Obama's Going to Do What?

ProwlCat · February 25, 2009, 6:08am

[quote]Varqanir wrote:
ProwlCat wrote:

Bernanke said today that the recession will end mid-this year.

This is the same Bernanke who accidentally revealed the secret of the U.S. government’s super-duper money-making capability.

“…the U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost.”

So THAT’s where all this bailout money is coming from. I knew there had to be an explanation.[/quote]

I know you are not overly bright and missed the point. The point was simply that Bernanke’s statement, correct or DEAD WRONG, helped push the market UP (instead of down, where it’s been headed for the past few weeks, in a big way), indicating that the market is about the future. This was done to demonstrate for another moron that people buy stock as a bet on the future. They sell stock when that future does not look so bright in terms of actually making money.

SinisterMinister · February 25, 2009, 2:46am

[quote]100meters wrote:

Raising taxes increases revenue! How hard is that to understand? And on your second point you’re historically wrong. Laugh out wrong. Like, how could you be that wrong. No one votes for republicans because they’re good at running the economy (who’s you’re example?) MY GOD! just look avg. median incomes, real gdp. stock market returns, unemployment all correlate with democratic presidents you idiot.

Your issues are abortion and gays and guns or something, not economy. Damn dude.[/quote]

Here, this should help. Thomas Sowell simplified it for you so maybe you’ll get it this time:

"If it seems that raising taxes is the only way to reduce the national debt, at least when so much spending is mandated by “entitlement” programs, that only shows the need for an economic dictionary. “Taxes” is one of those treacherous words with more than one meaning, enabling politicians to shift back and forth between meanings when they talk.

Unless spending is reduced, then of course more tax revenues are necessary in order to reduce a deficit or bring down a debt. But tax revenues and tax rates are two different things, even though the same word ? “taxes” ? is used to refer to both.

What “tax cuts” cut is the tax rate. But tax revenues can rise, fall, or stay the same when tax rates are cut. Everything depends on what happens to income.

Tax revenues rose after the Kennedy tax cuts of the 1960s and the Reagan tax cuts of the 1980s because incomes rose.

As for taxes, we could stop taxing productivity and start taxing consumption. After all, productivity is what makes a society more prosperous.

Someone who is adding to the total wealth of this country is not depriving you of anything. But someone who is consuming the nation’s wealth, without contributing anything to it, is. Yet our tax system penalizes those who are producing wealth in order to subsidize those who are only consuming it."

Make sense yet?

Sloth · February 25, 2009, 6:39am

I thought this interesting as it refers to recent research on multipliers of tax cuts and spending. The research suggests every dollar of spending raises GDP by only 1.4 dollars. On the otherhand, research on tax cuts suggests that GDP rises $3 for every $1 dollar cut. If this is the case, why not have a tax holiday? Why don’t we attack deficits through massive spending cuts?
http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/mankiw/files/Is%20Govt%20Spending%20Too%20Easy.pdf

G87 · February 25, 2009, 6:46am

[quote]ProwlCat wrote:
I’m still clinging to hope that the sources have their facts wrong.

It’s being widely reported that Obama will announce in his speech to congress tomorrow that he’s imposing an increase in the captial gains tax.

Let me understand this: Even the most liberal economists oppose this because it will actually result in LESS tax revenue. Clinton reduced it, tax receipts rose. Bush reduced it further, tax receipts rose again. The trend is simple: Lower taxes = MORE investment = MORE tax $ for the fed.

By raising the tax we’ll see LESS investment and LESS revenue for the federal government.

The market is headed under 7,000. People are losing their savings, 401Ks, etc. Don’t we WANT more investment? Don’t we WANT people to EARN? Doesn’t the fed WANT more tax dollars?

Someone help me out here. What am I missing? WHY would a president do something that is bad for government, bad for citizens? Perhaps someone can give us an opinion as why this is actually a GOOD thing? [/quote]

Sand in your vag?

Varqanir · February 25, 2009, 7:12am

[quote]ProwlCat wrote:
Varqanir wrote:
ProwlCat wrote:

Bernanke said today that the recession will end mid-this year.

This is the same Bernanke who accidentally revealed the secret of the U.S. government’s super-duper money-making capability.

