No, you personally are disappointed. Liberals in general are not.
I just think that Obama is by far the best of a very, very bad lot (i.e., his Republican opposition). But I think his administration has blundered repeatedly, and VERY badly in his negotiating tactics with the opposition. And I think the fact that his administration has been unable to find a SINGLE banker, realtor or financier guilty of fraud in the recent housing market debacle to be proof positive that Wall Street owns him. I’m VERY disappointed in him. But since I’ll almost certainly vote for him, does this make me, by the standards of that survey, a “supporter” despite the increasing degree to which I will be forced to hold my nose when I vote for him in November 2012?
Sure, there’s a difference between “did not meet expectations” and “wow, what kind of weak-ass pansy is this guy.” The former does not really show up strongly in this kind of polling, but I think the latter does. Job favorability is different from whether you’d vote for the guy. In fact, Obama’s overall job favorables are lower than his re-elect numbers against actual candidates. Moreover, the approval among Lib-Dems actually went up in the weeks preceding the poll I cited. So it’s safe to say that the only evidence we have suggests Liberals are not, as a whole, very disappointed.
But even if there were evidence of a significant number of disappointed liberals – which I have not seen – it is still a fallacy for people like Mosier or Der Trihs to speak on behalf of the whole group. Millions of liberals think Obama has done exactly what he promised he would do, and has proceeded as best as he could have in the face of what the GOP has become.
This doesn’t make any sense. Hundreds of bankers, realtors, and financiers have been found guilty of fraud by state and federal prosecutors. Do you want Obama to, like, personally be in the court or something?
So how does one decide how much of the trouble is his fault?
Obama had the extreme good luck to be elected Captain of the Titanic one minute after it hit the iceberg. Maybe a man was ever born who could, by sheer willpower and intellect, turn a pile of duck biscuits into a solar-powered rainbow generator. What, charm the pants off the Tea Party? Hell, why not turn the Great Lakes into burgundy while he’s about it, then maybe cure some lepers.
You just linked to a graph that shows liberal support of Obama dropped 7 points over the course of a month. Sorry, you’ll have to do better than that.
And if your statement was that 30% of Liberals disapprove of Obama, then you’d have a point. Since it wasn’t, you don’t.
And he is black and was poor. No excuse for that.
hello from atlanta…wandered in here drunk…hope all’s well with yall…Lard save us from Obama and his bs
Saved from Obama only to die of heart disease? Not much of an improvement there…
My main issue with the whole way that Obama is trying to help the economy is with a plethora of temporary measures. Businesses need some certainty as to the direction of the economy in order to retrench and plan for the future. Sure, let’s cut the payroll tax by 2% next year. That puts 2% more money in my pocket and I like that. Maybe I’ll use the money to buy a few more things and boost the economy a little bit.
Problem: It is only temporary. Even Obama admits this. He is not proposing a permanent 2% payroll cut. If I am a business I am happy with this extra cash coming in, but I’m not going to hire a bunch of new people because I don’t know that business will continue at this level next year when the cut isn’t there anymore. As even the Dems admit, businesses are sitting on piles of cash, but are not hiring. Temporary spikes in demand will at best do nothing and at worse create a new bubble down the road.
If there is anything that the government needs to do it is to clean up the housing mess. Do not reinflate the bubble, but accelerate a resolution. Many houses in south Florida are sitting empty and literally falling down because the owners have left and the banks will not foreclose. They would rather have that $300k asset on their balance sheet than foreclose and sell for $100k.
I’m generally anti-big government, but I would support a program mandating a resolution of every underwater and troubled mortgage and have the rules geared to a fair resolution between the homeowner and the bank that leaves the homeowner in a stable situation: whether that is foreclosure or a modification, it needs to be done now instead of years from now.
Once the housing problem is solved, that will pervade so many other industries. The housing bubble started this and the resolution of that problem will lift the rest of the economy.
Why? Do you not believe in virtuous cycles created by temporary artificial increases in demand? Or is it that you think we have to solve the other structural problems before demand genuinely rebounds?
I’m sympathetic to the second possibility, but it strikes me that the proposition should be that the result is either neutral or good. How do these measures spur a new bubble?
