I really wish Romney was elected though, what you Americans need is a businessman to get you out of recession. Not some lawyer/community organizer
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The economy is pretty good at running itself if as long as businesses know that they can plan for the future with some degree of certainty. It doesn’t really matter so much what the certainty is as long as it exists and they know that they can plan for it. That’s the real issue now. The only thing people can really count on from the government is more gridlock.
Because running a country is just like running a business:rolleyes:.
Make tons of money for the CEOs and have annual layoffs to run lean. Sounds like a great plan.
I’m going to go with 24%.
You must be a far Left Liberal.
Yes the government should be run like a business, if it was run like a (responsible) business your country wouldnt be in trillions of dollars of debt.
Its amazing you Lefties cant comprehend this simple economic rule :smack:
Actually, governing requires political capital, and your popularity is your political capital. There is a danger to Congressmen who thwart a popular President. The Republicans have never really had to face consequences for obstructing Obama because the public hasn’t been solidly behind him since the GOP took over.
America doesn’t need a business man (Romney wouldn’t have done much better).
American needs a wise man that realizes we have to stop spending money, spending our children’s, children’s money and balance the budget. In order to do that we have to raise taxes or go to war with China, both would be very unpopular choices.
No one can get elected promoting raising taxes now can they?
I guess you don’t know much about running a business. Depending on the industry, leverage is a way of life. Industries that are capital intensive regularly run high debt to asset ratios. Take a look at the balance sheet for Consolidated Edison for example, a utility company. Roughly 3/4 of their assets are financed by debt (half in debt, half in other liabilities). Only about a quarter is shareholder equity.
Since most utilities are functional monopolies or at least oligopolies, they’re pretty close to mini-govts for the purposes of comparison, wouldn’t you say?
So much for your “economic rule.”
Yet healthy companies don’t tend to have a 70% debt-to-market cap ratio.
No, the government is not a business. It doesn’t seek profit. However, business or not, it has to manage its money wisely. And also recognize that the purpose of public jobs is to provide services to the public, not to provide jobs as an end in itself. I wanted to hit something when interested politicians started complaining that if unneeded military bases were closed, it would cost jobs.
At the risk of stretching a stupid analogy even further, how do you even begin to assess market cap for a country? Is Amazon really worth over $370/share based on trailing EPS of 28 cents? Uhh, I don’t think so. But that’s not what you’re paying for when you buy AMZN.
I was comparing market cap to GDP. But if you prefer debt to equity, the same applies. Companies deep in debt tend to run into trouble. Government that are deep in debt tend to run into trouble. Witness Argentina, which is currently being sued in US courts for defaulting on bonds investors bought in good faith. Personally, I think all of Argentina’s US assets should be seized and distributed to bondholders.
Oh, you just wait till I get to picking apart your post.
Gimme 24 hours or so.
Cheers 
I took me all of 24 seconds to pick yours apart, but hey, take your time.
GDP is more comparable to an income statement than a balance sheet wouldn’t you say? How does that help determine market cap?
I was going to wait until about the 20th or 25th thread, in case some of my betters wanted to take pole position.
Bush may have passed more “consequential” bills but that is due to having a far less obstructive Congress and ignores their effectiveness (No Child Left Behind for example does not seem to have done a stellar performance).
And the same principle is applied to low information GOP voters-even if Obamacare was highly successful later on
Is that why conservative Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W Bush both increased the debts substantially and in Bush’s case opened up a deficit? Mind you in Bush’s case this was in a time of prosperity rather than a recession when a deficit would be unsurprising due to less revenue and needs more government spending to stimulate the economy.
America needs a wise man who realizes that what is needed in an economic crisis is far more substantial stimulative spending on infrastructure to build a national high speed rail system and nuclearize the energy sector along with promoting and expanding our entitlement system.
And most Treasury bonds don’t go to China and the majority of Americans are in favour of raising taxes on the rich.
If we’re judging by effectiveness than Obama gets a negative score. He would have been better off passing nothing at all. Heck, losing congress and halting his ability to get the legislation he wanted probably saved his reelection. If he could only figure out how to manage HIS branch rather than the other elected branch, he’d probably get somewhere.