“…the U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost.”

So THAT’s where all this bailout money is coming from. I knew there had to be an explanation.

I know you are not overly bright and missed the point. The point was simply that Bernanke’s statement, correct or DEAD WRONG, helped push the market UP (instead of down, where it’s been headed for the past few weeks, in a big way), indicating that the market is about the future. This was done to demonstrate for another moron that people buy stock as a bet on the future. They sell stock when that future does not look so bright in terms of actually making money.
[/quote]

Oh, I know what your point was, ProwlCat.

I wasn’t really responding to your exchange with the other moron.

Nor was I actually disagreeing with anything you had to say.

Just taking a little dig at the Fed Chairman, who likely still believes we can print our way out of a crisis, six years later.

Carry on.

Aragorn · February 25, 2009, 10:53am

[quote]Sloth wrote:
I thought this interesting as it refers to recent research on multipliers of tax cuts and spending. The research suggests every dollar of spending raises GDP by only 1.4 dollars. On the otherhand, research on tax cuts suggests that GDP rises $3 for every $1 dollar cut. If this is the case, why not have a tax holiday? Why don’t we attack deficits through massive spending cuts?
http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/mankiw/files/Is%20Govt%20Spending%20Too%20Easy.pdf [/quote]

That was a fantastic article. Thanks for the link. Very clear, concise, and accurate summary of things.

hedo · February 25, 2009, 12:09pm

[quote]100meters wrote:
hedo wrote:
ProwlCat wrote:
100meters wrote:
ProwlCat wrote:
This is typical. There is all sorts of argument and redirection of the conversation. “You bastard you made fun of the poor and food stamps!” God DAMN you! But no one has even attempted to answer the original mother fucking question: How is raising the cap-gains tax good? To recap, again!

It generates LESS revenue for the fed, punishes and discourages investment…BUT! It DOES punish those fat-cats! Damn them!

Can anyone make an argument? Anyone at all? Last call!

Dude, it raises revenue. You’re confused. Short term it may lead to some increase due to tax timing,etc, but longer term you just lose revenue. The CBO estimated that extending the 2003 cap gains tax cut costs 20 billion dollars over 10 years.

Of course the losses from the income tax cuts really hurt, but still the point is you raise them for revenue.

Uh, dude. No it doens’t. It never has! No one - except you - is even pretending it will. For someone so well acquainted with ‘simple’ mathmatics, you seem to struggle with simple math:

Less investing = fewer investors = fewer tax (CG) taxpayers = less revenue to tax = less tax revenue. This is not income tax (that’s a whole other issue). This is a tax that people can choose NOT to pay by simply NOT investing. And that’s bad. You agree that’s not good, right?

It’s basic economics. He isn’t going to understand it.

Fanatics don’t let confusing things like facts change their mind, otherwise they wouldn’t be fanatics.

The market is tanking because Obama is president and Democrats are in control of congress. The markets are a predictor of the direction the economy is taking (more basic economics I know…)otherwise known as an indicator.

The market began to tank when it looked like he would get the nomination and his victory seemed likely. The market is now in a free fall because traders and investors don’t have any confidence in him or his policies.

It isn’t falling because Bush was president for the last two terms. Most money managers are fleeing to safety because it’s amateur hour in the White House and the special interests are driving the spending. Until that changes the market will continue to fall. No reason for it to turn.

A capital gains increase now will be another reason for the market to drop and wealth to decrease. Keep in mind that those who pay capital gains are not the people Obama owes and is beholden to.

Use this as your guide. Think about what Obama and his fellow traveller’s could do to fuck up the economy and that is the decision they will make. When it blows up on them, they blame Bush. Increase spending, raise tax’s, lower domestic energy production, waste money on special interests…sound familiar.

Hmmm… I wonder if Obama’s market returns beat Bush’s? Since dems always do, suspect so this time too. But when it happens of course the president has nothing to do with it. (must cut and save this for future reference)[/quote]

Haven’t you already made up your mind about that. Don’t let facts and reality slow you down. You do realize that you are being mocked by just about everyone on the forum don’t you?

