From the ‘Everyone’s an Economist’ Dept.
Barack Obama, on February 6:
You’ve got some economists and some folks who think they’re economists. By the way, these days everybody thinks they’re economists.
Actually, we’re not all economists, but we’ve had to live in his and his party’s POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy for the past eight months. Given that, we are all at least entitled to our own thoughts and fact-based assertions. Don’t like it? Too bad.
At Rasmussen today:
When it comes to the nation’s economic issues, 67% of U.S. voters have more confidence in their own judgment than they do in the average member of Congress.
Nineteen percent (19%) trust members of Congress more, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Fourteen percent (14%) aren’t sure.
I’d say that 33% of US voters are underestimating themselves, especially after yesterday’s performance by Tax Cheat Tim Geithner, who most in Congress and the Senate apparently thought (until Monday night’s laugh-fest) was a pretty competent guy.
You keep cracking me up with this it’s Obama fault for the past eight months despite the fact that he’s only been President for less than a month. You actually blame him for an economic meltdown that occurred before he won the General election?
It’s nutty. Nobody’s buying it, Bizzy.
Comment by Modern Esquire — February 11, 2009 @ 1:02 pm
#1, no it’s not Obama’s fault. It’s Obama’s, Pelosi’s, Reid’s, and the Democratic Party’s.
I called it when it started to happen, and it happened. My next column cites three specific pieces of economic evidence tracing the steep economic decline to when I said that the POR Economy began.
And the h*ll “they” are not buyin’ it (as if who’s “buying it” matters when the truth is at stake).
The awful truth hurts, pal — It’s in your face, and you can take your substance-free whining elsewhere until you have something resembling an argument.
Comment by TBlumer — February 11, 2009 @ 3:02 pm
Sorry, Tom, I thought we’d gone over this: Calling something as it happens is referred to as making an observation. Calling something before it happens — as my record at Blah3 demonstrates — is called forecasting. There’s a big difference. Along with others, I was forecasting what was to come long before it was remotely possible to blame it on Pelosi, Obama, or Reid. That, my friend, is one of those “stubborn” facts you so often refer to. Your POR story is, frankly, fairly lame. I’d like to think you smarter than that.
Comment by Invictus — February 11, 2009 @ 7:22 pm
#3, yeah we did go over this, I observed that the POR Economy began, and predicted that a continuation of what POR were engaging in would cause a downturn.
Pelosi’s, Obama’s, and Reid’s actions are what caused your forecast to come true. Send them a thank-you card, as they are the ones that in your lame mind are making you look so good.
Comment by TBlumer — February 11, 2009 @ 10:27 pm
Invictus, don’t you know that Bush has no responsibility for anything after that day in July when POR said bad things about offshore drilling? They just made everyone, like, totally freak.
Tom, there was a second survey: “Obama outpolls Congress by more than 30 points, and he also can point to an uptick in the number of people who think the country’s headed in the right direction even as a majority thinks the worst is yet to come in the economy.”
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/61991.html
Comment by Tony B. — February 11, 2009 @ 11:22 pm
#5, a pet poodle could (added later: “with the level of lapdog media support Obama has”) could outpoll Congress by 30 points. That puts Obama less than 10 points ahead of Bush, who only got there because of an 8-year campaign of media distortion. Obama could drop below Bush in months at the rate he’s going, even with a fawning press.
As to your first-paragraph mischaracterization — put it where the sun doesn’t shine.
Comment by TBlumer — February 11, 2009 @ 11:43 pm
I still maintain that the Democrat economy started Nov. ‘06 after they took over Congress, and essentially scared business and productive Americans into protecting themselves from the economic insults to come — i.e. “The Democrat Effect” — which then predictably produced this Dem-inflicted “crisis.”
It doesn’t matter that Bush was President because the economic terrorists in Congress would not allow any progrowth policies to pass — not that they offered any. Bush became a willing accomplice by signing the minimum wage law, and that signaled the assault on the economy from which capital is hiding. You want to end the recession tomorrow? Kill Obama’s spending bill, eliminate or at least cut the corporate tax rate and cut the individual tax rates, end mark-to-market, end the death tax, and reform Sarbanes-Oxley; the stock markets would be back to 12,000 tomorrow. Right now it is government and the threat of more government run by a bunch of Leftist morons that is preventing recovery. In actuality, if they had done nothing last year, we would have been better off. The Obama-Bush bailout to the manufactured pre-election crisis and the ensuing panic id feeding this frenzy. It appears that the only people that know what to do are not in government, and are being ignored by those that are.
Comment by Joe C. — February 12, 2009 @ 6:19 am
#7, Joe C, I think a lot of the underlying stage was set for later problems when the Dems took over Congress in 2007. But businesses and investors gave them the benefit of the doubt that they might conduct themselves responsibly after
1612 years out of power (they shouldn’t have, but we can thank the media for mostly concealing their agenda).Both 2Q and 3Q 2007 had 4.8% GDP growth, which any of us would take in a heartbeat. Even though growth was -0.2% in the fourth quarter, revised BLS numbers show 500,000 seasonally adjusted jobs were added in the fourth quarter of 2007.
But there’s no denying that they did put us on an overspending path that outdid the Republicans, who hadn’t performed well themselves until their last year in power (too late to get noticed by the electorate).
So I’m suggesting that there was at worst a very mild, likely Democratic-effect downturn in late 2007-early 2008. But the economy was working nicely on recovering during the second quarter of 2008 (it was almost as if the reaction was “OK, if this is as bad as it gets, we can live with it”). Then Pelosi-Obama-Reid put a knife through it in June-July, They’ve been twisting the knife ever since.
The PJM article that went up late last night shows three specific examples cited by the hallowed NBER where econ indicators were recovering or steadying in late spring, and then headed south. Why? POR and Democrats.
Your prescriptions are, as usual, the correct ones.
Comment by TBlumer — February 12, 2009 @ 7:22 am
TB,
I have followed your bullet-proof analysis all this time, and I agree completely. My thesis is more from the firm behavior standpoint, whereby profit will be maximized in the short-term in preparation for the expected economic insult in the longer-term. I think your “P-O-R Economy” numbers bear this out. When P-O-R’s knife struck, firms were prepared; hence the rapid economic plummet once Obama became the odds-on-favorite to win in Nov.
I still believe that this was one of the few attempts to manipulate political business cycles that actually worked; but it took some inciting event — i.e. the recently divulged money market run, which I believe to have been economic terrorism (where have you heard that term before?) — followed by the panic and capitulation of Paulson-Geitner-Bush. This was seized upon politically by the Dems and riden to victory. Ironically, it could have been the white knight for McCain. If played correctly, it could have propelled him to a double-digit win; but in true “moderate maverick” form he bungled it, and instead flamed out.
Elections have consequences, and I will continue to be an “I told you so” to remind all the Obamatons that they got what they were warned about but still voted for as he rides this country into the abyss. All because people wanted an unqualified half-black guy that could read a teleprompter — ie. the patron saint of affirmative action — as president so as to assuage their guilt.
Comment by Joe C. — February 12, 2009 @ 11:31 am