By the way, here is a good chart for you to look at.
Not sure if you are proud of this or not. Is it a good thing the market hasn’t grown since Bush took office?
Now this is just baloney. Bush’s policies caused the downturn to be much deeper and last much longer than they would have if Clinton’s policies had been continued. No one can argue that.
I know it’s been awhile in this thread since the effects of unified/divided government on the deficit was being discussed. But I’m thinking that might not be much of a factor - especially given that, per the charts that Jonathan Chance linked to, it’s clear that many of the biggest deficits as a % of GDP happened during years when the President’s party didn’t control Congress.
Regardless of what the Constitution says, how our system actually works is that the President proposes a budget, then Congress modifies it somewhat before passing something whose core is still the President’s budget.
ISTM that Congress mostly nibbles around the edges, and rarely (if ever during the post-WWII era) makes changes that substantially affect the deficit.
Questions: has a Congress ever increased or reduced the deficit by as much as 1% of GDP through its budgetary changes? What’s the most a post-WWII Congress has changed a proposed budget by this measure?
ISTM that it’s hard to claim that Congress makes a difference with regard to deficits unless one can point to an instance where it did just that.
Why would I be proud of that? To tell you the truth, I couldn’t care less. But what was stated was wrong, and I felt the need to refute it.
Sure they can. Throw a war on top of an economic downturn and it’s going to hit the wall under anybody’s administration. Add rampant accounting scandals to that downturn and it only gets more severe. You can argue that Bush’s economic policies didn’t help, but if you look at the numbers they don’t seem to have hurt the stock market, just the national debt.
That’s really what I have a problem with. Prosperity now for crushing debt later is irresponsible. You can blame the Republicans and President Bush for that, but you can’t pin the stock market on them.
You may well have lost 20K after it was annnounced that Bush had won that election (or court battle depending on one’s point of view), but the losses in the market that day weren’t the beginning of the end. That came much earlier in the year.
Fer instance, the Dow lost over 600 points on March 14, 2000 - at that time it was the record single day loss. And that was after it had already shed more than 10% of its January 2000 value by the end of Feb 2000.
The NASDAQ was even worse. It closed at an all-time high of ~$5050.00 in early March 2000. And by mid-April 2000 lost 34% of that value.
Its high in January 2000 was 11723. Its high in September 2000 was 11311. Its high in May 2001 was 11338. When exactly did this bubble pop?
(The Dow was noticeably higher in May 2001 than anytime during or immediately after the Battle for Florida, btw. DrDeth, I think you just picked the wrong investments, or sold too soon, or misremembered when your losses were, or something.)
It gets even more confusing: the Dow closed at 9605 on September 10, 2001, in that last moment of normalcy. Then the big slide, right? Nope. Dow was back up to 10635 in March 2002. Then finally we see the slide that would carry it down into the 7000s by that fall.
Think of the NASDAQ during that period as the stock market of a developing country. Or a developing reality. Or something like that.
What scares me is China buying up alot of that debt. And according to fox news, buying more than any country in recent months. Who owns the house, you or that bank? Forget spanish, I’ll start learning Chinese. Anyone know how to say “And I for one, salute my new chinese overlords” in Mandarin?
I have looked at the data. I don’t think ANY of it is a solid basis for concluding that one party is significantly more fiscally responsible then the other. The US economy and government is way to complex to analyze by simply looking at what the deficit was when a given party had power.
Neither party seems to be particularly responsible, and neither has the balls to force the necessary tax increases and spending cuts down the voters throats. Instead, what we’ll get will be along the lines of “Look! We’re running a surplus! All we had to do was cut income taxes, sunset those taxes in 6 years, predict that incomes will triple in 5 years, assume inflation remains reasonable and that no new spending programs are enacted, erase some zeros from this figure right here, and proactively syngergize the over-under amortization tables! We don’t even have to close the local military base or stop construction of the North Dulbo Hog and Goat Products Museum!!!”
Let’s say that not much changes between now and 2008, and the Dems control the presidency, house, and senate. Let’s say they need to do some combination of tax increases and spending cuts that together must total $500 billion. How do you propose they do it? Do you honestly see them enacting your proposed solution?
Then you haven’t looked at the data. Please do so: Click here. Scroll down. Read. If you had done so, you would have seen that it isn’t a matter of simply looking at the deficit. Choose an economic indicator. They all are better under Democratic presidents:
They are all better under Democratic presidents!
See also more analyses here, which I have also linked to before.
I’m coming to find that even though the SDMB is dedicated to finding ignorance, what people really like to do is spout shit without any support for it. I’ll give my opinion as readily as anyone else, to be sure. But I’ll shut up if you show me data to the contrary. Please, rather than spouting more stuff, explain to me how the array of indicators that perform better under Democratic presidents can simply be dismissed.
See, it’s goddamn easy to say this, but people who do are just talking out of the top of their hats. The more you look at what actually happens by looking at the data, the less you can support such bullshit accusations.
No, I have.
Let me extend what I said: Corellating economic indicators with the political party that’s dominant at the time isn’t a valid way to determine which party is presently more fiscally responsible.
Go fuck yourself. I looked at that “eRiposte” page you linked to, and if you think that shit actually makes you less ignorant and gives you reason to thump your chest and pretend that you actually know something then you have the analytical skills of Koko the Gorilla after huffing several tubes of airplane glue.
You can’t look at a bunch of indicators independently of the other indicators and without regard to the corresponding historical circumstances and reasonably draw a conclusion.
You didn’t answer the question I posed to you:
Appointed, by a deeply divided Supreme Court, in a flawed decision. Not elected.
This graphic of our budget helps explain why we’re in debt: military spending. It details discretionary spending in the 2004 budget. $399 billion for military, $383 billion for everything else. Entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare are not listed, as the elected officials don’t have as direct a control over how that money’s allocated.
At one time, our national debt approximately equaled the amount we’ve spent (and continue to spend) on nuclear weapons. I liked that simple comparison. The debt’s risen by more than that under this administration.
Then why did you say that one cannot simply look at the deficit as an index?
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Let me extend what I said: Corellating economic indicators with the political party that’s dominant at the time isn’t a valid way to determine which party is presently more fiscally responsible.
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No. It demonstrates history. Presently, we know what’s going on. Open up a paper.
That’s a great argument. You really smacked that data-based analysis down with your witty Koko the Gorilla response. Of course, the “eRiposte” page is a collection of analyses from multiple sources of multiple indicators, consistently yielding one conclusion.
Sure you can, you stupid cunt. You can conclude that these indicators tend to be better under Democratic presidents. What you are actually flailing about for wildly is the fact that you cannot demonstrate cause. I agree with that. However, you offer instead some effort at casting about for vague unspecified historical anomalies. That’s all well and good, but these vague unspecifed historical anomalies nevertheless end up at the same spot. Historically, vague unspecifed anomalous factors result in things going better under Democratic presidents.
Because it is a red fucking herring. A wild goose chase. You can’t offer any argument for the data, and your handwaving makes you seem frightened of it, so you would rather dicker about potential future plans. Then you can spitball all you want about what might or might not be. That’s fine. I’ll give you step one, and you can blow till you’re pink about it, but it won’t change the fact that vague unspecified historical anomalies lead to multiple economic indicators fairing far better under Democratic presidents.
Step 1: Roll back the Bush tax cuts.
Step 2: Go fuck yourself.
I seriously have no idea what was going through Unclebeer’s head, when he posted the Fed working paper: “Currency and Banking Crises: The Early Warnings of Distress” as a cite.
Here’s the paper’s abstract:
Got all that? The paper seeks to build an index that might predict third world financial crises. What’s in the index? See Table 2 page 32. Here’s a partial list: M2 Multiplier, Domestic Credit/GDP, Domestic and External Financial Liberalization, Bank Deposits, Excess M1 Balances, Exports, yada yada and oh yes stock prices. That’s 1 out of 20 factors.
Sheesh.
C’mon Unclebeer, try not to be so pathetic. Ok, I’ll admit I overstated the case. Much of the 1990s prosperity was probably associated with the peace dividend: engineers who were released (fired) from the defense sector --or better yet never hired by it-- were fortunate enough to be absorbed by a computer sector (software and hardware) that was just mature enough to advance economy wide productivity.
Roughly speaking the US had a period of terrific productivity growth from 1948-1972. Then the magic went away and nobody knows why (there are plenty of hypotheses, but no decent tests). The magic came back around 1995. To lay give Clinton full credit for this is a little silly, BUT it can be said that his anti-deficit policies were pro-growth: expanded national savings assisted the investment boom associated with the return of fast productivity growth.
Beneficial knock-on effects also occurred: real wage growth turned positive in a sustained manner for the first time in decades. The 1990s truly did roar.
Social security runs a surplus. They need to buy something with that surplus. Would you prefer that they purchase used cars? Rare coins? Bonds backed by the full faith and credit of the US government seem like a good choice. What’s your alternative?
One possible answer would be a diversified portfolio. But such a portfolio would still contain assets such as T-Bonds.
Still, the remainder of the government currently runs a deficit, a deficit that overwhelms SS’s surplus. And that folks, is a problem. Indeed, it is the subject of the OP.
Any portfolio manager would be surprised to hear that Treasury bonds are not an asset.
