Notice, I did did (sic) say ‘again’.
And, there have been numerous ups and down since. 
WWI was a down for everybody but banks, arms manufacturers and other war profiteers. Then after a decade of high living on credit we come to The Great Depression. You ain’t seen nothing yet.
Roosevelt was the '30s Obama. Offered a New Deal to the voting collateral damage of the corporate war on humanity.
Obama in Whiteface?
I’m not sure what the OP was referring to, but here is one example: Wynn: Obama’s remarks bad for convention business - Las Vegas Sun Newspaper (it’s not about small business, but the OP didn’t mention small business).
I did not say that Germany is doing great - that was Wesley Clark’s contention. They are likely doing somewhat better than the U.S. - especially in the unemployment rate.
They did have a stimulus, but it was much smaller than in the U.S.
Even the very piece you’re quoting notices concerns about a possible double-dip recession in the U.S. but somehow you’re ready to pronounce the stimulus a resounding success? Based on the data from different countries, we cannot even conclude that there was a relationship between the stimulus size and the GDP growth: http://catallaxyfiles.com/2010/05/13/did-the-stimulus-work/.
Did you read that article?
What you consider “anti-business posturing” was Obama’s comment about companies using government bailouts to send top executives to Vegas.
Obama’s comment was about wasteful spending of TARP and stimulus funding. Shouldn’t conservatives be happy about that?
Well, it might have been Obama’s comments, or it might have been the MASSIVE media attention given to recipients of bailout money who then sent their executives to spa getaways.
Are we seriously this obtuse?
In 2008, AIG spent $440,000 to send its top-performing insurance salesmen to a luxury resort in California. This was a few months after the government stepped in to prevent AIG from going bankrupt. Obama said, “The Treasury should demand that money back and those executives should be fired.”
So, was that comment also anti-business posturing? I’m sure it had a similar impact on the executive spa industry.
Remember when the executives for the Big Three auto makers drove to Washington instead of flying in private jets–that hurt the private jet industry. Wanna blame Obama for that too?
According to the OECD they’ve had a bigger rate of fiscal stimulus as a percentage of GDP than America has.
It’s not like comparing German and American recessions is a fair comparision either. Germany didn’t have a giant housing or credit bubble by comparison to America, a country that had the biggest asset bubble in history go pop. America has an infinitely bigger economic hole to climb out of than the rest of the world while at the same time being unable to cut interest rates and so really needs a correspondingly bigger stimulus to do so. And while the Australian righty blogger you link to is clearly a credible source of information, here’s the chief economics editor of the FT arguing that the US stimulus and fiscal stimulus packages in general were a resounding success, quoting various studies by ex-Fed chairmen and the CBO :
As far as economys around the world go there’s no debate at all over whether fiscal stimulus was successful. Here’s what Asian economys have to say about their fiscal stimulus programmes :
Asian governments have taken the lesson to heart. According to Fitch Ratings, fiscal stimulus packages as a percentage of gross domestic product amounted to 6.9 per cent for Vietnam, 7.7 per cent for Thailand, 8 per cent for Singapore, 13.5 per cent for China, and a whopping 14.6 per cent for Japan. Taiwan, with a relatively modest stimulus of 3.8 per cent, gave $100 spending vouchers to each of its 23m inhabitants, including convicts. The Singaporean government subsidised businesses that retained staff. In China, the mother of all stimulus packages funnelled $585bn of spending into the economy, and even more through directing state-controlled banks to increase credit…
Unlike in the west, there is little debate in Asia about how well the stimulus worked. It has been spectacular. Asian output is well above pre-crisis levels. HSBC is predicting growth for Asia ex-Japan of 8.6 per cent this year. Rather than contemplating more stimulus, authorities are trying to cool things down. Banks have been raising interest rates for months. China and others have introduced measures to take the heat out of the housing market. Fears about unemployment have given way to concerns about labour shortages and spiralling wage demands. Thus the question in most of Asia is not whether to remove stimulus, but how fast. Asia is in orthodox territory, balancing well-trodden trade-offs between growth and inflation.
It’s only in America that you get any real debate over fiscal stimulus and that’s because you have a free market deregulationist school of economists who as a matter of ideology can’t accept that any government intervention in the economy can be a good thing. But events over the past couple of years have utterly discredited these guys and their response to the financial meltdown and the wreckage it made of their theories has made them a laughing stock in most parts of the world.
