May Unemployment Rises to 9.1%

[HomerJS]

It happened in 1998 to 2001

So by your own logic Bush will be responsible for the economy until 2018

 

[HomerJS]

It took Bush 8 years to screw this economy up. Even a miracle worker couldn't fix it in 2.

 

[ProfJohn]

Reagan took over during a recession and it only took about 2.5 years for the rebound to start.

This recession is turning out to be worse than the 1982 one though. In fact this one is probably the worst one we have had since the great depression. And there is still no end in sight.

I think it will take a new President before things start to improve. The business sector doesn't trust Obama and his policies and will sit on their hands until we see massive improvements in the economy or we get a new president they feel they can trust.

 

[Doppel]

Reagan took over during a recession and it only took about 2.5 years for the rebound to start.

This recession is turning out to be worse than the 1982 one though. In fact this one is probably the worst one we have had since the great depression. And there is still no end in sight.

I think it will take a new President before things start to improve. The business sector doesn't trust Obama and his policies and will sit on their hands until we see massive improvements in the economy or we get a new president they feel they can trust.

Did Reagan solve it by saying F you to the debt? I think so, wasn't he a turning point when the government just completely gave up on giving a sh*t about debt? Yep, he was.

 

[LegendKiller]

Reagan took over during a recession and it only took about 2.5 years for the rebound to start.

This recession is turning out to be worse than the 1982 one though. In fact this one is probably the worst one we have had since the great depression. And there is still no end in sight.

I think it will take a new President before things start to improve. The business sector doesn't trust Obama and his policies and will sit on their hands until we see massive improvements in the economy or we get a new president they feel they can trust.

Reagan didn't do shit to fix the economy. Volcker was already fixing it, Carter brought in Volcker. In fact, Carter gave Reagan a roadmap to fix it through moderate spending increases in targeted areas. In fact, Carter even gave this country a layup on how to become energy independent.

Then, the "brain trust" took over, drove up our debt by ~80%, fucked us over on energy, and effectively put us where we are all in 12 years of running the show. It's interesting that in those 12 years you had a huge credit bubble, an LBO bonanza, a S&L crisis, and a huge bailout of the banking industry, a huge stock crash, scandals on Wall Street (fixing of gov't bond auctions), and an arabian war. Then Democrat inherited a recession with the Republicans pointed fingers on who fucked everything up, pointing at the Democrats naturally.

Sounds vaguely familiar, eh?

 

[Matt1970]

All of you who think lower taxes are the problem only need to look back at the 1970's with the 70% upper tax bracket. By those numbers we should have been in a Utopia yet we were in the toilet back then too.

 

[matt0611]

Doubling the amount of revenue the federal government takes in will not even solve the problem.

Government spending has far outdone increases in inflation and population since the 90s, it needs to be rolled back, A LOT.

 

[LegendKiller]

Doubling the amount of revenue the federal government takes in will not even solve the problem.

Government spending has far outdone increases in inflation and population since the 90s, it needs to be rolled back, A LOT.

We didn't have a ton of debt in the 70s. Nobody on here is advocating JUST revenue but revenue and spending.

 

[Jhhnn]

All of you who think lower taxes are the problem only need to look back at the 1970's with the 70% upper tax bracket. By those numbers we should have been in a Utopia yet we were in the toilet back then too.

Hardly. The economic situation was much less dire. Federal debt was <$1T when Reagan took office and would almost triple before he left. Income distribution was much less concentrated at the top. And the Rust Belt was just a twinkle in the eyes of offshoring capitalists.

 

[Craig234]

Reagan didn't do shit to fix the economy. Volcker was already fixing it, Carter brought in Volcker. In fact, Carter gave Reagan a roadmap to fix it through moderate spending increases in targeted areas. In fact, Carter even gave this country a layup on how to become energy independent.

Then, the "brain trust" took over, drove up our debt by ~80%, fucked us over on energy, and effectively put us where we are all in 12 years of running the show. It's interesting that in those 12 years you had a huge credit bubble, an LBO bonanza, a S&L crisis, and a huge bailout of the banking industry, a huge stock crash, scandals on Wall Street (fixing of gov't bond auctions), and an arabian war. Then Democrat inherited a recession with the Republicans pointed fingers on who fucked everything up, pointing at the Democrats naturally.