ProwlCat · February 25, 2009, 12:47pm

[quote]hedo wrote:
100meters wrote:
hedo wrote:
ProwlCat wrote:
100meters wrote:
ProwlCat wrote:
This is typical. There is all sorts of argument and redirection of the conversation. “You bastard you made fun of the poor and food stamps!” God DAMN you! But no one has even attempted to answer the original mother fucking question: How is raising the cap-gains tax good? To recap, again!

It generates LESS revenue for the fed, punishes and discourages investment…BUT! It DOES punish those fat-cats! Damn them!

Can anyone make an argument? Anyone at all? Last call!

Dude, it raises revenue. You’re confused. Short term it may lead to some increase due to tax timing,etc, but longer term you just lose revenue. The CBO estimated that extending the 2003 cap gains tax cut costs 20 billion dollars over 10 years.

Of course the losses from the income tax cuts really hurt, but still the point is you raise them for revenue.

Uh, dude. No it doens’t. It never has! No one - except you - is even pretending it will. For someone so well acquainted with ‘simple’ mathmatics, you seem to struggle with simple math:

Less investing = fewer investors = fewer tax (CG) taxpayers = less revenue to tax = less tax revenue. This is not income tax (that’s a whole other issue). This is a tax that people can choose NOT to pay by simply NOT investing. And that’s bad. You agree that’s not good, right?

It’s basic economics. He isn’t going to understand it.

Fanatics don’t let confusing things like facts change their mind, otherwise they wouldn’t be fanatics.

The market is tanking because Obama is president and Democrats are in control of congress. The markets are a predictor of the direction the economy is taking (more basic economics I know…)otherwise known as an indicator.

The market began to tank when it looked like he would get the nomination and his victory seemed likely. The market is now in a free fall because traders and investors don’t have any confidence in him or his policies.

It isn’t falling because Bush was president for the last two terms. Most money managers are fleeing to safety because it’s amateur hour in the White House and the special interests are driving the spending. Until that changes the market will continue to fall. No reason for it to turn.

A capital gains increase now will be another reason for the market to drop and wealth to decrease. Keep in mind that those who pay capital gains are not the people Obama owes and is beholden to.

Use this as your guide. Think about what Obama and his fellow traveller’s could do to fuck up the economy and that is the decision they will make. When it blows up on them, they blame Bush. Increase spending, raise tax’s, lower domestic energy production, waste money on special interests…sound familiar.

Hmmm… I wonder if Obama’s market returns beat Bush’s? Since dems always do, suspect so this time too. But when it happens of course the president has nothing to do with it. (must cut and save this for future reference)

Haven’t you already made up your mind about that. Don’t let facts and reality slow you down. You do realize that you are being mocked by just about everyone on the forum don’t you?

[/quote]

Well…view this as immediate cause and effect:

http://money.cnn.com/2009/02/25/markets/stockswatch/index.htm?postversion=2009022507

So Bernanke - ninny as he may be - says that the recession may end mid-2009, along with a lot of negative stuff (recovery will take more than 2-3 years, etc.) and the market jumps 237 points. Obama, on the other hand, gives a speech that was obviously influenced by what Bill Clinton and others have been saying (he needs to be more positive, optimistic, etc.) and futures are tracking down. I hope I’m writing tonight about a big turnaround during the trading day, though. Alas, telling the people who create jobs and wealth (and own stock) that they are going to get a tax-hike - while telling people who pay no taxes that they are going to get more free money - may not be the best medicine for an ailing market. But I’m just spit-balling here.

The dreadfully wrongheaded economic stuff aside, I liked the speech. Well delivered. Optimistic. Patriotic (well…as patriotic as democrats are allowed to be these days). The most entertaining bit, though, was watching Nancy Pelosi. At times she seemed to be on the verge of falling asleep…only to leap to her feet and start applauding (sometimes before the actually applause line) like a lunatic. This in contrast to Biden who seemed to strike the right note of dignified support.

pat · February 25, 2009, 4:15pm

[quote]100meters wrote:
pat wrote:
100meters wrote:
pat wrote:
100meters wrote:

Hmmm… I wonder if Obama’s market returns beat Bush’s? Since dems always do, suspect so this time too. But when it happens of course the president has nothing to do with it. (must cut and save this for future reference)

Correct, that is congress not the president that creates legislation. The president can cheer-lead and bang his dick on the desk, but until it passes both houses, he cannot do shit…Do you know nothing about the constitution?