I don’t agree. About half the oil in the US is used for personal transportation like cars & trucks. Another 10-20% is used in manufacturing and alternatives like coal would probably suffice. Agriculture only uses 2-3%. The end of cheap oil means people will not be able to drive their own personal SUV to and from work everyday and that transporting goods across country will take longer by train and barge because oil shortages will cause semis to prioritize and ration what they transport. It doesn’t mean civilization will collapse.
There is a lot of waste in oil consumption and we could consume far far less with only moderate lifestyle changes. I don’t believe the peak oil as end of civilization concept.
Either way, keeping people alive is easy. All people generally need is protection from malnutrition, microbes and physical trauma (severe weather, violence, war, etc). It doesn’t take much to give those things to people.
New Orleans and Haiti not to mention the record our Middle East adventures would be good examples of how easy it is, I suppose.
Here’s an interesting site. http://mykindred.com/cloud/TX/Documents/dollar/
You’ll notice to the left of the page you can make any year the base reference. Try $1.00 in 1800. After 213 year in 1913, the US dollar was worth 1.70. Then we got the Fed. Today, less than 100 years later, a buck is worth .08.
Doing the math.
1800-1913, value of the dollar rose 70%.
1913-2010, value of the dollar fell 2100%
Currently American businesses are sitting on a lot of money that they are not investing because there is little demand for what they sell. Also, most of the countries with Social Democratic economies were hit less hard by the recession, and they are recovering faster. The U.S. economy has been more congenial to business interests than Social Democrat economies, and remains so. Countries with Social Democrat economies have been less effected by the Great Recession, and they are recovering faster.
In June 2010 the unemployment rate in the United States was 9.5%.
During this time, the unemployment rate in Austria was 3.9%.
The unemployment rate in Canada was 7.9%.
The unemployment rate in Denmark was 6.6%.
The unemployment rate in Germany was 7.0%.
The unemployment rate in Iceland was 7.6%.
The unemployment rate in Luxembourg was 5.3%
The unemployment rate in the Netherlands was 4.4%.
In May 2010 the unemployment rate in Australia was 5.2%.
The unemployment rate in Switzerland was 4.0%.
The unemployment rate in the United Kingdom was 7.8%.
In March 2010 the unemployment rate in New Zealand was 6.0%.
These countries have governments that are less congenial to their business communities, and they charge higher taxes.
Share of Income Going to Corporate Profits at Record High
By Aviva Aron-Dine and Isaac Shapiro
Revised March 29, 2007
Commerce Department data released today show that the share of national income going to wages and salaries in 2006 was at its lowest level on record with data going back to 1929.[1] The share of national income captured by corporate profits, in contrast, was at its highest level on record.
In 2006 we had a Republican president. Both houses of Congress had Republican majorities. We should not assume that most Americans benefit from a pro-business government. Since the administration of Lyndon Johnson, there has always been more job creation under Democratic presidents than Republican presidents.
Under Lyndon Johnson there was an average of 2,300,000 jobs created per year.
Under Richard Nixon there was an average of 1,700,000 jobs created per year.
Under Gerald Ford there was an average of 745,000 jobs created per year.
Under Jimmy Carter there was an average of 2,600,000 jobs created per year.
Under Ronald Reagan there was an average of 2,000,000 jobs created per year.
That’s right. More jobs were created per year under Carter than Reagan.
Under George H.W. Bush there was an average of 625,000 jobs created per year.
Under Bill Clinton there was an average of 2,900,000 jobs created per year.
Under George W. Bush there was an average of 375,000 jobs created per year.
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/01/09/bush-on-jobs-the-worst-track-record-on-record/
That happened under a pro business government when American businesses were making record profits. Nevertheless: "On every major measurement, the Census Bureau report shows that the country lost ground during Bush’s two terms. While Bush was in office, the median household income declined, poverty increased, childhood poverty increased even more, and the number of Americans without health insurance spiked. By contrast, the country’s condition improved on each of those measures during Bill Clinton’s two terms, often substantially…
“When Bill Clinton left office after 2000, the median income-the income line around which half of households come in above, and half fall below-stood at $52,500 (measured in inflation-adjusted 2008 dollars). When Bush left office after 2008, the median income had fallen to $50,303. That’s a decline of 4.2 per cent.”
Doing the math? :o
!913-2010, value of the dollar fell 95%.
I wonder how many of those jobs (and those under other Democrat presidents) were due to government jobs programs like CETA, during Carter’s administration, and/or the expansion of the number of employees on the federal payroll. It’s one thing to bolster the economy and thereby create legitimate jobs in the private sector; it’s another entirely to simply add unnecessary people to the government payroll and then brag about how you’ve reduced unemployment.
