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US headed in the right direction?

Is the US on the road to economic recovery?

  • The US is 100% on the right road to recovery

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    24
  • Poll closed .

Ockham

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Fox DC said:
President Barack Obama said Tuesday that he has “never been more confident that our nation is headed in the right direction.”

“We are doing what is needed to move forward, and we’re doing what’s necessary not just to rebuild the economy for the short term, we want to rebuild it for the long term,” the president said at a Seattle fundraiser for Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash).
Obama Confident US Headed In 'Right Direction'


Is President Barack Obama correct? Is the United States, now more than ever, headed in the right direction and doing what's necessary to rebuild the economy?

Take the poll.
 
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Obama Confident US Headed In 'Right Direction'


Is President Barack Obama correct? Is the United States, now more than ever, headed in the right direction and doing what's necessary to rebuild the economy?

Take the poll.

Obama could **** on a roll, call it a meatball sub, and the left would eat it and order seconds.

45 months of democrat control of the House and Senate. 20 months of the Obama Presidency. Unemployment is still up, the economy is still down, racial tension is as ugly as it has ever been, home foreclosures are still up and expected to increase...

Oh...we've turned the corner all right...we've yanked the wheel hard left and turned over the cliff.
 
Obama Confident US Headed In 'Right Direction'


Is President Barack Obama correct? Is the United States, now more than ever, headed in the right direction and doing what's necessary to rebuild the economy?

Take the poll.

In the long term, yes. We need more financial regulation than we got from the bill that just passed Congress to prevent some of the more egregious examples of moral hazard, but aside from that the policies for continued prosperity are all there. Eventually our economy will recover and we will prosper. Our economy is still one of the most attractive sources of skilled labor in the world.

In the short term, it's harder to say. My hunch is that the recovery will continue to be sluggish, owing in part to spillover debt worries in Europe, and US state governments imposing "austerity measures."
 
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I believe we are on the road to recovery. Prior to George W Bush's roll-back of regulations and intense spending, as well as his assiting the wholesale movement of jobs out of the country, the national economy was doing great. Now the proper regulations are being put back into place and the economy is beginning to slowly recover. It is funny that conservatives are all too ready to say he has had 20 months, when Bush had 96 to run everything into the ground.
 
If nothing is done, eventually things will still recover economically. Which was not the issue or the question. The policy road we are on will hinder a recovery instead of hasten it. Therefore, we are not on the correct road to recovery --- the economy will rebound despite the bad policies being pushed by Obama.
 
If nothing is done, eventually things will still recover economically. Which was not the issue or the question. The policy road we are on will hinder a recovery instead of hasten it. Therefore, we are not on the correct road to recovery --- the economy will rebound despite the bad policies being pushed by Obama.

Which of Obama's policies specifically do you believe will hinder the short-term recovery?
 
Obama Confident US Headed In 'Right Direction'


Is President Barack Obama correct? Is the United States, now more than ever, headed in the right direction and doing what's necessary to rebuild the economy?

Take the poll.
I should have put yes. Obama has us on a path that will throw a bunch of bums out in NOV. That is the right path and will rebuild the economy.
 
I believe we are on the road to recovery. Prior to George W Bush's roll-back of regulations and intense spending, as well as his assiting the wholesale movement of jobs out of the country, the national economy was doing great. Now the proper regulations are being put back into place and the economy is beginning to slowly recover. It is funny that conservatives are all too ready to say he has had 20 months, when Bush had 96 to run everything into the ground.

More like 72 but that doesn't matter. Didn't Obama and Dems vote for TARP?
Just more BIOB. When are you guys ever going to admit that you won the election? Bush is not President anymore.
 
I believe we are on the road to recovery. Prior to George W Bush's roll-back of regulations and intense spending, as well as his assiting the wholesale movement of jobs out of the country, the national economy was doing great. Now the proper regulations are being put back into place and the economy is beginning to slowly recover. It is funny that conservatives are all too ready to say he has had 20 months, when Bush had 96 to run everything into the ground.

Im sorry...when did you say those regulations were rolled back? Under which president? And I notice you just completely ignore the fact that the democrats have been ion control of the house and senate for 45 months...and pray tell...which legislation did Bush OR Obama sign that wasnt first passed by congress?

You want some cheese on your 'meatball sub'? I mean...since you are on seconds...
 
Which of Obama's policies specifically do you believe will hinder the short-term recovery?

1.) American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
2.) Affordable Care Act
3.) CARS Program (aka - Cash for Clunkers)
4.) Troubled Assets Recovery Program (TARP) - all versions including Obama's extension of it.
5.) FAA Air Transportation Modernization and Safety Improvement Act (which includes the 28 billion for the teachers union bailout / payoff)

I could add in the government takeover of student loans, take over of the GM and Chrysler ...etc. But let's just go with 1-5.
 
