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Unless you can point to some major policy change or the passage of a piece of legislation that dramatically alter economic policy, which you can't, trying to demonstrate causality would be a fools errand, not that we don't have enough fools to take up the challenge.
Perversely to your point, one could argue that it was precisely because of growing concern about the economy, unemployment had dropped to 4.4%, a weak rate of growth of only 1.6%, due to a 17.4% slump in house sales, that the Democrats won a majority of seats during the 2006 elections.
So instead of making the point that the economy tanked due to the Democrats taking the House, the actual point is that this is when the American public woke up and started to smell the coffee.
For either side to claim that one or the other party is "responsible" for the current economic condition is intellectual masturbation. There is plenty of blame to go around, and some of the revisionist history is a bit much around here lately. People forget the Dow at 14K and GDP growth of 5%, and they also forget that after Congress changed hands in 1994 that Bill Clinton moved to the right and signed onto some of the Republican agenda (or didn't block it) and that led to a pretty good economy and the first balanced budget in 40 years.
Now I'll give Clinton some of the credit for the late 90s, but the Republican Congress gets its share too. I'll give GWB and the Republican Congress from 2001 to 2006 their fair share of blame for jacking up spending. They also allowed the financial sector to continue down the path that was laid out by Clinton and the Republican Congress in the late 90s. Remember that Clinton signed the repeal of Glass-Steagall, not GWB. Remember too that it was Dodd and Frank that said all was just fine at Fannie Mae and no changes needed to be made, despite warnings from folks like McCain.
I'm not saying Republicans are blameless, but this revisionist history lately since Obama took office (and he's saying it too) and this implication that Democrats are just arriving in DC from some far off land is complete bunk. Both parties knew exactly what was going on and both are to blame. Some of you need to get you heads out of the sand, stop the kool aid drinking, and come back to reality. We have way too much at stake, and if we continue on the path we're headed on, we'll be living in a bankrupt socialist state where liberty and the American dream will be dead.
For either side to claim that one or the other party is "responsible" for the current economic condition is intellectual masturbation.
I couldn't agree more sense my personal feeling, one that I have held since opting out of a economics in the early 80's, that the restructuring of the American economy from manufacturing to service and finance was folly. As a result I also agree that the blame for the current economic situation is widespread.
However, I cannot, nor will I, allow for the fact that the Bush Administration did little to nothing, to properly access the depth of the current crisis or that Greenspan or Bernanke pursued the correct mechanisms for at the least averting the present disaster. We can talk about structural issues, deregulation and lack of enforcement but the bottom line is that the depth of the current crisis could and should have been avoided. This doesn't mean that an economic downturn was totally avoidable, but the severity certainly was. And, that blame lies squarely in the lap of the Bush administration.
Now this is were you lose me;
"We have way too much at stake, and if we continue on the path we're headed on, we'll be living in a bankrupt socialist state where liberty and the American dream will be dead."
That is one of the most ludicrous arguments being bandied about. The abject ignorance regarding what is or what isn't socialism from either a practical or philosophical stand point is staggering, and I should know because I was at one time in my youth a very dedicated student and advocate of socialist ideas.
There used to be a saying, that Adam Smith invented Capitalism, Marx critiqued it and John Maynard Keynes saved it. I cannot argue forcefully enough how correct that argument is. Obama is a liberal capitalist pure and simple. There isn't a socialist bone in his body, and any socialist or Marxist could expound for hours on why that is the case (in fact a recent conversation with my uncle-in-law a socialist economist who studied at the University of Chicago and London School of Economics bore this out).
As I have posted on another thread, if you want to revisit the the rise of socialist ideology, simply look back at the Great Depression. Not the policies of Roosevelt but those of the working class who suffering from the burdens of the depression looked for alternatives to capitalism in numbers unheard of in the United States - the Communist Party had well over 100,000 card carrying members and that doesn't include those in the Socialist Party and other off shoots. What Roosevelt did and Obama is attempting to do is to not only save capitalism from its worst excesses but to also stave off those sentiments that give rise to real socialist tendencies or worst those of neo-fascism. You should keep that in mind when you bandy about accusations of socialist policies, you know not of what you speak.
If you don't think neglecting the highways will cost more than $28 billion, no evidence is going to satisfy you. It doesn't matter where the jobs go. We shouldn't fix anything unless we have a plan for jobs afterwards?
Heiwos, you haven't provided ANY evidence. Please just do the math and humor me, I work in IT...I need facts and not just vague feelings. I agree that the monetary cost of fixing the highways would be more than $28B however taking into account the devaluation of the dollar due to this stimulus this current cost is going to become much greater. And yes, we SHOULDN'T fix anything until we have a long term plan! Not doing so is like buying a house when you will be moving in three months. It is nice to have your own place but you are screwing yourself in the end.
WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama enjoys widespread backing from a frightened American public for his ambitious, front-loaded agenda, a new poll indicates.
He is more popular than ever, Americans are hopeful about his leadership, and opposition Republicans are getting drubbed in public opinion, the new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll suggests.
Heiwos, you haven't provided ANY evidence. Please just do the math and humor me, I work in IT...I need facts and not just vague feelings. I agree that the monetary cost of fixing the highways would be more than $28B however taking into account the devaluation of the dollar due to this stimulus this current cost is going to become much greater. And yes, we SHOULDN'T fix anything until we have a long term plan! Not doing so is like buying a house when you will be moving in three months. It is nice to have your own place but you are screwing yourself in the end.
I work in IT too. This is a no brainer, as they say in IT. $28 billion is a teeny weeny drop in the bucket for fixing obvious problems with our roads. Just in my state we've needed a new multi-$billion bridge for 10 years at least. The under-capacity bridge needs lots of shutdowns for maintenance because it's so old and this is a serious drain on our local economy. As soon as Bush got in office he diverted federal funds, which used to be rightly allocated to the states, to his pet projects like the Iraq war. So necessary projects have been sitting unfunded for 8 years--the planning for them has already been done for years. That explains why, when Obama released these highway funds yesterday, the work started yesterday (actual shovels hit the ground in PA or someplace).
To boot...we were told that Geithner was the only man who could save us and take control of Treasury and the crisis. That's why, despite his status as a tax cheat, he was put in charge of the IRS and the rest of the department.
To me, and I think to many, he seems like an empty suit. At best, he's appears to be in waaaaay over his head.
Seems like a common thread. I think is has been said that we surround ourselves with those most like ourselves.
To boot...we were told that Geithner was the only man who could save us and take control of Treasury and the crisis. That's why, despite his status as a tax cheat, he was put in charge of the IRS and the rest of the department.
To me, and I think to many, he seems like an empty suit. At best, he's appears to be in waaaaay over his head.
and has been for over a year already!
I wonder what he promised Obama to be given this post?
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Many?