Sounds vaguely familiar, eh?

Elliot Spitzer:

Let me tell you a dirty secret: The Fed has done an absolutely disastrous job since [former Fed Chairman] Paul Volcker left.

Context:

Spitzer... seemed to agree with Ratigan that the bank bailout amounts to Americas greatest theft and cover-up ever.

Advocating in favor of a House bill to audit the Federal Reserve, Spitzer said:

"The Federal Reserve has benefited for decades from the notion that it is quasi-autonomous, its supposed to be independent. Let me tell you a dirty secret: The Fed has done an absolutely disastrous job since [former Fed Chairman] Paul Volcker left.

The reality is the Fed has blown it. Time and time again, they blew it. Bubble after bubble, they failed to understand what they were doing to the economy.

The most poignant example for me is the AIG bailout, where they gave tens of billions of dollars that went right through — conduit payments — to the investment banks that are now solvent. We [taxpayers] didnt get stock in those banks, they didnt ask what was going on — this begs and cries out for hard, tough examination.

You look at the governing structure of the New York [Federal Reserve], it was run by the very banks that got the money. This is a Ponzi scheme, an inside job. It is outrageous, it is time for Congress to say enough of this. And to give them more power now is crazy."

 

[boomerang]

Just like Dems knew in their collective guts that the first stimulus package would keep unemployment below 8-8.5%?

Don't forget this...

Pelosi: Obamacare Will Supply 400,000 Jobs Almost Immediately!

 

[Doppel]

Don't forget this...

Pelosi: Obamacare Will Supply 400,000 Jobs Almost Immediately!

Yeah I remember that one. I was bitterly laughing at that sh*t at the time, f**king disgusting they way they just spew this and nobody holds their feet to the fire. She might as well have said 700 million new jobs.

 

[Craig234]

Don't forget this...

Pelosi: Obamacare Will Supply 400,000 Jobs Almost Immediately!

Which version is she talking about? Her House passed a version that was radically different (public option) than the compromise they ended up with.

 

[Zebo]

Reagan took over during a recession and it only took about 2.5 years for the rebound to start.

This recession is turning out to be worse than the 1982 one though. In fact this one is probably the worst one we have had since the great depression. And there is still no end in sight.

I think it will take a new President before things start to improve. The business sector doesn't trust Obama and his policies and will sit on their hands until we see massive improvements in the economy or we get a new president they feel they can trust.

No new president can do a thing. America has changed from a production economy to a leveraged economy. For past 30 years, a significant amount of profits and economic activity in America was simply based on leveraged transactions. Government(s), People and Businesses borrowing money and buying and selling things back and forth to each other at a profit.

So here we are today, millions of jobs that were created simply because of the credit bubble have been lost AND THE DEBT REMAINS. Servicing that debt is suffocating our economy and destroying profits and spending.

Wall Street and banks are being bailed out or they couldn't service either, ~ 7 trillion so far with no end in sight, main street is being left out and saving and paying or bankrupting.

 

[Jhhnn]

So what it all amounts to is that unemployment estimates on the way down were too optimistic, and that the stimulus was therefore less than optimal.

What's also true, and what Righties are desperately trying to avoid, is that the Reaganomic exercise of the Bush years was a complete disaster which created the inevitable crash. What was represented as honest growth turned out to be an unsustainable bubble of monstrous proportions, which is a natural property of financial capitalism poorly regulated & left to its own devices.

The difference between 1929 & 2008 is in the response to the crash, not the reasons for it. Both were the result of financial pyramid schemes inherent to capitalism and the corresponding over extension of credit based on false high asset valuation. If anything, the current crash is more serious, because actual indebtedness is much, much higher at every level, no matter how we measure it.

 

[Matt1970]

Hardly. The economic situation was much less dire. Federal debt was <$1T when Reagan took office and would almost triple before he left. Income distribution was much less concentrated at the top. And the Rust Belt was just a twinkle in the eyes of offshoring capitalists.

Less dire? A 70% upper tax bracket is a liberals wet dream yet we still ran deficits and had high unemployment. How is removing the Bush tax cuts (upper bracket will go from 36% back to 39% and middle class from 25% to 27%) going to fix an out of control government deficit spending Trillions a year in the name of a bad economy? We are going to pay dearly in the future for this crap going on.