Prior to George W Bush's roll-back of regulations...
Specifically, which regulations, and how did rolling them back put us into a recession?

...and intense spending...
And The Obama's spending, 3x more intense - how does that not hurt things even more?

...as well as his assiting the wholesale movement of jobs out of the country...
Specifically, how did GWB do this?

the national economy was doing great.
Funny how liberals never said this while GWB was actually in office.
While GWB was in office, every bit of good economic news was countered by a liberal telling us how things still stank.

Now the proper regulations are being put back into place...
Really?
What, specifically, has The Obama done to reverse the GWB policies that put us into the recession?
What, specifically, has The Obama done to reverse GWB's :intense" spending?
What, specifically, has The Obama done to reverse the GWB policies that assisted the wholesale movement of jobs out of the country?
Be specific now...

and the economy is beginning to slowly recover.
If these same conditions were present while a Rpublican were in the whitehouse, you'd not say that.

It is funny that conservatives are all too ready to say he has had 20 months, when Bush had 96 to run everything into the ground.
Well, given that The Obama doing thngs 5x as poorly as GWB, He needs less time.
 
1.) American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
2.) Affordable Care Act
3.) CARS Program (aka - Cash for Clunkers)
4.) Troubled Assets Recovery Program (TARP) - all versions including Obama's extension of it.
5.) FAA Air Transportation Modernization and Safety Improvement Act (which includes the 28 billion for the teachers union bailout / payoff)

I could add in the government takeover of student loans, take over of the GM and Chrysler ...etc. But let's just go with 1-5.

I don't see how any of those things will hinder the recovery. I can see how someone could make the argument that some of them are bad for the economy in the long-term (especially the auto bailout and the union bailouts), but in the short term those programs are all flooding the economy with cash...except for arguably #2, which doesn't really have much of an effect at all until 2014. I don't see how the other policies could possibly NOT boost aggregate demand and hasten the recovery.

There are some valid criticisms of all these policies...but I don't think slowing down the economic recovery is among them.
 
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Lets see we have two ongoing wars possible a third and fourth on the way, the public sector is growing more rapidly while the private sector is struggling and the so called opposition is talking a big game when in reality they're full of ****. So Im gonna no we're not going in the right direction and I dont see that happening in the future.
 
Where to begin....Let's start with the immediate action taken in Bush's tax cuts. If I remember correctly, in 2003 the "Economists' statement opposing Bush's tax cuts," was signed by 450 economists, including 10 nobel laureates. The message they sent was clear, "these tax cuts will worsen the long-term budget outlook... will reduce the capacity of the government to finance Social Security and Medicare benefits as well as investments in schools, health, infrastructure, and basic research... [and] generate further inequalities in after-tax income."

The result of his cuts was exactly as they stated, the gap between the upper 1% and lower 99% grew as between 2003 and 2004, following the 2003 tax cuts, the share of after-tax income going to the top 1% rose from 12.2% in 2003 to 14.0% in 2004.

In regulation Bush decided in 2004 to allow investment banks to regulate themselves essentially, and the term "shadow banking system" was coined by Paul Krugman. We all know the result of this, do we not? We are living in it.

In shipping jobs overseas, Bush with his tax cuts and policy decisions ran the deficit up to $10 trillion during his tenor, stood by signing CAFTA and promoting "free-trade" while allowing companies tax breaks that based in the US but manufactured abroad (Clinton is also guilty of this) and watched helpless as the trade deficit climbed from 1.5% of GDP to 5.8% of the GDP. To finance these surpluses he burrowed money from China, the nation running the surplus.

Couple that with the wars and you can see the rest for yourself.

Obama continued with Bush's bailout plan, which I admit has done little to nothing, but he has put banking regulation back into place and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act is one portion of that. Allowing the Bush Tax cuts to expire and replacement of the estate tax will certainly go to lowering the deficit. I could go on, but there is no need.
 
I don't see how any of those things will hinder the recovery. I can see how someone could make the argument that some of them are bad for the economy in the long-term (especially the auto bailout and the union bailouts), but in the short term those programs are all flooding the economy with cash...except for arguably #2, which doesn't really have much of an effect at all until 2014. I don't see how the other policies could possibly NOT boost aggregate demand and hasten the recovery.

There are some valid criticisms of all these policies...but I don't think slowing down the economic recovery is among them.


