Sure, the “shovel-ready jobs weren’t as shovel ready” as Obama’d thought [cue: uproarious laughter] — and sure, the Democrats controlled Congress from 2006 until just this year, and so were in control of spending — while their “regulatory” policies, begun by and under President Bill Clinton, were turning an experiment in social engineering and Democrat plunder into a toxic housing bubble that eventually would push banks to make bad loans, investers to try to pawn off the paper, and cause millions of Americans to lose all their equity once the whole fetid scheme invariably crumbled.
— But that doesn’t mean the current economic climate, which is as bad as the Great Depression, but which is really a recovery, except when it remains (doggedly and “unexpectedly”) an inherited recession, isn’t still all all Bush’s fault — in particular, the fault of his 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, which Obama extended so as not to trouble the tenuous recovery, which, to be clear, is a recovery, except when it is an inherited recession that is (unexpectedly!) as bad as the Great Depression, and albeit one that is slowly and steadily recovering.
From the Bush tax cuts Obama just extended. Which caused this new Great Depression. And spurred on its subsequent recovery. Which is unexpectedly not recovering.
So.
Four more years!
Somewhere last night I heard someone express the view that were our government a business very many of the men and women acting in that government would now be in jail under any reasonable understanding of our fraud laws. But of course, the wrongs they’ve done will never be prosecuted against them. Nor — given our sense of the disunity that results from criminalizing politics (which we’ve seen more than once over the last couple of decades) — would we want such an eventuality. Yet, we know the injustices perpetrated against the polity in the name of and often with the acquiescence of the ignorant polity itself stare us in the face. And worse, continue unabated. There seems no way out.
sdferr,
This makes your point nicely. Can you imagine the hue & cry if it were the intro to a publicly traded company’s financial statements?
The only thing shovel ready was the economy. Had to it with the shovel a few times, but he finally got it into its hole.
Had to hit it…
Heckofa point, sdferr, and one that someone needs to go into depth on. There are a number of factors that mitigate against reform.
The government is bankrupt, not rhetorically but by literal definition. The government is for the most part corrupt — in its unit of trade, its corporation of bankers, it’s global ties, ways, and means, and entire financial culture and machinery of the Welfare State — again, not rhetorically but by literal definition.
Debts that cannot be paid shall not be paid.
With this reality evident, we find ourselves at a crossroads. Yet, for a variety of reasons, we shout but do mostly nothing about this. We certainly wouldn’t abide our personal pull at the trough ended — in fact, we cannot afford that it be ended. Any reforms come nicely bundled with system fail: Kick out one of the blocks and the whole thing tumbles.
Other factors enter: We see banking as the free market when it is anything but. Rather, it hosts a failed experiment in progressive money and their economies that’s transferred wealth and power away from the once sovereign citizen and crumbled his rights and properties. We believe — virtually all of us these days — that government’s place is to engineer recoveries in the midst of the above, which is entirely false.
We loop back to the impasses above and the conundrum is complete. We do nothing while we have one eye out for the collapse.
Frankly, it’s a hell of a pickle — they have us where they want us. Drudge has been highlighting the annual meetings in Europe this month of powerful global elites. Even if those conversations and plans were innocent of collective aims, we know we’re losing the democratic mechanisms that supported the Republic and its principles. We’re not running this show anymore and we’re increasingly feeling that.
Makes sense to me.
-brain dead zombie progressive protesting a Special Olympics ceremony
So, what you’re saying, JeffG, is that Obama has a messaging problem? And once he clears that up, the economy will recover from Great Depression II?
Rather than “New Great Depression” or “Great Depression II”, I much prefer “Great Depression 2.0”. Has a more 21st century, high-tech sound to it. Winning The Future!
Obama’s messaging problem is that when he has actually talked about wanting to drive up energy prices and the like, that message somehow hasn’t gotten out to enough people.
Dave, how about, “The REAL Great Depression (that one back in the 1930s was amateur hour)”?
“Great Depression 2.0, now with more people dependent on government handouts!”
Coming to a corner of American near you.
Check your local listings.
I notice that Rush spent a little bit of time on this today. This is Obama’s recession. It was caused by a correct market anticipation of progressive governance. It was exacerbated by the Schumer bank run, and almost collapsed completely in 2008 when the slowest-on-the-uptake, no-greater-fools-to-be-found crowd finally realized that we were electing a leftist democrat, a progressive, an un-apologetic(though still unexpressed) socialist to the White House, with a House dominated by progressives and maybe, just maybe, 60 seats in the Senate.
There were 750,000 jobs a month being lost as Barack Obama was walking into the White House. What the Left will lie through their teeth to deny is this simple truth: the latter caused the former, and the solution is a reverse
strollfrog-march.Does anyone believe the Keynesians will finally admit that they’ve been wrong?
Me neither.
All the ones I know are absolutely certain the economy is improving, Spiney.
Think anybody who thinks otherwise is just nuts.
Yes, but think of all those jobs saved!
Yeah, Seth, liberals always fall back on “it would have been a lot worse, had we not done anything.”
It has the advantage of not needing any particular evidence, Blake. Win-win! Unless you happen to actually live in America.