Ok, so Bush not responsible whatsoever for his massive stock market gains of negative 22%! But your republican congress is. Therefore we can conclude we’ll never vote republican again.

I wonder if Obama/dem congress can beat -22%?

The government doesn’t run the stock market…this is America not the USSR. Neither are responsible directly for the stock market. The market can and does respond to the actions of the government, but it is correlative, not cause and effect. Only by legislation can the government have any effect on the market forces.
For instance, the sub-prime mess was signed into law by Carter…Nobody thought interest rates would ever get below 10% again so nobody was worried. The Clinton administration further forced private businesses to lend to people who could not pay the money back.

For the record over the past 60 years, Republicans only ran congress for 12 of them. Actually less because the prior to 06 the congress was split. Now do you really want to play a blame game? Because the litany of democrat failures is a vast deep well of embarrassment. There is plenty of blame to go around, right down the bums who bit off more than they can chew financially.

If you want to be blameless, be responsible and sponge off of no one. Pay your debts and spend only what you can afford. It is we who did this that are blameless, but it is us who will foot the even more massive bill.

Carter signed sub-prime mess… Debunked already. I’ll assume you mean the CRA, which was responsible for what %4 of all subprimes? So that leaves us with banks and financial institutions which points to lack of regulation, then we can get in blame game that still on balance tilts substantially towards republicans.

But yes the macro-economic policies of admin/party in charge has an effect on the market.

Also if you disagree you should be correcting the other posters blaming Obama for the current market performance, right?[/quote]

It began with Carter, it was expounded exponentially by Clinton. No, I do not believe Obama is responsible for the current mess. It was a collective effort of mistakes over the past 30 years that led to this problem. I am not sure his pet stimulus will help, as has the markings of something that will hurt as they invested money with no plans for recovering it…Leaving it squarly on the shoulders of us tax payers to pay for it.

100meters · February 25, 2009, 9:53pm

[quote]SinisterMinister wrote:
100meters wrote:

Raising taxes increases revenue! How hard is that to understand? And on your second point you’re historically wrong. Laugh out wrong. Like, how could you be that wrong. No one votes for republicans because they’re good at running the economy (who’s you’re example?) MY GOD! just look avg. median incomes, real gdp. stock market returns, unemployment all correlate with democratic presidents you idiot.

Your issues are abortion and gays and guns or something, not economy. Damn dude.

Here, this should help. Thomas Sowell simplified it for you so maybe you’ll get it this time:

"If it seems that raising taxes is the only way to reduce the national debt, at least when so much spending is mandated by “entitlement” programs, that only shows the need for an economic dictionary. “Taxes” is one of those treacherous words with more than one meaning, enabling politicians to shift back and forth between meanings when they talk.

Unless spending is reduced, then of course more tax revenues are necessary in order to reduce a deficit or bring down a debt. But tax revenues and tax rates are two different things, even though the same word ? “taxes” ? is used to refer to both.

What “tax cuts” cut is the tax rate. But tax revenues can rise, fall, or stay the same when tax rates are cut. Everything depends on what happens to income.

Tax revenues rose after the Kennedy tax cuts of the 1960s and the Reagan tax cuts of the 1980s because incomes rose.

As for taxes, we could stop taxing productivity and start taxing consumption. After all, productivity is what makes a society more prosperous.

Someone who is adding to the total wealth of this country is not depriving you of anything. But someone who is consuming the nation’s wealth, without contributing anything to it, is. Yet our tax system penalizes those who are producing wealth in order to subsidize those who are only consuming it."

Make sense yet?

[/quote]
Uh, you quoted a hack? Tax revenues have risen in every admin over the previous admin since at least 1950. The question is what was left off the table.

It’s hilarious that you mentioned it but furthering the notion of Sowell’s ineptness is most presidents do better than the president before them in terms of “real revenue” too.
Not Reagan.

Oh well, you gave it the ol’ wingnut try.

But yeah, Sowell simplified alright, but like Kudlow, he:
a. is either the worlds worst economist
b. a liar/misleader
c. a little bit of both

I’ll take C. with Sowell.

