than usual Democratic / Obama economic recovery over your typical Republican Great Depression / Recession any day. This one was slower because Republican Party leadership in Congress agreed among themselves and pledged on the night of Obama's first inauguration not to help the incoming President pass anything or do anything to pull us out of the worst economic downturn their own Republican Party policies produced, figuring they could blame the slow recovery on Obama and the Dems in the minds of dimwits who likely have no idea what a cloture vote is and ride that lie back to congressional wins in subsequent elections. Shrewd move. They were right.

Obama not having even the bare minimum 60 Democratic seats in the Senate generally required to pass anything of significance for even a single day of his presidency (he only had a bare minimum 60 seat Democratic majority "caucus", which is not the same as having all 60 seats being Democratic Party seats, for about 12 unpredictable, sporadic weeks during his first year in office), meant the Republican Senate minority could slow walk, delay, obfuscate, obstruct or outright block all the known and well-tested methods for pulling the USA Economy out of those patented Great Republican Depressions / Recessions. And that is exactly what they did.

There was no counterpart to that kind of political party leadership pledge to obstruction in the aftermath of the previous Great Republican Depressions / Recessions. The Republican Party presence in the House and Senate was too paltry during the FDR years to block his Dem recovery measures. The Democratic Party majorities in the House and Senate under Reagan weren't about to make the country suffer longer than necessary for purely political reasons when they were faced with pulling us out of Reagan's Great Recession. The Republican Party congressional minorities were not about to dig in too much to block what G. W. Bush had to do under duress and at the last minute to pull us out of his Great Crash / Recession at the end of his presidency because, hey, he was one of their own.

Of course, a handful of House Republicans still managed to trigger the biggest panic stock market sell-off Crash since the Stock Market Crash of October 1929 when they pulled their "yes" votes at the last minute on that first TARP vote on September 29, 2008, contrary to what G.W. Bush asked of them. That was horrifically damaging enough for our economy and those of many other countries around the planet, particularly on an important psychological level. But otherwise they at least went along with it on the second go around the following month. Too late to "unpanic" the stock market sell-off by then though.

[Member #2041]

Perhaps. One thing to consider is that in the Congressional elections of 2010, 2012, and 2014 Obama lost his majority in the House (2010) and then the Senate (2014). This all happened after Obama Care became law. Further, the Democrats saw their party lose many state governor houses and legislatures. Much of this was due to the Tea Party, which I doubt would have been receptive to Obama-esque anything, and the inability of the Democrats to get out the vote during mid-term elections. I think this limited Romney's flexibility. Obama's charisma wasn't transitive to others in his party. Reagan's was.

Not only did Reagan win more than 50% of the vote with a strongish third-party candidate participating, he then built on that by winning almost 59% in '84 - Obama's numbers went down by about 3m votes in '12. Reagan set up Bush the elder for victory in '88, and I think Bush could have won in '92 had it not been for the economic contraction, Perot, and "Read my lips, no new taxes. " (Yes, I've read the articles saying Perot didn't take votes away from Bush, but I'm unconvinced.) Clinton bashed Bush for breaking that tax pledge, which is kind of a remarkable event that a Democrat would use opposition to increased tax as a strategy. That's how far to the right the Democrats swung, all due to Reagan. Even Obama could hardly be called at Roosevelt, Truman, or LBJ Democrat.

Economic recovery was both Bush and Obama. TARP was enacted in Oct 2008, so that's Bush (and Congress). A set of mixed measures, such as TALF and CPP, shored up the banks, which at least brought stability back in a time of panic. I understand all the banks minus AIG repaid their rescue packages with interest. The automakers were also rescued by TARP because GM's and Chrysler's bankruptcies were orderly and millions were not tossed out of the factories. This is no comfort to those whose pensions were affected.

Though $100B was budgeted, TARP did little to ease the foreclosure crisis because only $21B was spent. The result was about 10m homes were foreclosed. That's on both Bush and Obama, but I think Obama's share of the blame is larger since he had 8 years to redress this. Obama's Home Affordable Modification Program had the Treasury Department alone decide to run it through mortgage companies that had financial incentives to foreclose rather than modify loans. In 2010 it was revealed the mortgage companies were still perpetrating fraud to squeeze the borrowers, yet little was done to punish those involved. The borrowers were used to "foam the runway", allowing mortgage companies time to absorb inevitable foreclosures more slowly. Homeowners were the foam being crushed by a jumbo jet in that scenario, squeezed for as many payments as possible before ultimately losing their homes. You may read Neil Barofsky's book Bailout: An Inside Account Of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street - Barofsky was the congressionally appointed watchdog of TARP. "Treasury's bungling of HAMP and its refusal to heed our warnings and those of other TARP oversight bodies resulted in the program harming many of the people it was supposed to help. " This happened under Geithner's Treasury Department, and that's Obama.

I think Romney should have attacked Obama on home foreclosures, yet he's a traditional Republican and challenging business interests isn't in their DNA.

Looking at the 2016 election, I think anger at Wall St, i.e. banks, figured prominently. Look how Sanders eviscerated Clinton for her series of $250 k speeches to it. Much as been made about sexism, racism, "fake news", the FBI, and Russian hackers, but I think a lot of voters were deeply upset, if not enraged, that Wall St was bailed out and homeowners weren't. They learnt of Clinton pocketing cheque after cheque, and people justifiably saw that as their tax dollars going into her bank account. If I were a voter I wouldn't gave voted for her just for that. Collect your reward once you're finished with public service entirely. It's astonishing how unaware she was of public sentiment. Maybe she thought the public wouldn't learn of these since these were private speeches, yet she should have learnt from her Bosnia under-sniper-fire incident and other episodes that these tend to blow up in one's face. For a person who was supposedly very intelligent and highly experienced, she sure was amazingly adroit in charging into problems of her own making.

