The GOP leadership is taking fire from both sides for a transparent and craven attempt to strongarm Ben Bernake into taking no action on the economy.
Gosh, why would the Republicans want to keep the economy from getting better? /sarcasm.
Miscellaneous Heathen
Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past.
The Fed can only make things worse now. Let us hope they choose not to do so.
When it comes to monetary policy, the only question I see left to ask at this point is how much more inflation would we care to have? We can have as much as we want. Do we really want to see what it looks like if we try to monetize $13,000,000,000,000 of national debt?
Frankly I’m starting to seriously consider the possibility that we are well past the turning point. We could confiscate damn near all of the income and wealth out there and it still wouldn’t even be close to enough. The arithmetic doesn’t work.
I’m not convinced you’re right. If the private sector isn’t hiring, and we can borrow more money for cheap, and the jackholes in the GOP stop with the debt limit brinksmanship, we probably OUGHT to do more spending to get people working. The economy won’t improve until consumers are willing to spend money. 15% unemployment means nobody feels like spending any money. Nobody spending any money means the economy doesn’t improve, and unemployment doesn’t fall. Find me a way out of that.
Consumers are spending money. The uncertain environment about taxation has caused businesses to withdraw from hiring. The uncertain macro economic situation is causing business to trim payroll. The leadership or lack thereof on these issues is the problem. Had O channeled his inner Clinton he would have worked from day one on employment instead of wasting money and time on initiatives such as healthcare that the US does not understand, and many did not want. spend failure.
The FED can’t stimulate employment. The last trillion dollars should be proof of this . It has been resounding failure. spend failure.
I thought O was going to take the troops home? This wold have saved considerable money, but he did not, as this was just a political cheap shots to make the W haters feel better. The Nobel Peace Laureate instead expanded existing wars and started another in Libya over Oil. spend failure.
As a business owner I have in fact spent money this year on hardware due to the accelerated depreciation schedule offered by the Federal government. I have also taken advantage of the decreased tax withholding on hiring unemployed people a few years ago. Remove Tax win x 2.
I am currently looking at trimming payroll as the threat of new taxation that has been proposed is pushing me in this direction. Unlike the US FED I must actually balance my budget so that the company succeeds and the 38 families that rely on this success can prosper. Spend Tax Fail.
I sell data my biggest expenses are salaries and lease. Guess which one I can cut? Spend Tax fail.
Ah, another scattershot reply from Edgar in FoxNewsLand.
What “uncertain taxation environment” is depressing hiring practices? Be specific. That’s a novel position, but one not supported by logic or facts. With > 10% of Americans not working, our consumer spending is limping, and that drags everything down.
It’s also unclear to me how you think the Fed or the government can’t stimulate employment. What do you think WPA was? What do you think sustained infrastructure investment would produce?
The health care bill as proposed would reduce spending, and even the GOP recognized this because they specifically exempted their alternative bill from their “must cut spending” manifesto. I’m sure you, as a rich dude, think health care is just fine in this country, but that doesn’t make it the case.
Nobody really thought BHO could or would pull out of Iraq quickly. We fucked up that country but good, and it would be a net loss to regional security if we just bailed. It isn’t clear why we can’t draw down more rapidly in Afghanistan, unless we think the Taliban will come back in a way that’s globally troublesome. Libya involved no ground troops as I understand it, and we got involved at least in part because the Colonel was massacring his own people. Given level of investment, level of US casualties, and net effects, I call it a pretty good deal.
Do you REALLY think you’re overtaxed?
“Scattershot” reply=six bullseyes. We do not ordinarily see MH overreach with ill-fitting Fox News references and anti-upper middle class ad hominem stuff unless several underlying critical (and ultimately Keynesian) premises have been successfully challenged.
“No very deep knowledge of economics is usually needed for grasping the immediate effects of a measure; but the task of economics is to foretell the remoter effects, and so to allow us to avoid such acts as attempt to remedy a present ill by sowing the seeds of a much greater ill for the future.”
-Ludwig Von Mises
Keynesian full-employment doctrine is easily demonstrated to be a laughable fallacy. To vastly oversimplify the entire debate, “the essence of Keyesianism is it’s complete failure to conceive the role that saving and capital accumulation play in the improvement of economic conditions”.
I note a complete lack of answers to my questions.
WPA was not a FED as In Federal Reserve Initiative. Please correct me if I am wrong on this assertion.
The past trillion the US has spent via the FED did not go to WPA-type programs. The next Trillion will not go to WPA type programs either. The 400 Billion Obama is asking won’t go to WPA type programs either. Actually, QE2 and QE3 went to the banks. Who ar enow laying people off in order to make room for all the write downs they will be taking on the “Brown” loans they made to unqualified people vie Freddie and Fannie (Clinton’s legacy).
I do not watch Fox News , the closest I get is Drudge which seems to be more of a credible source than wherever you might be accessing the Talking Points you are trying to get across. To quote the Big O “It’s Silly Season Again”.
My business is taxed. i am taxed again personally. The talking points you link to do not address this, nor do they take into account that I pay for pensions as percentage of payroll by Federal mandate. In fact this mandate is to make up for the deficiencies and future deficiencies implied in Social Security as a pension. Thus I am required to deposit 6% of an employees salary so they might have a pension when they get old. I am also required to pay each w-2 employees FICA, Social Security and Medicare. So please add up all of these categories as well as the Corporate Tax and you will soon see that the required US tax burden is as high or higher than the top tax raes around the world. This happy horse caca that just counts what the corporate rate is nice but is does not encompass the total burden. Sorry if you don’t like my shotgun attacks I speak from personal and real world experience when it comes to taxes. There are no talking points here.
As for Obama and the other points, you can judge him anyway you chose. He is currently losing to the equivalent of a GOP Guffman. This must be because his policies are timely, well communicated, and universally accepted by all citizens of the United States. Right? Perhaps you can decide which of the accepted media outlets can confirm these assertions from your non-burn list.
I think a ham sandwich could run against the Big O and win at this point. Hell even an Aggie is more popular and it is a well known fact that Aggies could fuck up a cheese sandwich.
Fair cop on WPA vs. FRB, and I’m baffled why we don’t do massive infrastructure spending — which would basically translate to pork for affected districts, but pork that’s actually nutritious! — as part of any stimulus or QE or whatever.
Drudge isn’t far from Fox, man.
Yes, your business is taxed. It also, if your lifestyle is any indication, makes bank. Yay! My assumption is that for most employees, you do some sort of arithmetic in your head about the investment the employee hire represents, and your expected rate of return. In professional services – the world I live in, I mean – that’s a question of salary, benefits, taxes, and fixed costs (furniture & etc) vs. their anticipated billing rate * utilization rate. Modulo some overhead people you have to have (accounting, hr, e.g.), that’s gotta be what any business does.
While raising personal tax rates will affect you (and me) in April, I still don’t get how raising the top two rates will affect your hiring or layoff decisions. Surely you don’t have $200K people at DeWitt that don’t bring in many times that in revenue, do you?
I think you’re looking at different polls than I am — I don’t see anybody running away with the race at this point. Of course, if Obama gets his way and manages to push the economy into a recovery somehow, the GOP will start losing. And I think, as you note, Perry will be a bit of a flash in the pan — Romney will eat him alive eventually. The wild card is late entries from other players like Christie in NJ, or (God help us) Palin.
I think Romney creates a horse race next summer. I think Perry ultimately gets destroyed by Obama, because centrist/undecided voters will look at his actual record — or even his book! — and realize he’s a joke. At this point I don’t see anybody else who’s viable.