Did the Republicans Deliberately Crash the US Economy?

[gazhekwe]

Very interesting article from the Guardian [[UK).

Just one point from the article, there were many such points:

This collection of more-harm-than-good policies must also include last summer's debt limit debacle, which House speaker John Boehner has threatened to renew this year. This was yet another GOP initiative that undermined the economic recovery. According to economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, "over the entire episode, confidence declined more than it did following the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc in 2008." Only after the crisis did the consumer confidence stabilize, but employers "held back on hiring, sapping momentum from a recovery that remains far too fragile." In addition, the debt limit deal also forced more unhelpful spending cuts on the country.
Since that national embarrassment, Republicans have refused to even allow votes on President Obama's jobs bill in the Senate; they dragged their feet on the aforementioned payroll tax and even now are holding up a transportation bill with poison-pill demands for the White House on environmental regulation.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...nomy?fb=optOut

[Papasito]

Glass-Steagal could have been reinstituted by Bush II after Clinton suspended it. Both parties had a hand in the collapse. How many times must we go over the same old crap?

[rb336]

Until you realize it was all the trickle-down, get rid of all regulation republican bullshit that caused it

[gazhekwe]

The article is not about what caused it, but what is slowing down the recovery.

[Jimaz]

The troubling thing is that they seem to think they can get away with this without being held accountable. It's as if they have an ace up their sleeve that they have yet to play.

I say they know they're at the end of their rope and so they're bluffing as a desperate last resort. There is no ace up their sleeve.

The third parties better get ready to fill the power vacuum when the Republicans tank.

[ghettopalmetto]

The troubling thing is that they seem to think they can get away with this without being held accountable. It's as if they have an ace up their sleeve that they have yet to play.

I say they know they're at the end of their rope and so they're bluffing as a desperate last resort. There is no ace up their sleeve.

The third parties better get ready to fill the power vacuum when the Republicans tank.

I'm just glad the Republicans got [[a little bit) honest, and stopped running campaigns on the Personal Responsibility platform.

[Danny]

Did the Republicans crashed the US ecomony?

YES THEY DID! for these reasons:

1. They are very greedy!

2. They want to live rich and stay rich.

3. They want to outsource jobs to foreign nations to reach profitability.

4. They want to destroy the poor, low-income and middle class. families.

5. They favor our governments for bailout monies so they don't go bankrupt.


The Republicans indeed failed our US ecomony. They contribute to the ecomonic depressions from 1893 to 1929. They created staggerant inflation on the early 1980s and they are not job creators! We must keep Republicans out of the two houses and congress and the presidency forever!

[oladub]

Republicans, particularly under Bush, were an affront to fiscal conservatives. The budget under Clinton and Gingrich was sort of balanced. Bush reversed that by spending like crazy and handing out large tax cuts for the rich. Obama expanded on Bush's policies. He expanded the wars, spent even more, kept the Clinton signed NAFTA and signed three more free trade policies, codified Bush's winking acceptance of illegal workers by executive order, handed out more favors to the banksters, and twice extended Bush's tax cuts on the rich. Yet the author sees little consistency between these two presidents. The author makes keynesian assumptions as did Bush and Obama and even intones the name of Keynesian apologist and jester Paul Krugman.

There is no mention that Democrats controlled the presidency, Senate and House for two of Obama's sorry 3.75 years of economic doldrums. The article states, "Republicans have refused to even allow votes on President Obama's jobs bill in the Senate" even though Democrats control the Senate. Two sentences later, the author blames Republicans for holding up the transportation bill because Obama refuses to compromise. Bill Clinton used to compromise to get things done. Obama is no Clinton. I realize that someone will lamely respond that the Democrats actually need a super majority instead of a majority. What Democrats really crave is an enabling act so Obama can dictate executive orders as he sees fit. He has already started that process without an enabling act. Last night, Obama envisioned himself as Roosevelt II which is appropriates since Roosevelt never did end high unemployment until WWII created demand and gave 12M Americans jobs in the military. Obama, so far, has run up $5T of national debt with 8.1% official unemployment to show for it. Those are two numbers this article didn't mention. Instead it was 'blame the Republicans' implying Democrats were responsible for none of this mess. How very Democrat.

Good news for masochists though! It's Obama 49 - Romney 40 in the latest Fox poll.

[firstandten]

gazhekwe one word answer to your question YES. Now the question is why. The simple answer is politics. Outwardly they don't want the administration to have that kind of success and is willing to put the middle class at risk in order to not cooperate with the president.