SinisterMinister · February 26, 2009, 3:18am

[quote]100meters wrote:

Uh, you quoted a hack? Tax revenues have risen in every admin over the previous admin since at least 1950. The question is what was left off the table.

It’s hilarious that you mentioned it but furthering the notion of Sowell’s ineptness is most presidents do better than the president before them in terms of “real revenue” too.
Not Reagan.

Oh well, you gave it the ol’ wingnut try.

But yeah, Sowell simplified alright, but like Kudlow, he:
a. is either the worlds worst economist
b. a liar/misleader
c. a little bit of both

I’ll take C. with Sowell.
[/quote]

Ok, not simple enough. Point made. If you want to reach ‘the world’s worst economist’ to teach him a thing or two about economics, you can mail your thoughts to Stanford University where he’s a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institute.

In the meantime, how about you show us how your credentials compare to this ‘hack’. Here are a few of his:

EDUCATION:
Ph.D. in Economics, University of Chicago, 1968
A.M. in Economics, Columbia University, 1959
A.B. in Economics, magna cum laude, Harvard College, 1958

100meters · February 25, 2009, 11:10pm

[quote]Sloth wrote:
I thought this interesting as it refers to recent research on multipliers of tax cuts and spending. The research suggests every dollar of spending raises GDP by only 1.4 dollars. On the otherhand, research on tax cuts suggests that GDP rises $3 for every $1 dollar cut. If this is the case, why not have a tax holiday? Why don’t we attack deficits through massive spending cuts?
http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/mankiw/files/Is%20Govt%20Spending%20Too%20Easy.pdf [/quote]

Mankiw was badly misleading in this piece, admitting later he was comparing apples to oranges.

The Romers’ tax cut that he wrongly refers to is an exogenous tax cut which occurs spontaneously in normal economic conditions, which is the EXACT opposite of now. She of course has pointed that out.

Which is why Romer who now heads CEA for Obama in her impact assessment of the stimulus package has the following values:
Output effects of a permanent stimulus of 1% of GDP (percent)

Multiplier Effects
Qtr spending tax cuts
1 1.05 0.00
2 1.24 0.49
3 1.35 0.58
4 1.44 0.66
5 1.51 0.75
6 1.53 0.84
7 1.54 0.93
8 1.57 0.99
9 1.57 0.99
10 1.57 0.99
11 1.57 0.99
12 1.57 0.99
13 1.57 0.99
14 1.57 0.99
15 1.57 0.99
16 1.55 0.98

http://otrans.3cdn.net/45593e8ecbd339d074_l3m6bt1te.pdf
And that is why we have the stimulus.

100meters · February 25, 2009, 11:15pm

[quote]SinisterMinister wrote:
100meters wrote:

Uh, you quoted a hack? Tax revenues have risen in every admin over the previous admin since at least 1950. The question is what was left off the table.

It’s hilarious that you mentioned it but furthering the notion of Sowell’s ineptness is most presidents do better than the president before them in terms of “real revenue” too.
Not Reagan.

Oh well, you gave it the ol’ wingnut try.

But yeah, Sowell simplified alright, but like Kudlow, he:
a. is either the worlds worst economist
b. a liar/misleader
c. a little bit of both

I’ll take C. with Sowell.

Ok, not simple enough. Point made. If you want to reach ‘the world’s worst economist’ to teach him a thing or two about economics, you can mail your thoughts to Stanford University where he’s a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institute.

In the meantime, how about you show us how your credentials compare to this ‘hack’. Here are a few of his:

EDUCATION:
Ph.D. in Economics, University of Chicago, 1968
A.M. in Economics, Columbia University, 1959
A.B. in Economics, magna cum laude, Harvard College, 1958

[/quote]

Yes, those are his credentials, scary isn’t it that a someone with a PHD could then say:

“President X increased revenues over previous president.”

Well f%$king DUH! That’s never not happened MORON!(unless it comes to “real revenue” then Reagan proceeds to EPIC FAIL!)

But good job finding his credentials.

Sloth · February 25, 2009, 11:48pm

Halve The Deficit? Good Luck, Obama

dhickey · February 26, 2009, 12:06am

[quote]100meters wrote:
SinisterMinister wrote:
100meters wrote: