Anyone on the left waking up yet?

[ccbatson]

Just curious, besides the "I told you so" factor, the handwriting is very much on the wall regarding the radical liberal socialist actions [[more than his deceptive and cryptic words) of President Obama. Some of the early and irrefutable consequences are starting to develop [[and they are very grim and scary indeed). Even the disinterested and uninformed understand that inflation/hyperinflation is around the corner, and that this will make things far worse.

So, without being nasty [[and I am not doing so either), I am wondering if any moderate, or even firmly liberal folks out there are having second thoughts about Obama/radical liberalism, etc.

Early polling, if it is any indication, and public outcry [[teas parties, California rejecting tax hikes) seems to point in the direction I suggest.

[vetalalumni]

Smiling, I'm happy to read this on principle and from whom. Nice attempt at establishing an edifice.

After pondering, I 'll come check back in.

[jams]

We are and have been awake, just because we reject the simplistic and myopic views you promote, does not mean we are unaware of situations or conditions.

In other words, you have your world view and I have mine, posting a viewpoint numerous times night after night does not give that viewpoint any more credibility than standing in a rainstorm proclaiming only a 30% chance of showers.

[firstandten]

Just curious, besides the "I told you so" factor, the handwriting is very much on the wall regarding the radical liberal socialist actions [[more than his deceptive and cryptic words) of President Obama. Some of the early and irrefutable consequences are starting to develop [[and they are very grim and scary indeed). Even the disinterested and uninformed understand that inflation/hyperinflation is around the corner, and that this will make things far worse.

So, without being nasty [[and I am not doing so either), I am wondering if any moderate, or even firmly liberal folks out there are having second thoughts about Obama/radical liberalism, etc.

Early polling, if it is any indication, and public outcry [[teas parties, California rejecting tax hikes) seems to point in the direction I suggest.

Wow Cc that was such a long post for you, I felt I just had to respond. Here's an article from a "real" economist telling you to calm down you have nothing to fear.

The Big Inflation Scare
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: May 28, 2009
Suddenly it seems as if everyone is talking about inflation. Stern opinion pieces warn that hyperinflation is just around the corner. And markets may be heeding these warnings: Interest rates on long-term government bonds are up, with fear of future inflation one possible reason for the interest-rate spike.
But does the big inflation scare make any sense? Basically, no — with one caveat I’ll get to later. And I suspect that the scare is at least partly about politics rather than economics.

First things first. It’s important to realize that there’s no hint of inflationary pressures in the economy right now. Consumer prices are lower now than they were a year ago, and wage increases have stalled in the face of high unemployment. Deflation, not inflation, is the clear and present danger.
So if prices aren’t rising, why the inflation worries? Some claim that the Federal Reserve is printing lots of money, which must be inflationary, while others claim that budget deficits will eventually force the U.S. government to inflate away its debt.
The first story is just wrong. The second could be right, but isn’t.
Now, it’s true that the Fed has taken unprecedented actions lately. More specifically, it has been buying lots of debt both from the government and from the private sector, and paying for these purchases by crediting banks with extra reserves. And in ordinary times, this would be highly inflationary: banks, flush with reserves, would increase loans, which would drive up demand, which would push up prices.
But these aren’t ordinary times. Banks aren’t lending out their extra reserves. They’re just sitting on them — in effect, they’re sending the money right back to the Fed. So the Fed isn’t really printing money after all.
Still, don’t such actions have to be inflationary sooner or later? No. The Bank of Japan, faced with economic difficulties not too different from those we face today, purchased debt on a huge scale between 1997 and 2003. What happened to consumer prices? They fell.
All in all, much of the current inflation discussion calls to mind what happened during the early years of the Great Depression when many influential people were warning about inflation even as prices plunged. As the British economist Ralph Hawtrey wrote, “Fantastic fears of inflation were expressed. That was to cry, Fire, Fire in Noah’s Flood.� And he went on, “It is after depression and unemployment have subsided that inflation becomes dangerous.�
Is there a risk that we’ll have inflation after the economy recovers? That’s the claim of those who look at projections that federal debt may rise to more than 100 percent of G.D.P. and say that America will eventually have to inflate away that debt — that is, drive up prices so that the real value of the debt is reduced.
Such things have happened in the past. For example, France ultimately inflated away much of the debt it incurred while fighting World War I.
But more modern examples are lacking. Over the past two decades, Belgium, Canada and, of course, Japan have all gone through episodes when debt exceeded 100 percent of G.D.P. And the United States itself emerged from World War II with debt exceeding 120 percent of G.D.P. In none of these cases did governments resort to inflation to resolve their problems.
So is there any reason to think that inflation is coming? Some economists have argued for moderate inflation as a deliberate policy, as a way to encourage lending and reduce private debt burdens. I’m sympathetic to these arguments and made a similar case for Japan in the 1990s. But the case for inflation never made headway with Japanese policy makers then, and there’s no sign it’s getting traction with U.S. policy makers now.
All of this raises the question: If inflation isn’t a real risk, why all the claims that it is?
Well, as you may have noticed, economists sometimes disagree. And big disagreements are especially likely in weird times like the present, when many of the normal rules no longer apply.
But it’s hard to escape the sense that the current inflation fear-mongering is partly political, coming largely from economists who had no problem with deficits caused by tax cuts but suddenly became fiscal scolds when the government started spending money to rescue the economy. And their goal seems to be to bully the Obama administration into abandoning those rescue efforts.
Needless to say, the president should not let himself be bullied. The economy is still in deep trouble and needs continuing help.
Yes, we have a long-run budget problem, and we need to start laying the groundwork for a long-run solution. But when it comes to inflation, the only thing we have to fear is inflation fear itself."