 

[fskimospy]

All of you who think lower taxes are the problem only need to look back at the 1970's with the 70% upper tax bracket. By those numbers we should have been in a Utopia yet we were in the toilet back then too.

It's not that higher taxes on the rich will somehow magically fix the economy, it's that they will help our deficit problems. There is basically zero correlation between marginal tax rates on the rich and economic growth, which means that we can raise them.

 

[Matt1970]

We have had upwards of 85&#37; tax rates on the wealthy before and yet we still ran deficits. If you guys think raising the tax rate back to 39% is going to pay for Obama's $1.6 Trillion a year in deficit spending, I have a bridge I want to sell you.

 

[LegendKiller]

We have had upwards of 85% tax rates on the wealthy before and yet we still ran deficits. If you guys think raising the tax rate back to 39% is going to pay for Obama's $1.6 Trillion a year in deficit spending, I have a bridge I want to sell you.

What don't you get, the size of the deficits matter. Tax increases PLUS spending cuts is the key.

 

[Jhhnn]

Less dire? A 70% upper tax bracket is a liberals wet dream yet we still ran deficits and had high unemployment. How is removing the Bush tax cuts (upper bracket will go from 36% back to 39% and middle class from 25% to 27%) going to fix an out of control government deficit spending Trillions a year in the name of a bad economy? We are going to pay dearly in the future for this crap going on.

More lame raving. Marginal tax rates are meaningless- what matters is effective tax rates & the definition of taxable income. The top 1% share of income today is > twice what it was in 1980, and their effective tax rate has dropped by a third.

Prior to Reagan, deficits were quite small, and more than countered by inflation. Unemployment when he took office was a problem, but certainly nothing like today, when lots of people have just given up, dropping out of the statistical base. Searching for a job for many Americans is like searching for Sasquatch- pointless.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?id=EMRATIO

Kinda like falling off a cliff, huh? And that's *with* massive govt spending in support of employment. In Reagan's time, single income households were a lot more common, too, and people hadn't planned their futures on 2 incomes, and didn't need them as much as today, either.

I'm not advocating raising taxes to pre-Bush levels, at all, but rather to pre-Reagan levels other than for the bottom 50% whose income share has fallen so badly that they only wish they could afford to pay federal income tax.

 

[chucky2]

As a fiscal conservative, I don't have a problem paying more in taxes to get the country out of the massive hole We (the collective We) have dug for ourselves.

But like a borrower with a super sh1tty credit rating, the Fed Gov needs to prove to me before doing that they're worth the investment. And they can prove it by passing a balanced 2013-2016 budget, one that cannot be changed in regards spending vs. income, so I - and every other person they want to take more from - can see that they've done their job and will spend within their means.

Until the Fed does that, talking about taking more of my money is a non-starter. Period. They need to go get their own house in order before coming to me and mine asking for us to sacrifice. Absolutely unreal that anyone paying taxes could take a different viewpoint than that, given the behavior of the Fed Gov.

Chuck

 

[DucatiMonster696]

But extending teh Bush Tax Cuts was going to save us!!!

Because raising taxes when businesses are not hiring in a bad economic period is sure way to get those businesses to start rehiring people right???

 

[DucatiMonster696]

Don't forget this...

Pelosi: Obamacare Will Supply 400,000 Jobs Almost Immediately!

That thread on her comments was pretty hilarious. Someone should go dig it up.

Edit: Oh wait that thread was on her comments about how extending unemployment insurance benefits would somehow improve the economy, (lol) still equally as funny IMHO.

 

[JSt0rm]

Because raising taxes when businesses are not hiring in a bad economic period is sure way to get those businesses to start rehiring people right???

Last I heard businesses pay tax on profits. So in my mind what I would do is grow my business instead of taking a profit if the taxes were too high. So wouldn't that increase employment?

 

[DucatiMonster696]

Last I heard businesses pay tax on profits. So in my mind what I would do is grow my business instead of taking a profit if the taxes were too high. So wouldn't that increase employment?

In a magical world where demand was endless and paid for by an unlimited amount of cash with no worries of inflation that may work well. In the real world it doesn't quite work that way because you can only grow as much as there is demand and spendable income around to purchase those goods and services. Mindlessly increasing the size of your business is a sure fire way of building a business made out of a deck of cards.