Dictators need to have a war to keep their nation in a state of crisis. If they don’t have one, they need to manufacture one.
I was going to write about Obama’s state of the union speech yesterday – but I’m going to use King’s observations instead, since he’s both qualified and coherent:
“All we have to fear is the status quo,” I think, is how Ed characterized that. But I think much of this is hyperbole. Take for example “2 million out of work.” The context for this is a workforce over 140 million people. Through November, the 12 month percentage change in employt is a decline of 1.4%. (You can play with the data.) This doesn’t even match the 12-month percentage change in March 2002, hardly a period that called for the drama of this speech. Payroll employment declines of 2.5% or more have occured in both the 1974-75 and 1981-82 recessions. We may get to that level; I think that’s more likely than not some time in the next six months, at which point you will say “4 million out of work” rather than two. But let’s keep some perspective rather than dwell on “we could lose a generation of potential and promise.” That’s just bathos. Four million jobs lost sucks, but it’s not without recent precedent when the size of the economy is accounted for.That same perspective is needed elsewhere. 2.8 million more people involuntarily in part-time work? Take a look at the data. 25% of them are workers age 16-24. We don’t have data before 1994 for the unemployment series that includes part-time workers who wish they were full time (known as U-6), and we know it’s higher than it has been since we’ve tracked the current series. But it was pretty high in 1994, also not a date when we thought the end of the world was nigh.
King – an actual licensed economist, for those who don’t already know – goes on to show how bad the crisis at this moment is not, at least for most Americans. Read the post.
The question: why did Obama uncork a stemwinder on exactly how badly we all need his trillion-dollar hug?
Rahm Emanuel noted that the new administration didn’t want to waste a crisis, that they could pass things in crisis mode that wouldn’t get past Congress in normal times. The speech tries to elevate a normal recession into a crisis. In doing so it risks imposing a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist anymore when fiscal policy works through its lags.
See “The New Deal, Circa 1939”.
(And yes, I wrote this before I read Roosh’s excellent “Trillion Dollar Hug“, which you need to read now).
Look at the details of what he proposes. It’s an excuse, like global cooling/warming, to grab power over the individual. Huge gov’t expansion. As you say, they just need an excuse.
Dictators need to have a war to keep their nation in a state of crisis. If they don’t have one, they need to manufacture one.
You’re joking, right?
I mean, after what we’ve had for 8 years – a manufactured WMD crisis in Iraq, ludicrous over-hype about terrorism justifying illegally detaining people without charge, creating secret (illegal) prisons, violating treaties, creating ILLEGAL prisons like Gitmo, engaging ILLEGALLY in torture… THIS is what you come up with?
ROFLMAO. That’s a good one.
And all deference to King – but it neither takes a degree to observe economic realities, nor does a degree matter to you when an esteemed economist, like say, Paul Krugman, a Professor Emeritus in fact, in – oh, macro economics, at say, one of the finest schools in the country (Princeton), and another Professor, say, Alan Blinder, ALSO a professor at Princeton – DON’T agree with your particular BS spin – then, those degrees are only tangetial – and therefore can be discounted. But heck, when convenient, the fact that he’s got a degree in economics means he KNOWS stuff. Yeah, like GWB KNEW all about WMD – again, I’m not saying Banian isn’t fully capable, I’m saying your faith smacks of utter contrivance and convenience. His comments fit your worldview, therefore they are right, Krugman’s don’t – so no matter how competent or qualified – he MUST be wrong.
The admnistration of GWB is culprit that created this mess, and its unfettered capitalism lemmings, attempting to blame someone who ISN’T President, is just more BS spin from the Berger King – aka Home of the Whopper.
BTW Mitch – please tell the 7.2% of Americans who are unemployed, the highest since 1993, that we don’t currently face any real crisis, and we’lll be better off if you simply don’t have to do anything to help them.
aw Peev/pb/penema/don preciado
what, no wisdom today from Hammurabi? by the way what does your esteemed boss (Alan Blinder) think of ? or are you unfamiliar with it? were you just gibbering nonsense yesterday?
damned html
Not to put too fine a point on it peev, but you gave up the tiny shred of, well, ANYTHING, you had claim to when you asserted the Code of Hammurabi was 1,500 years old. I mean, that’s the kind of thing I read about in middle school.
Therefore, when you assert WMDs were the sole justification for invading Iraq, or when you throw out the term ILLEGAL like you even know what it means, or when you say “over-hype about terrorism” when 9/11 images are a Google search away, you really do come across as a complete, fucking moron.
Take it, as you will, from a person who’s not worth a hill of beans, clearly.
Bold off, hopefully.
Thanks for the plug, Mitch. I hold Prof. Krugman in high esteem, btw, and I am not saying anything about his diagnosis. This COULD be a bad recession; it COULD be the worst since the Great Depression. He’s got a Nobel, I don’t and won’t, so if you want to play the credential game be my guest.