Now Cc, if you can sleep at night without worry, then I would have done my good deed for the day!

[Mikeg]

Here's an article from a "real" economist telling you to calm down you have nothing to fear.

Was this written by the same Paul Krugman who once upon a time:

a) was a paid advisor for the Enron Corporation, yet never once disclosed that fact in a 2003 New York Times column where he claimed that the 2001 energy crisis in California was caused by greedy corporate manipulators?
b) wrote a New York Times column on Dec. 31, 2002 warning that the US could be sucked into the "black hole" of deflation within the next 12 months?

He has a sorry track record of faulty economic predictions and his writings in the NYT are nothing more than political punditry. I take no comfort or facts from anything he writes regarding the economy.

If Krugman is a "real" economist, then I'm a "real" nuclear physicist.

[gazhekwe]

If hyperinflation is around the corner, it has more to do with continuing global pressures than anything Obama has done in 120 days. Ditto with deflation, though I keep wondering why deflation is so bad. If my income is going down down down, why the heck wouldn't I be happy if prices are going down instead of up? Oh, well.... Might as well go and make sure the wheelbarrow is ready to carry my money for the next shopping expedition to Walmart.

PS, Obama really is a moderate, not a far left liberal loony. He is disappointing some on the far left because he is too pragmatic, looking to find a way that will work best for the majority. Fortunately, loonies on either side are not the majority. I think they are the yin and yang that create the spin we need to keep us in balance.

[Mikeg]

....though I keep wondering why deflation is so bad. If my income is going down down down, why the heck wouldn't I be happy if prices are going down instead of up?

Here's why deflation is something to be feared, perhaps even more so than inflation:
a) if it is apparent that prices are declining across broad groups of consumer goods and you've been wanting to buy a big-ticket item, are you more inclined to buy today or wait until next month when you know the price will be even lower? With deflation, people naturally tend to hold on to their disposable income in the expectation that they can buy more with it if they just wait a little longer. Since US consumer spending traditionally constitutes 65 to 70% of our GDP [[as compared to 50 to 60% in the EU countries), if consumer demand lags then GDP growth can disappear and recession ensues and unless the deflationary cycle can somehow be broken, we can find ourselves in another depression.
b) if you owe money on your home, it can be very painful to find yourself making those fixed monthly payments. When it comes to re-paying a loan, inflation is your friend because you use increasingly cheaper dollars to make each payment. In a deflationary economy, you are re-paying with a monthly amount that could otherwise be used to buy more and more goods - in other words, you are using increasingly more valuable dollars to make each payment.

Regarding President Obama, there is nothing in his record as a community organizer or as state or US Senator - or in his Presidential campaign rhetoric - that even remotely suggests that he is a moderate on any issue. His actions as President seem to reflect a realization of the constraints he finds that he must operate within plus a tacit acknowledgement that for the first time in his professional career, his job carries a measure of accountability for results with it.

[mjs]

Deflation would be bad if you own property or stock, want a raise, or hope to start a new job making as much as the guy that started last year. Its good if you're on a fixed income and hold lots of cash or bonds.

[oldredfordette]

Everytime I read you guys bitch about Obama, it makes me smile.

[mjs]

You misunderstood me. I was simply stating why deflation is bad; I wasn't agreeing that Obama was to blame or that it was coming.

A guest on Bill Moyer said that at the rate we're selling cars, its going to take 27 years to replace whats on the road. Seems to me, we just have to wait this out until more people get their bills paid down a little.

[mjs]

You know, Republicans complaining about Obama's handling of the economy is like a guy throwing a flaming bag of dog shit at you and then complaining that you ground it into the carpet. If they were that worried about the house, they shouldn't have lit the shit on fire.