Now as Americans we find it hard to not come together as a people when there is a crisis regardless of party, and we were in the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression.

However the Repubs were at a crossroads as a party. If the Obama administration was seen as successful at fixing the economy, it would be a repudiation of supply side economics which is the bedrock of Repub economic policy. There would probably not be another Repub elected to the White House for a generation if people realized supply side economics for the fraud that it is. So what I am saying is the very future of their party being relevant was at stake so yes, they did every thing in there power to undermine the economic recovery.

[Gannon]

Only partisans can see this issue as only one of the party's fault.

The International Bankers deliberately crashed the US economy, and while the Republicans are 'usually' more closely aligned with them, these last three presidencies have been more than odd, so I cannot make that association a sole one.

As long as these creepy, old power-mongers have the leadership of our country...hell, our WORLD...convinced that a policy of "Grow 'til You War [[if no growth go to war) Either Way, War War War"...we will have these periodic 'corrections'. [[and they've gotten everyone to forget the ancient 'Jubilee' scheme of twice-per-century givebacks to family lines as detailed in the Old Testament)

I believe it was Mayer Rothschild [[one of the founding International Bankers in the 1700s) who said, "Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes the laws." Who controls our nation's money?! What DO you know about the Federal Reserve Bank?

I believe there is no mistaking when the two major economic systems developed on the planet, and HOW they developed, were influenced by this man...who used them both to siphon off the wealth created by everything 'beneath' his family.

If the LOVE of money is the root of all evil, they are the ones who tend those roots. And derive the bulk of the fruits of the tree, if we really want to pummel that analogy.

To that end, when you see there is an entity ABOVE that which you wish to blame...and this entity is fully capable of, and has shown a willingness to foment some extraordinarily ugly evil in order to remain in power to continue raping this earthly profit...then it is a relatively moot conversation.

Argue as you wish over Replicans and Democrats. That is exactly what they WANT you to be consumed with, so you never look above and beyond them.


What a way to start the day...

[Jimaz]

Papantonio: GOP Trying To Make Obama Fail

[Papasito]

Good Post, Gannon!
At least someone gets it.

What a way to start the day...

I'm so bored of people re-hashing six year old material.
You did a good job slamming blind partisans.
Applause!

[gazhekwe]

Actually the article was from the UK, not strictly partisan, and it is talking only about the last 3.5 years, not what led to the disaster in the first place. In the article they are balancing the Republican actions through the Obama first term as either deliberate partisan wedge wielding, or INEPT economic policies. Neither is a great image for the GOP. The most powerful example of the GOP deliberately putting a spike in the economic recovery was the debt limit mess:

This collection of more-harm-than-good policies must also include last summer's debt limit debacle, which House speaker John Boehner has threatened to renew this year. This was yet another GOP initiative that undermined the economic recovery. According to economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, "over the entire episode, confidence declined more than it did following the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc in 2008." Only after the crisis did the consumer confidence stabilize, but employers "held back on hiring, sapping momentum from a recovery that remains far too fragile." In addition, the debt limit deal also forced more unhelpful spending cuts on the country.
Since that national embarrassment, Republicans have refused to even allow votes on President Obama's jobs bill in the Senate; they dragged their feet on the aforementioned payroll tax and even now are holding up a transportation bill with poison-pill demands for the White House on environmental regulation.

[oladub]

the 'not strictly partisan' Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers,

Gazhekwe, Not that you were addressing me specifically, but I already covered the fact that the article was mostly about happenings during the Obama years in post #8. I did look up the "not strictly partisan" economists quoted though. Betsey is the head economist at the Obama's Department of Labor and Justin is her 'partner'. They have a kid but don't want a marriage license because of the tax disadvantages marriage brings. How could one ever even suspect they are Democrats?

[Gannon]

If they only consider two options, and force an either/or choice...it is partisan.

That is a mindset not reserved for one nationality.

It is a false diametric. Common, but untrue in all cases...save perhaps the choice between life and death. That one seems uncompromisable and non-transcendent.

When I see "either/ors" proposed, I immediately investigate the possible and potential "ands" and the "neither/nors".


Cheers

[Gannon]

Change your 'is' to 'was', she is no longer emplyed by the government directly...but it does look disingenuous of them.

[Gannon]

How does a couple get hired to work together at two places at once?! Odd.

[rb336]

They OBVIOUSLY cloned themselves. DUH

[Jimaz]

The parasitic saboteurs* in power are tearing this country down for their own personal gain.