1.) American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
Helped shore up businesses, banks and extended temp jobs - but otherwise increased growth stagnation. Company's aren't increasing their workforce, they are becoming solvent and keep liquid assets available in still uncertain times. Jobs were not affected after 800 Billion dollars was invested, and by now much was spent. Effect of said investment on jobs? Still 9.5% unemployment or close to 17% actual unemployment. This hinders recovery as it provided money to wall street and buisness with no payoff to mainstreet. Promises were extensive... so far, it's a bust.

2.) Affordable Care Act

No effects supposedly until 2014... yet premiums are rising.
FOXNews.com - Health Care Premiums Are Already Soaring In Advance of Obamacare

This hinders recovery as insurance premiums rise hitting individual users and raising costs quarterly / yearly during an extended recession where people already have a tough time making ends meet. How does increasing insurance company costs help our economy? It doesn't - and I think we all knew that the insurance company's wouldn't be bearing the brunt of costs without passing it off on their customers. Since we still do not have the ability to purchase insurance across state lines, we're all still stuck and now worse than ever. It's early yet, but this has high potential to get worse.

3.) CARS Program (aka - Cash for Clunkers)
This artificially created demand but the demand wasn't what we thought. Edmunds.com identified about 690K cars were bought during the CARS program, yet 565,000 would have been bought anyway, leaving the remainder of 120K or so being artificially stimulated. Since we (the taxpayers) spent $3 billion on the program, that's about $24,000 per car. The Toyota Carolla was the most popular purchased car under the program which sold for about $16K - so we overpaid. What hindered us here is we had people trade in perfectly good vehicles which in many cases were paid off and costing the consumer only upkeep and insurance, and turned around and used their own future tax money to incentivize them to purchase a new car, where they'll pay payments or outlay cash they ordinarily would still have... all under the guise of better fuel mileage and lower carbon footprint. Using your own money to entice you to spend more of your own money on something you didn't need in the first place... that's a Ponzi scheme Madoff would be proud to see.

4.) Troubled Assets Recovery Program (TARP) - all versions including Obama's extension of it.
[quote="Inspector General Quarterly Report to Congress January 2010, Page 7]

Many of TARP’s stated goals, however, have simply not been met. Despite the
fact that the explicit goal of the Capital Purchase Program (“CPP”) was to increase
financing to U.S. businesses and consumers, lending continues to decrease, month
after month, and the TARP program designed specifically to address small-business
lending — announced in March 2009 — has still not been implemented by
Treasury. Notwithstanding the fact that preserving homeownership and promoting
jobs were explicit purposes of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008
(“EESA”), the statute that created TARP, nearly 16 months later, home foreclosures
remain at record levels, the TARP foreclosure prevention program has only
permanently modified a small fraction of eligible mortgages, and unemployment is
the highest it has been in a generation. Whether these goals can effectively be met
through existing TARP programs is very much an open question at this time. And
to the extent that the Government had leverage through its status as a significant
preferred shareholder to influence the largest TARP recipients to carry out such
policy goals, it was lost with their exit from TARP.[/quote]
http://www.sigtarp.gov/reports/congress/2010/January2010_Quarterly_Report_to_Congress.pdf

This hinders us by again having government use future taxpayer money and having said program not achieve it's goal and as most see it, failed miserably. Adding more debt is not helping.


5.) FAA Air Transportation Modernization and Safety Improvement Act (which includes the 28 billion for the teachers union bailout / payoff)

This one may actually be the lesser of evils in the list. By sliding in a payoff to school unions in an FAA Air Transportation bill, this one just seems like a big pork pay off. It's simple, it's 28 billion and it's uncomplicated. Other than promising a bailout of teachers now, and the ultimate political spin that's attached to this bribe - it's is what it is. This hinders us by sheltering one segment of the population and paying them off with -- what else, future tax payer money, to placate unions and the teachers associated with them. Yet more money we do not have, cannot afford to "share the wealth" of others to certain politically important segments of society for strictly political gain.
 
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Well I am very shocked that the blame doesnt land at Clintons feet for the banking deruglation efforts from 1996 to 1999 with Clinton finally signing the Financial Services Modernization Act in Nov of 1999.

Wait...no Im not shocked at all...

Its all Bush's fault. And Pelosi and Reid heading a democrat controlled congress and presiding over every bit of democrat passed legislation in 45 MONTHS...move along...nothing to see...it was all Bush.

****ing myopic liberals...
 
1.) American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
2.) Affordable Care Act
3.) CARS Program (aka - Cash for Clunkers)
4.) Troubled Assets Recovery Program (TARP) - all versions including Obama's extension of it.
5.) FAA Air Transportation Modernization and Safety Improvement Act (which includes the 28 billion for the teachers union bailout / payoff)

I could add in the government takeover of student loans, take over of the GM and Chrysler ...etc. But let's just go with 1-5.

I'd like to add the moratorium on drilling
and growing government jobs to your list.
 
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