[Mikeg]

Everytime I read you guys bitch about Obama, it makes me smile.

I smile every time I read Oldredfordette bitch about those "Greedy incompetent stupid motherfuckers, Gannett and their little toady partners".

Then I laugh at Oldredfordette when she goes back and edits the strong stuff out after another poster cautions her about writing those kind of comments about her employer - while at the same time embedding and leaving her username and original quotes in his post!

[4real]

I still think they are all in a delusional haze still hallucinating on the media buzz they got so intoxicated on.
But seriously, come on CC, don't you know the new savior is here and he is here to save our souls from all the evil and greedy corporate pigs who have the gall to make more money than others.

Inflation like the flu, has no discrimination, and the lower the income, the more it will effect you, so praise the anointed one, for he has helped most everyone equally bad.

[gazhekwe]

What a way to put it, mjs! But so true, nothing in the current economic spiral was created in 120 days, and it will not be substantially affected in 120 days. It will take time to play itself out, and there are many factors that began well before this decade that could still blow up one way or another, business real estate for one, the health care industry for another. There are things we must change to set a better foundation, and some of those changes may cause problems as the status quo is shaken to its over-leveraged core. If you want to make an omelet....

[oldredfordette]

Poor little righties. You can't get over the fact that you and your leaders were overwhelmingly rejected by the American people. It's sweet, that's what it is.

[oladub]

Although not an Obama fan, I think that President Obama has been consistent with the promises made as candidate Obama while campaigning. He promised to deliver a health care and other expensive programs, suggested expanding the war in Afghanistan, and generally support the Democrat Party's grab bag of life style issues. He seems to be delivering on his promises. With his present 64% percent approval rating and a complicit Congress, there is not much to stand in his way. Since the high unemployment can still be largely attributed to Bush, inflation has not yet significantly kicked in, and bills have been charged to future generations, President Obama has so far encountered little resistance. His changes, so far, have been relatively painless.
__________________________________________________ ___________
off-topic-

May 27 [[Bloomberg) -- The U.S. economy will enter “hyperinflation� because the Federal Reserve will be reluctant to raise interest rates, investor Marc Faber said.
“I am 100 percent sure that the U.S. will go into hyperinflation,� Faber said. “The problem with government debt growing so much is that when the time will come and the Fed should increase interest rates, they will be very reluctant to do so and so inflation will start to accelerate.�

Link: The clock President Obama inherited from President Bush. President Obama decided to speed it up so he could make better time.

[Flanders]

Just curious, besides the "I told you so" factor, the handwriting is very much on the wall regarding the radical liberal socialist actions [[more than his deceptive and cryptic words) of President Obama. Some of the early and irrefutable consequences are starting to develop [[and they are very grim and scary indeed). Even the disinterested and uninformed understand that inflation/hyperinflation is around the corner, and that this will make things far worse.

So, without being nasty [[and I am not doing so either), I am wondering if any moderate, or even firmly liberal folks out there are having second thoughts about Obama/radical liberalism, etc.

Early polling, if it is any indication, and public outcry [[teas parties, California rejecting tax hikes) seems to point in the direction I suggest.

Public outcry, "early" polling, grim and oooh very scary...LOL, you fail utterly at attempting to convince me that thousands upon thousands if not millions of US citizens regardless of political ideology have begun joining together, mailing teabags to their representatives, firing off angry emails, commiserating on internet forums, organizing at public town and city halls and will soon march in handholding lockstepped unison on Independence Day, singing Kum Bah Ya together in opposition to President Obama, to DC or bust, demanding his resignation.

I know much of what you and your totally self-absorbed objectivist ilk really crave, just from reading their comments and blogs online and that is to end government entitlement programs intended for the poor, aged, and infirm, instead diverting that "welfare" into the form of tax cuts and incentives to business and the privately wealthy, and to eliminate what remains of organized labor. Objectivists also want Congress to enact new amendments to the US Constitution declaring healthcare to be an individually paid privilege and not a right, making personal responsibility one of the supreme laws of the land, as well as ending personal bankruptcies, as a result, preferably imprisoning those who cannot pay their debts,, and permit suffrage only to those who pay income taxes and own property.

Conservatives' corporate-underwritten and shadow-sponsored [[astroturfed) tea parties have been underwhelmingly attended for the most part so far and their very dubious claims of liberal attendance were more than likely a few Joe the Plumbers, seeded into the "crowds" at the larger of them by RW organizations nationwide, and of course making false claims as being disgruntled Obama voters when or if approached for photo ops or interviews.

[Bobl]

You know, Republicans complaining about Obama's handling of the economy is like a guy throwing a flaming bag of dog shit at you and then complaining that you ground it into the carpet. If they were that worried about the house, they shouldn't have lit the shit on fire.