... Republicans are so intent on defeating President Obama for re-election that they are purposely sabotaging the country's economic recovery.

For Democrats, perhaps the most obvious piece of evidence of GOP premeditated malice is the 2010 quote from Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell:

"The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."

Such words lead some to the conclusion that Republicans will do anything, including short-circuiting the economy, in order to hurt Obama politically. Considering that presidents – and rarely opposition parties – are held electorally responsible for economic calamity, it's not a bad political strategy.

* pluralization emphasized to thwart Republican internet lapdogs posing as Libertarians from misdirecting the effects of Republican sedition toward the singular president as those lapdogs have attempted to do in the past. [[You know who you are, shameless one.)

[RaumVogel]

This is the truth in a nutshell!

Only partisans can see this issue as only one of the party's fault.

The International Bankers deliberately crashed the US economy, and while the Republicans are 'usually' more closely aligned with them, these last three presidencies have been more than odd, so I cannot make that association a sole one.

As long as these creepy, old power-mongers have the leadership of our country...hell, our WORLD...convinced that a policy of "Grow 'til You War [[if no growth go to war) Either Way, War War War"...we will have these periodic 'corrections'. [[and they've gotten everyone to forget the ancient 'Jubilee' scheme of twice-per-century givebacks to family lines as detailed in the Old Testament)

I believe it was Mayer Rothschild [[one of the founding International Bankers in the 1700s) who said, "Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes the laws." Who controls our nation's money?! What DO you know about the Federal Reserve Bank?

I believe there is no mistaking when the two major economic systems developed on the planet, and HOW they developed, were influenced by this man...who used them both to siphon off the wealth created by everything 'beneath' his family.

If the LOVE of money is the root of all evil, they are the ones who tend those roots. And derive the bulk of the fruits of the tree, if we really want to pummel that analogy.

To that end, when you see there is an entity ABOVE that which you wish to blame...and this entity is fully capable of, and has shown a willingness to foment some extraordinarily ugly evil in order to remain in power to continue raping this earthly profit...then it is a relatively moot conversation.

Argue as you wish over Replicans and Democrats. That is exactly what they WANT you to be consumed with, so you never look above and beyond them.


What a way to start the day...

[Papasito]

Since we're beating a dead horse..


The only reason we are STILL talking about the economy is because Obama didn't fulfill his campaign promises about fixing the economy. I distinctly remember him saying he could do it in 3 years and if he couldn't his presidency would be a "1 term proposition"

Maybe he should have spent less time on making everyone buy health insurance they cant afford [[it's more expensive now than ever!) and less time golfing and less time making poor people angry at rich people and less time handing out a so-called stimulus to campaign donors and foreign companies and spent more time actually focusing on the economy and fixing it

[rb336]

blah blah blah moronic republican BS ignoring right-wing obstructionism blah blah blah

[ghettopalmetto]

Since we're beating a dead horse..


The only reason we are STILL talking about the economy is because Obama didn't fulfill his campaign promises about fixing the economy. I distinctly remember him saying he could do it in 3 years and if he couldn't his presidency would be a "1 term proposition"

Maybe he should have spent less time on making everyone buy health insurance they cant afford [[it's more expensive now than ever!) and less time golfing and less time making poor people angry at rich people and less time handing out a so-called stimulus to campaign donors and foreign companies and spent more time actually focusing on the economy and fixing it

You might want to think about a hobby. Like hiking. I hear the Appalachian Trail is real nice.

You want the economy fixed? Fix it your damned self. Borrow money from your parents and start a company. I'm tired of people like you doing nothing but watching Fox News, pontificating lukewarm talking points from your computer, doing jack shit about anything, and blaming everyone else for your problems. Take some Personal Responsibility for your place in this society.

[Goose]

Only partisans can see this issue as only one of the party's fault.

thank you

its amazing that people on one side can believe the other side is a conglomeration of evil people while their side is completely honest and beholden to the people only

both parties are full of self absorbed power hungry statists, neither party is working for 99% of the countries interests....

the only reason I tend to the republicans is that they promise less government vs. ever expanding government [[not like they follow through on their promises)

in my opinion, the less the 99% are under the thumb of government, especially in its current state, the better off everyone would be....

[ghettopalmetto]

in my opinion, the less the 99% are under the thumb of government, especially in its current state, the better off everyone would be....

See, now this is a curious statement to me. What specifically do you mean by "under the thumb" of government? Could you explain how you are so oppressed?