Right now, this recession is following a path that looks more like two rather nasty recessions of the stagflation period. The first (1974/75) was attacked with Keynesian tools by Ford/Carter with poor results. The second (1981-82) was attacked with tax cuts of a more new classical bent by Reagan, to good effect (“the seven fat years”.) Krugman has argued that those years had little to do with Reagan (see his 1994 book “Peddling Prosperity”) but never accepts responsibility for the failure of Carter policies. So forgive me if I take the laureate with a grain of salt.
peev is a moron (Sorry, just wanted that in bold again before I closed the tag, if it works. And yeah, it’s name-calling, but it’s a single tiny step down from what peev does even though he tries to dress it up as something that requires thought. )
aww, King beat me to it…
I could leave it with what Yossarian said; you are getting so wrapped up in demented unreality that it’s hard to justify wasteing the time trying to discuss much of anything with you. Part of it is the constant, crushing illogic; part of it is that you have not the faintest interest in “discussion”; you just want to be a troll.
But what the heck. I’m between meetings for a moment:
I mean, after what we’ve had for 8 years – a manufactured WMD crisis in Iraq,
Hindsight 2020 etc etc
ludicrous over-hype about terrorism justifying illegally detaining people without charge, creating secret (illegal) prisons, violating treaties, creating ILLEGAL prisons like Gitmo, engaging ILLEGALLY in torture… THIS is what you come up with?
Peev: Leave aside the fact that I’ve never really promoted any of the above; re-read your paragraph. Do you realize you said EXACTLY THE SAME THING twice?
ROFLMAO. That’s a good one.
Ah, the old “ROFLMAO” argument.
Hard to argue with that one. {shrug}
Where to start with this next ball of rhetorical goo?
And all deference to King – but it neither takes a degree to observe economic realities,
This from the guy who claimed (wrongly, and supported the claim with lies) that Scott Johnson isn’t qualified to comment about education law?
Hmmm.
If you were a centipede, you’d have 99 feet pointing back at you.
nor does a degree matter to you when an esteemed economist, like say, Paul Krugman, a Professor Emeritus in fact, in – oh, macro economics,
Um, calling someone a “professor of macro-economics” is like calling an engineer “an engineer in calculations”; Macro is just one way of looking at economics.
And in any case, Paul Krugman isn’t a “Professor of Macroeconomics”, as you imply. Read it for yourself.
And in any case…:
at say, one of the finest schools in the country (Princeton), and another Professor, say, Alan Blinder, ALSO a professor at Princeton – DON’T agree with your particular BS spin –
Citing credentials without any evidence – indeed, facts whatsoever – is a logical fallacy. Saying “My expert teaches at a better school!” without showing how your “expert” addresses the issue, and how that makes your opponent wrong, is flabby, flaccid logic.
then, those degrees are only tangetial – and therefore can be discounted.
No, Peev, comparing degrees is not like comparing poker hands. They have no intrinsic value in and of themselves.
Speaking of fallacious, flabby “logic”:
But heck, when convenient, the fact that he’s got a degree in economics means he KNOWS stuff. Yeah, like GWB KNEW all about WMD
That’s a non-sequitur; King stated evidence based on a theory of how recessions work. His evidence doesn’t depend on reports from foreign intelligence services; furthermore, King is not a policy-setting official (outside of the SCSU Econ department).
Seriously, Peev – perhaps you need a logic class?
again, I’m not saying Banian isn’t fully capable, I’m saying your faith smacks of utter contrivance and convenience.
No, Peev, there is no “faith”. I’m quoting him. Just like you’re quoting Krugmann and that other nutslap. Except, of course, that you didn’t even quote them; you just dropped their names, as if that should end the discussion.
Nope!
His comments fit your worldview, therefore they are right, Krugman’s don’t – so no matter how competent or qualified – he MUST be wrong.
Or, alternately, Krugman’s comments fit your worldview, so everyone else must be wrong.
Or so we assume, since we have no means of comparing King’s theory with Krugman’s, since YOU DIDN’T CITE ANYTHING. Merely dropped names.
The admnistration of GWB is culprit that created this mess
Nope. The mess is a result of policy going back ten years. Bush spent too much, and didn’t do anything to fix it – but Barney Frank and Tom Daschle and Bill Clinton and Jamie Gorelick share the blame at least equally.
, and its unfettered capitalism lemmings, attempting to blame someone who ISN’T President, is just more BS spin
What on earth does that mean? Seriously. I have no idea what that is supposed to mean.
And, I suspect, either do you.
from the Berger King – aka Home of the Whopper.
Ah. So you can’t cite, you can’t carry a logical narrative, but you can do grade-school ad-homina.
Your teachers must be so proud.
Mitch, what did you just do?
Took a dump and started doing revisions on a design project of mine?
Why?
Oh, nothing. It’s just that when it takes more than three mouse scrolls to get through a comment I always think of Peevee….;-)
Um, calling someone a “professor of macro-economics” is like calling an engineer “an engineer in calculations”; Macro is just one way of looking at economics.
Ooh, I am saving that for a post. It’s both right and wrong, but in very interesting ways. And I would have referred to Krugman as an international economist, as this is the field where his greatest scholarship has occurred. But it’s irrelevant — economists tend to be very imperial in their choice of subject matter. We’ll talk about anything.