My wife worked as a dispatcher for a large city police department in the late seventies which was plagued with a considerable number of CETA employees. These people were employed by the federal government and could not be disciplined or fired. They huddled together in one part of the office and spent their days reading paperback books and telling jokes and laughing amongst themselves. If a new CETA hire were to show any initiative and actually attempt to learn the work and do a good job, they were accosted by the others and made aware right away that they were not to upset the apple cart. Soon they were as worthless as the rest.
And the real kicker? They were paid more and had better benefits than the city employees who were doing the real work!
Do you have a cite for any of that, or did you just come in to do some bashing?
You mean that act that was signed by Nixon, and was based on his proposed Manpower Training Act of 1969? Here is his signing statement.Democrats passed it, but it was a Nixon initiative all the way.
Yes, the act signed by Nixon but an extension of a federal works program from the '30s, and administered - if you can call it that - by the Carter administration.
And, no, I’m sorry, Bo, but I don’t have a cite as to my wife’s work experiences during the latter part of the 1970s. You can take my word for it or not, but I think anyone familiar with the way the federal government operates, especially under Democrats, can recognize the truth of it easily enough.
Did you mean Ford? This act was in place long before Carter became president. Do you blame Obama for invading Iraq? After all, he “administered” it, whatever that means. It appears as if you are incapable of composing a post without taking a swipe at some Democrat, even if you have to be dead wrong in your composition to do so.
As far as your bogus claims (I mean “anecdotes”), I CAN prove that people were terminated under CETA. Since you haven’t given a single cite to back up your claim, how many terminations do I need to demonstrate before you retract your claims?
Oh, clearly all of those jobs created by liberals were just government make work projects.
Kudos to Bush 43 for not expanding government in any way (cough Home Land Security) or Reagan (cough cold war military build up).
Nope, only liberals screw business and higher more government workers (who are all lazy btw). That’s why you can’t trust liberal politicians. At least with Conservative politicians, you know they’re trying to do what’s right. I should know, I had a friend who knew people that worked for the government, and they were all lazy.
Who cares what one unit of currency is worth? What matters is what one hour of your labour will buy you. And that has risen much more between 1913-2010 than it did between 1800-1913.
I can tell you that the Ford administration was not running the CETA program in 1977 and 1978, which was the period of time I was talking about. I can tell you that the city administration my wife worked for had a policy whereby CETA employees could not be told what to do or disciplined or fired for job related performance. I’m sure that if they were committing acts of violence or dealing drugs or something along those lines they could and would be fired. I can’t speak as to how CETA employees were treated in other cities or parts of the country, which is why I stated conditions at my wife’s workplace in the city where we were living at the time. However, like I said, it was a large metropolitan area and I doubt very seriously that things were done much differently there than in most other metropolitan areas.
Now, can you perhaps tell me why the fact that you can point to some fired CETA employee somewhere seems in your mind to negate the overall point of my post, which was that Democrats will put unnecessary people on the federal payroll and then use those so-called jobs as a basis for claiming they reduced unemployment?
No, I can and do compose posts without taking a swipe at some Democrat. Sometimes I compose and post things that have nothing to do with politics at all. Still, the reason I’m so critical of most things Democrat is because in my opinion they are the wrong thing to do. If I felt otherwise, I’d probably be a Democrat. You can take the subject currently under discussion as an example. In the world of Democrat philosophy it’s perfectly fine to put people to work doing nothing and pay them with taxpayer dollars. Hey, people gotta eat, right? And then we have the Democrat fondess for allowing illegal immigration and it’s disdain for - and name-calling toward - those who oppose it. I simply find the Democrat/liberal way of looking at things to be deeply flawed, and so it follows that I find most of the things they put into practice to be deeply flawed as well. Thus I criticize most of what Democrats do. About the only area where I feel Democrats got it right was with regard to civil rights legislation. I’d add Social Security and Medicare to that as well, had it been funded by compulsory individual investment.
Except you did no such thing. You merely demonstrated that you have a problem with a program that was initiated by a Republican president, signed by a Republican president, and overseen for the first several years under a different Republican president. You then toss out some bogus anecdote, which I can show is false, in reference to said program, and use a time-frame that happens to coincide with the very first year that a Democrat happened to be in the White House and use that to slam Democrats. Pretty fucking pitiful.