An interesting way of putting it. Kind of like a spoiled child who deliberately breaks a toy, then complains when mommy takes too long trying to fix it.

The condition described by c: " very grim and scary indeed" applies to the condition left by the previous administration, and resulted from the deregulation of the financials in the 1999 Gramm Act and other foolishness. Obama had nothing much to do with it, and is now continuing the radically needed bailing out that was started by the Bush administration last September, when it became obvious that drastic, expensive measures were immediately needed to ward off financial ruin.
There will be more pain, and success is not guaranteed, but it is silly to blame Obama, so called socialists, or the boogieman. They did not bring this on. We all know who did.

[firstandten]

Regarding President Obama, there is nothing in his record as a community organizer or as state or US Senator - or in his Presidential campaign rhetoric - that even remotely suggests that he is a moderate on any issue. His actions as President seem to reflect a realization of the constraints he finds that he must operate within plus a tacit acknowledgement that for the first time in his professional career, his job carries a measure of accountability for results with it.

I guess it all depends on ones definition of moderate. If you use health care as the litmus test then I don't understand your argument. If he wasn't a moderate but a far left liberal then he would telling us that single payer universal health care is the answer.
He's not an idealogue, but a political pragmatist, a concept that people both on the liberal and conservative side seem to have a tough time understanding. What he is doing is engineering a swing in the vast middle ground of voters from" right of center to left of center". Hardly the end of America as we know it. I would also challenge you on the comment that the constraints of the presidency is making him act as he does. Only to a degree. If you read his second book he pretty much tells you how he would govern if elected and he's pretty much been consistant on that.
Now, what he will do if new facts come to light he will change his position on issues to reflect that. If he were an idealogue like Bush he would just adjust the facts to fit his position.

[oladub]

Problems with Bat's question include-

• The lack of recognition that President Obama inherited a big mess left behind by President Bush.
• the bills for paying for President Obama's agenda have not yet shown up in most of our mailboxes yet.

Perhaps, Bats should instead have asked the faithful something like-

President Bush left behind record debts, record national deficits, growing unemployment, and wars while diminishing our rights. At what point in time will you have buyer's regret, if President Obama has not reversed these vestiges of the Bush administration?

One to one and a half years seems reasonable to me.

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

[gibran]

Funny I find Obama even better at his job than expected...got to love his world view and his vision for the USA..and least he is attempting to turn the economy around and our image abroad...

Really though; could anyone really turn around ten years of economy and lack of a real world view in one season? I find it unreasonable that the neocons and conservatives who wanted the status quo preserved lost the election on the issues of the economy and a negative world view [[ shows the level of cognitive dissonance) and yet they are so fearful of change that they are the first to blame those who bring about it for causing it...

so moderates that supported Obama should be joyed withhis ability to mutli-task and speak as a true leader for our nation and perhaps a person who could bring peace to conflicted areas of the if he stays his historical course..

and to those who back handedly call him a savior..well..he is no way perfect, but at least he is trying an d is not afraid totally to take on big interests; nationally and internationally.

[firstandten]

Was this written by the same Paul Krugman who once upon a time:

a) was a paid advisor for the Enron Corporation, yet never once disclosed that fact in a 2003 New York Times column where he claimed that the 2001 energy crisis in California was caused by greedy corporate manipulators?
b) wrote a New York Times column on Dec. 31, 2002 warning that the US could be sucked into the "black hole" of deflation within the next 12 months?

He has a sorry track record of faulty economic predictions and his writings in the NYT are nothing more than political punditry. I take no comfort or facts from anything he writes regarding the economy.

If Krugman is a "real" economist, then I'm a "real" nuclear physicist.

You may be a real nuclear physicist... I do know that Krugman gets paid as an economist and columnist and more respected in that line of work than either you or I.

I just wanted to cheer Cc up because one of my other favorite economist said we will be in a depression by the end of this year, I just hope that Batra is wrong and Krugman is right.

[mjs]

Dr. Raveendra Batra who wrote a book in 1988 called the Great Depression on 1990? Sounds like he's an interesting writer that can identify flaws in the system, but I hope he keeps being wrong about the aspect that the system is beyond repair.

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The.../9780440201687
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravi_Batra

[Flanders]

Obama was never considered to be any kind of "savior" by most of the liberal left, but McCain and Palin never let us forget that they were Mavericks during the fall elections.

I wonder if a year and a half of Mavericking around in the Oval Office by the Country First! duo would be all that would be permitted by the RW to turn the economy around after the 8 years that their OWN party held the executive office, not to mention having control of Congress for much of those years ...

[Jimaz]

Attachment 1498
Sleep faster! I need your pillows!