Time for a little Peev channelling:
*breathe in* *breathe out*
Mitch, the current economic collapse/meltdown/explosive diarrhea is a direct result of the administration of George W. Bush. That you can’t see that is a direct reflection of your myopic worldview. I was just talking to my neighbor the other day (the award-winning economist neighbor, not the retired four star general one), and we had a lengthy curbside chat about how George W. Bush deliberately pushed the big red “Recession” button while choking on a pretzel. This was corroborated by another neighbor of mine who is a direct descendant of the man who designed the Oval Office and knows where the “Recession” button is.
But all that’s beside the point. Capitalist lemmings such as yourself have been singing the praises of the capitalist system since the Egyptians built the pyramids 400 years ago, and where has it gotten us? Huh? Huh? I’ll tell you where it’s gotten us! It’s gotten us into an ILLEGAL war using ILLEGAL weapons and using ILLEGAL soldiers firing ILLEGAL bullets consisting of toxins that can lead to ILL EAGLES!
You’ve supported a president over the past eight years who has overhyped the threat of terrorism, and before you can point to 9/11, I have another neighbor who is a structural egineer AND an aircraft pilot, who has told me the terrorist attacks that day were really not that big of a deal, and were more the result of poorly-designed buildings and wind gusts blowing planes into those buildings than anything stemming from terror.
The fact of the matter is, the Greeks had it right when they ruled the ancient world back in 1874. They were enlightened! Oh, sure, you’ll use some mention of their widespread practice of older men having sex with young boys as some sort of refutation of the Hellenistic age, but it’s obvious you’re just trying to spread your virulent brand of homophobia and sexual oppression.
Thankfully, there are people like me and others who are immune to the Siren propaganda call you bugle so shamelessly here at “Shot in the Foot,” and we’re not susceptible to your musings like so many of your mindless lilliputians. I’ll resist you down to my last vial of penguin dust!
Yossarian,
you almost have it, but you’re lacking the hallmarks of illiteracy that make peev such a standout; misspellings are lacking (write as tho you are using a crayon), and your sentences conform to the rules of English grammar, and you waited till the second paragraph to make a prepubescent ad homina. peev always gets that in the 1st paragraph.
otherwise you’ve got him cold A-
the ILL Eagles was a good touch.
Oceania didn’t have a deficit when Clinton left office, Winston.
Or did you file that fact in the memory hole?
“Oceania didn’t have a deficit when Clinton left office, Winston.”
Only if you don’t include the Social Security surplus. That’s about a hundred billion bucks.
Right, AC. Because social security has always been part of the general fund.
Here’s my plan for economic recovery.
Eliminate the social security tax. Every worker gets a 6% raise. Every employee costs their employer 6% less to employ.
The deficit would soar but at least the money would go to workers and the people who hire them.
The Republican congress and a Democrat President may have helped. Also don’t forget the security deficit under Clinton. We’ve paid for that many times over.
But if Big Gov’t had to obey the same laws as private business, they would have to account for future liabilities now. Obama’s trillion dollar annual deficit would grow to many times that. Every entitlement program would have to have a reserve set up (with a present value calc). Then, as stockholders in USA Corp, we would know what the true financial situation is.
I watched CBS news last night (Peni’s Fave apparent) & shortly after they reported that Obama sez public works are the key to ending this mess… years from now… they reported on the floods in Washington state.
They said the floods have already caused something like 4 billion dollars of economic loss.
But how can that be? If public works is the way out of the recession, then Washington state shall be leading the way! Flood clean up is a jobs program galore! All the new construction, retail sales of materials, production of materials, new bureaucrats to oversee the operations, clean up crews (possibly union) All the retail sales & production increases from people replacing all that has been lost.
That must be the case, because that’s Obama’s plan! Hope & Change! Hope & Change!
AC,
When Clinton left office a deficit was firmly in place & we were in a recession…
Mr. Shirt, you don’t pay attention to lefty talking points. Bush caused the 2000 recession by running for president. I’m certain that evn as we speak lefty pundits and bloggers are trying to come up with a way to blame Bush for the crash of ’29.
Whoops! Terry, thank you for reminding me, I keep forgetting about that! 🙂
Forget ’29 and 200, Terry. Angryclown would be happy if you kooks would hold Bush responsible for the things his administration did instead of trying to pin it on the evil, all-powerful Barney Frank.
Right, you pretend Clinton was a saint & Obama is the messiah because we think Frank had more to to with the current recession than W… sure.
Bush did some boneheaded things, but you are still full of crap.
BTW Mitch – please tell the 7.2% of Americans who are unemployed, the highest since 1993, that we don’t currently face any real crisis, and we’lll be better off if you simply don’t have to do anything to help them.
Maligna, is that you? Sorry what did you say? I couldn’t hear you over the din of the 92.8% of Americans that are not unemployed.
Angryclown would be happy if you kooks would hold Bush responsible for the things his administration did
Great! Be the first to thank W that Manhattan is not a radioactive crater today.
Kermit,
All things considered, I’d be happier if NYC was a crater, & THEN no further attacks.
Peev,
Didn’t say there wasn’t a crisis – and, as usual, you’re off the subject.