Earlier this week, the NY Times reported that Pretendident Obama had asked European leaders to maintain stimulus. He got his response from Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel earlier today: Yikes! When even "socialist" countries like much of Europe are in disagreement with your ideas, you may want to reconsider your policies. I don't think anyone listens to Obama anymore. They just smile politely and nod their head as he talks. Well, maybe Obama will find some other way to keep busy at the G-20 summit -- perhaps by finding some other youngins' ass to check out.
And in other G-20 news: China says they may stop artificially suppressing the value of their currency (good for the US and other nations); but it could (probably) just be posturing on their part.
Hey...Obama was "The World's" choice for US President. And how is that working out for you World? Enjoying the hopey-changey as much as we are?
Hey Barry. Still want us to be more like Europe? If that's the course they're taking, I do. And like France, let's build some nuke power plants.
Im looking around for a destroyed country, hundreds of thousands dead and a refugee crisis numbering in the millions, as a direct result of the last administration....... ....nope not found one..... I think I prefer the present lot The world DOES NOT NEED American neo-cons.
Only a moron thinks that whether or not a leader has gone to war is the barometer of whether or not he or she is a good leader. Hell, the OP has nothing to do with war whatsoever.
Im just talking about the relative merits of the present and last administrations. I think this one is better mainly because it is much less likely to be unnecessarily aggressive
You're right, no such country exists, now or during the last administration. But than you for playing "I'm Leach the utter idiot.".
OK what about we go with an economic issue. What was the state of the banks, interbank lending, borrowing and the American and world economies at the end of the last Republican term. Was it something you would descibe as 'good or 'bad'...?
Leach: I don't see any destroyed country. I see a country makng great strides toward democracy, a population entering the modern era, a population no longer in terror of a loony dictator and his rapist sons. I see a region, that until obama came along was toning down terror and making strides. A great example of this is Libya's behavior under Bush and his new attitude under Obama. Like all quacks you see everything bad and doom. I see the positive and the improvements in peoples lives.
How does it "humiliate" Obama for European countries to take a different view than him? For what it's worth, I think he's probably more right than them on this. You cannot cut your way out of a recession.
If the USA and European countries gave me a penny for every time they said this in the last decades, they would be billions upon trillions in debt by now. Oh wait...
Deficit spending works as well as "real" communism. That is, it doesn't work at all. The spending part has worked well for decades. The saving part has never happened to this day. What makes you think that, all of a sudden, it will work after this recession is over? There is no reason to assume any government will save only one single dollar and euro, so there's no reason to increase our debt now.
Whether they save after the recovery is fully underway will be a matter of policy choice. There's no law that says that they have to keep spending. Surpluses have been run before. But even if this were not the case, cuts during a recession are still doubly-damaging.
Nor can you borrow your way out of debt, which in this case trumps spending your way out a recession. Unlike most other busts, this wasn't a bubble in market segment bursting, this was a debt bubble that straddled the entire global economy going pop, made worse by governments continuing to borrow excessively during the higher points of the economic cycle - mainly because defectives like Brown were arrogant and unschooled enough to think they'd found the mystical recipe for perpetual growth. The unpleasant fact is that for around a decade growth was an illusion, which means any recession must take that into account before becoming part of any downward cycle. Stimulus spending is about who manages to dig the shallowest hole for themselves, well Europe has started to wise up to this. Essentially we spent years dosing ourselves up further to avoid a comedown, well the dealers are all out and we're having to consider the horrors of cold turkey. Years of bad economic policy and fantasy finances are what we're dealing with, and spending ain't the fix.
Of course you can. A recession is a lack of economic activity. Spending money increases economic activity. You don't like the resulting debt, but it's preferable to being stuck in a shrinking economy.
So that is what you're left with now? Better than McCain/Palin? My dog's shit would have been better than McCain/Palin.
On a different (but somewhat related) subject, last night when I posted this thread, I almost mentioned something I'd heard yesterday from one of the guests in the PUMA radio broadcasts that we do every so often. I didn't mention it though because well, you can't really link to a radio show. Anyway, the comment was that the Obama Administration is expected to get rid of certain advisers in the coming months. Specifically, that Rahm Emanuel wants to return to Chicago politics. There was also the additional comment that the POTUS is also getting tired of the job and wants to return to Chicago too (this, btw, is the second time I've heard that Obama is getting tired of the job). Twists involving the State Department and the Department of Defense also figured into the equation -- with it most likely being that Gates wants to retire soon, and he has more or less indicated that he wants Hillary as his hand-picked successor for Secretary of Defense. Of course, whether she wants to do that though, is anybody's guess. Interestingly enough though, while browsing today, I came across this article published by the Telegraph (UK). Looks like the NY Daily News is also reporting this now... Now, if we could just get them all to agree to go back to Chicago...as a friend of mine said, "I'd buy them their plane tickets myself!"