TARP version 1 passed under Bush in October of 2008, but frankly, Tim Geithner created the program for Paulson, and Obama was instrumental in getting it passed, because he strongly endorsed it, when McCain's campaign was flailing without any coherent strategy to deal with the financial crisis. Frankly, TARP was initially half-baked until Geithner fully baked it, and was appointed Obama's Treasury Secretary to carry it out. There also was a follow-on TARP II which passed during Obama's first month in office. Both TARP laws were Tim Geithner's creations, and he was all along going to be Obama's Treasury Secretary even when he was working for Paulson during the last months of the Bush Presidency. In fact, Geithner had some improprieties in his personal taxes, and his nomination would have sunk because of those improprieties, except that Obama stood hard by him because he knew that Geithner was far and away the key expert on what the program needed to do and how to do it.

BTW, I agree that Clinton has several shady dealings with Wall Street, but they actually pale into insignificance compared to Trump's shady dealings with Wall Street. But Trump's supporters refused to hold him accountable in the way that they held Clinton accountable for shady dealings that were 1-2 orders of magnitude smaller than Trump's shady deals. Trump was actually telling the truth when he stated that he could murder someone on 5th Avenue and the voters would give him a pass for it. That was actually the most truthful statement he made during his entire campaign.

[Hutsori]

If Romney had actually take CREDIT for Obamacare, instead of contorting himself into claiming it was so evil, when he himself had implemented a virtually identical plan in Massachussetts that was a success, he might well have won -

Perhaps. One thing to consider is that in the Congressional elections of 2010, 2012, and 2014 Obama lost his majority in the House (2010) and then the Senate (2014). This all happened after Obama Care became law. Further, the Democrats saw their party lose many state governor houses and legislatures. Much of this was due to the Tea Party, which I doubt would have been receptive to Obama-esque anything, and the inability of the Democrats to get out the vote during mid-term elections. I think this limited Romney's flexibility. Obama's charisma wasn't transitive to others in his party. Reagan's was.

Not only did Reagan win more than 50% of the vote with a strongish third-party candidate participating, he then built on that by winning almost 59% in '84 - Obama's numbers went down by about 3m votes in '12. Reagan set up Bush the elder for victory in '88, and I think Bush could have won in '92 had it not been for the economic contraction, Perot, and "Read my lips, no new taxes. " (Yes, I've read the articles saying Perot didn't take votes away from Bush, but I'm unconvinced.) Clinton bashed Bush for breaking that tax pledge, which is kind of a remarkable event that a Democrat would use opposition to increased tax as a strategy. That's how far to the right the Democrats swung, all due to Reagan. Even Obama could hardly be called at Roosevelt, Truman, or LBJ Democrat.

Economic recovery was both Bush and Obama. TARP was enacted in Oct 2008, so that's Bush (and Congress). A set of mixed measures, such as TALF and CPP, shored up the banks, which at least brought stability back in a time of panic. I understand all the banks minus AIG repaid their rescue packages with interest. The automakers were also rescued by TARP because GM's and Chrysler's bankruptcies were orderly and millions were not tossed out of the factories. This is no comfort to those whose pensions were affected.

Though $100B was budgeted to remedy it, TARP did little to ease the foreclosure crisis because only $21B was spent. The result was about 10m homes were foreclosed. That's on both Bush and Obama, but I think Obama's share of the blame is larger since he had 8 years to redress this. Obama's Home Affordable Modification Program had the Treasury Department alone decide to run it through mortgage companies that had financial incentives to foreclose rather than modify loans. In 2010 it was revealed the mortgage companies were still perpetrating fraud to squeeze the borrowers, yet little was done to punish those involved. The borrowers were used to "foam the runway", allowing mortgage companies time to absorb inevitable foreclosures more slowly. Homeowners were the foam being crushed by a jumbo jet in that scenario, squeezed for as many payments as possible before ultimately losing their homes. You may read Neil Barofsky's book Bailout: An Inside Account Of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street - Barofsky was the congressionally appointed watchdog of TARP. "Treasury's bungling of HAMP and its refusal to heed our warnings and those of other TARP oversight bodies resulted in the program harming many of the people it was supposed to help. " This happened under Geithner's Treasury Department, and that's Obama.

I think Romney should have attacked Obama on home foreclosures, yet he's a traditional Republican and challenging business interests isn't in their DNA.

Looking at the 2016 election, I think anger at Wall St, i.e. banks, figured prominently. Look how Sanders eviscerated Clinton for her series of $250 k speeches to it. Much as been made about sexism, racism, "fake news", the FBI, and Russian hackers, but I think a lot of voters were deeply upset, if not enraged, that Wall St was bailed out and homeowners weren't. They learnt of Clinton pocketing cheque after cheque, and people justifiably saw that as their tax dollars going into her bank account. If I were a voter I wouldn't have voted for her just for that alone. Collect your reward once you're finished with public service entirely. It's astonishing how unaware she was of public sentiment. Maybe she thought the public wouldn't learn of these since these were private speeches, yet she should have learnt from her Bosnia under-sniper-fire incident and other episodes that these tend to blow up in one's face. For a person who was supposedly very intelligent and highly experienced, she sure was amazingly adroit in charging into problems of her own making.