Look, I understand that when social security runs a surplus but the remainder of the federal government runs a bigger deficit, that this results in a decline in national savings. Indeed, that was the point of my previous post.
How many portfolio managers are going to suggest that you borrow from yourself? There’s a difference between the government buying government bonds and everyone else buying government bonds. The government buying government bonds is like me giving myself an IOU with 10% interest: I pay for the IOU originally with $10. In a year, I owe myself $11. Where’s the extra $1 come from? Me! I haven’t made anything on this deal because I’m paying myself $11 that I already owned. So where’s the profit coming from when the government buys government bonds?
Sure, they’re assets for private citizens, just not for the government that issued them. You can’t loan yourself money and claim the interest as profit. I mean, demonstrably you can, we’re doing it, but it’s not honest.
On preview: Or, what jayjay.
Re productivity: I don’t think there’s any mystery to it at all in terms of its fluctuation (as opposed to the absolute level; I wouldn’t want to even begin to try to explain why productivity varies as it does from country to country): the largest cohort of the baby boom joined the labor force in the late seventies and early eighties, and in 1979 and 1980 there was an amazing stretch of six consecutive quarters of negative productivity, measured year-over-year. By 1995, when productivity suddenly began to perk up, the boomers had long since been absorbed, but the baby bust that followed them was being digested. As of right now, the population profile includes a very heavy dose of people in their 40’s, which also happens to coincide with the age that most observers figure is when people are at their peak in productivity; this is that same cohort that entered the labor force back in the late seventies. (includes me, of course. The world does indeed revolve around me, in case you were wondering. 
)
I’ll have to start a thread over in GD, post all of this, and let you economists rip it to pieces.
BTW, measured year-over-year, we continue to have a consistently high growth in productivity. Didn’t even pause entering into the naughts: the average since 2000 has been, according to a spreadsheet I did, 3.2%, which ain’t shabby.
I now return you to your rant about the debt. (BTW, Bosda’s ripping of Doors was highly entertaining, given that the target of his ire hasn’t liked Bush in forever; I can’t even remember Doors ever liking the man. Oh well.)
How sad that you’ve grown neither more intelligent or more numerate over the past two years Shodan.
Try looking at the fucking table that I posted (twice now!) The Dems controlled the legislature and the executive from 1993-1994. Here, I’ll snip out a portion of it.
Date def/gdp ch def/gdp
1992 -4.6% -0.1% Republican -3.9%
1993 -3.8% 0.8% Democrat
1994 -2.9% 1.0% Democrat
Following a tax increase passed by Democrats and opposed by every single Republican Congressperson the deficit -lo and behold- declined from 4.6% to 3.8%, then 2.9% of GDP.
I congratulate Shodan for his brave attempt to advance ignorance in the face of the data.
Fucking laughable. The Republicans have controlled all 3 branches since 2001. Let’s see what happened to the deficit:
Date Budget Deficit, Billions
2000 236.4 billion surplus Democrat
2001 127.4 billion surplus Republican
2002 157.8 billion deficit Republican
2003 377.6 billion deficit Republican
2004 412.1 billion deficit Republican
2005e 426.6 billion deficit Republican
Still, **Shodan** has given us another stellar presentation of the modern conservative mentality: heavy on rhetoric, oblivious to facts.Ok. How you characterize it depends upon what sorts of questions you’re asking.
Here’s the thing. If you want to know the effects of governmental policy on national savings, it’s true that you must sum up the social security surpluses with the deficits run by the rest of the government. In fact, that’s what they do.
But. At the same time, it makes sense for the social security admin and the FDIC to put their surpluses into safe securities. That would be T-Bonds.
This would be dishonest only if somebody claimed that the government ran a tight fiscal policy on the basis of one trust fund or another. But nobody does that (knock on wood).
I’m not up to date on this but…
Productivity is procyclical, so the collapse during the 1979-1982 recession is not surprising.
But I was speaking of underlying trends. Yes, entry of baby boomers into the labor market in the mid 1970s might repress wages and even output per worker, following diminishing returns.
But I would think that such effects would have dissipated during the 1980s.
Anyway, the nice thing about the demographic explanation is that it could be modeled, and therefore tested, with some precision. (I suspect that this has been done, but…)
Another possible explanation is technological. There were a lot of new gizmos that became widespread following world war II: some say that this tech boom basically lost its steam after a certain point. But what about computers? Well, though they grew a lot faster from (say) 1985-1993, they didn’t become that much more useful. The move from Lotus on DOS to Excel on Win3.1 wasn’t that great. Then came the internet. That was a big change.
Another possible explanation is sociological. Yet another posits over-regulation of the 1970s.
I-yi-yi. It’s not that we lack hypotheses; it’s that we have too many and not enough tests to separate them apart.