May be the other way round. May be that we have to have some recovery before we can evaluate the houses. If we say the value of those mortgages is pegged exactly to the alleged value of the mortgages, we have a whole buttload of empty houses that cannot be sold. If, on the other hand, we say the value is what the house can actually be sold for, the banks holding those overvalued mortgages have to 'fess up that their “assets” are a lot less than they have been claiming.
Money owed to a bank or credit card company or whomever can be claimed as an “asset” so long as there is any plausible reason to believe they might actually get paid. If the economy recovers quickly enough, some of that becomes much more plausible, compared to now. Then your banker can cut back on his meds. Maybe stop drinking so much.
Any program to help, or change, or alter this situation has to run up against that single ugly fact: what are these mortgages worth right now? Nobody really wants to hear the answer.
When you are asking a question about the arcane mysteries of high finance, you need to consult a Dirty Fucking Hippy. We take lots of drugs, and have no money, so we can be much more objective.
I don’t believe that demand will geniunely rebound until people are confident that they will stay in their homes and that their job (when/if they have one) will be secure.
I spoke of a bubble as the worst situation. It may not happen. I am discouraged by the earlier policies of the $8,000 homebuyer credit and the “Cash for Clunkers” program. All those did was move forward those purchases and gave the home and car industry a false sense of recovery, and then they expire and cause a downturn again.
Temporary measures are sometimes a good thing. I supported TARP because you can’t have the entire financial system collapse. The problem is that was 3 years ago, and we are still throwing temporary measures against the wall to see if something will stick. My contention is that NO temporary measure will genuinely grow the economy.
We already passed the point of emergency measures. Now we need to step back and let the market find out where the demand actually is; not where it is when people have an extra 2% in their pocket.
The banks need to 'fess up. Those houses aren’t worth what the mortgages are for and won’t be for a long time, possibly not again in any of our lifetimes. It’s a dirty, damned lie that they have those on their balance sheets as assets for those values.
Even if the economy starts roaring, homes won’t triple in value. And if they do without a corresponding increase in wages, we are right back where we start with Housing Bubble II.
For example, can some poor schlub making $40k/yr afford a $300,000 house? Of course not. Can he afford a $100k house? Yes. To make your scenario come true, the economy would have to rebound so much that the guy making $40k/yr is now worth $120k/yr.
And all of this is assuming that it will be done without hyperinflation. I guess that would solve the housing crisis on paper, but still cause a ton of other problems.
ETA: And why shouldn’t something be valued for what it can sell for right now? I have a pair of binoculars that are worth $30. Maybe in three years, they will be worth $3 million. Maybe? Hopefully? Which value should we use?
That would be the truth. Nobody wants to hear the truth. Hearing the truth woud erode confidence, making the truth worse. Then, you tell the new truth, and that would erode confidence… Lather, rinse, scream, repeat.
I think that business owners, investors, and other people in the know DO know the truth, but don’t have hard numbers. That’s why they are sitting on cash and are so skitterish on investing. They are being served bullshit on a platter from Washington and need the full and complete picture on the housing and jobs situation to end the uncertainty and let things recover.
I just watched his speech and I think it’s one of his best. Forceful, specific, impassioned. I just have more respect for him now.
It was funny to watch the congressmen. The Dems are colorful and quick to applaud and/or stand (of course). The Republicans are grey and scowling, remaining seated for most of the speech. But a few of the scowling greys did stand for some populist issues (and more so for pro-corporation issues).
Does this show fractures in their block of resolve? Are they showing that they will buck the party line on some issues? If so, that is certainly new.
Obama should have taken over one of the failed banks and started lending to small business and limiting foreclosures. He missed the opportunity at the crash, and now the bankers have their lobbyists full force making pols do their bidding.
The regular person is pretty well fucked now. We have no power .
From last night’s PBS News Hour:
Feldstein is the “conservative” and Goolsbee is the “liberal”, for those not familiar with these guys.
Is Feldstein wrong? Goolsbee says he doesn’t “totally agree”, but he doesn’t say what he thinks the number is. How much money per job does it make sense to spend? How many of these jobs will be around once this stimulus (let’s call a spade a spade) is spent?
I think we’ll be seeing the Congressional Budget Office (or whatever it’s called) evaluation of this plan shortly. Should be interesting.
Feldstein is wrong to claim that all we get for $200,000 is one job. We also get new bridges, upgraded schools and modernized water systems. Well worth the investment.