Polling suggests that the Republicans are going to win HUGE in two months

[Siddhartha]

never mind

 

[kranky]

I expect there to be more than the average number of incumbents losing. Campaigning now is not about communicating your agenda, it's about creating hate for the other guy. Of all the political commercials I've seen in the last few weeks, only one talked about what the candidate is FOR. Every other one focused on what sucked about the other guy. You don't even have to take a position any more. Just get people to hate the opponent and you can win.

One of a Congressional candidate's ads points out that the opponent voted to raise taxes. No details, though. Found out later that the opponent did vote to raise taxes - 20 years ago, while he was a township commissioner in a rural area. C'mon, that's hardly relevant. But no matter, they can use that to badmouth someone.

Candidates will spend their money on ads that attack the opponent, especially if the opponent is an incumbent, and I think that will be effective.

 

[werepossum]

Well to be fair there are people who thought Bush was going to suspend elections as well:

Typical from LemonLaw

Clinton was suspected of having a plan to suspend elections as well. This fear is more indicative of our growing distrust of the political class than of Obama in particular, as it cuts across lines of party and even ideology.

 

[bl4ckfl4g]

I'm convinced now that it doesn't even matter what happens. When the R were in charge they didn't care about the huge deficit they were causing and all the hacks on this board were cheerleading it.

Now that Obama is failing miserably with the economy and the deficit is gooing up even more, the hacks on the other side are cheerleading it.

Regardless of who is in charge this country is going down the toilet. The only thing that could stop it is to bring manufacturing back to this country but that won't happen.

 

[werepossum]

Really? I think there are plenty.

I am an atheist who is strong on defense, is for full gay marital rights, for medical marijuana, anti-illegal immigration, anti government aid for the lazy (UI), and wants 95% of our troops from Afghanistan and Iraq to come home.

And I know several mid-20s people just like me. Where do we fall?

You've got my vote.

If the Pubbies take Congress then the economy will definitely pick up, as gridlock will stabilize the business environment. Problem is neither party has any real way to fix the economy and our underlying problems, so a Republican Congress likely just means a slower decline rather than a return to earlier prosperity. And as we've seen with a Republican President AND a Republican Congress, that decline is only minuscule in deficit spending and arguably greater in other non-fiscal areas. I really hope that the Pubbies and moderate to conservative Democrats have some sound plans to restore our country, but nothing I've seen to date gives me any hope they've learned anything.

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

And looking back at what the Republicans in Congress gave the country before 2006 - go back to 2002, 1994, whatever -what 'hope and change' should voters expect from them?

When it comes to politics...promises/expectations and subsequent reality are often two different things...no? Funny though that you can only see one side of this coin.

I think it's pretty obvious that voters elected Obama on the basis of hope and change and will likely be thrown out for not delivering positive results. As you know, a bad economy does not treat incumbents well and his performance in this area has been less than stellar. Will the Republicans fare any better if elected...I hope so. Do you?

 

[Svnla]

No, they don't deserve the Republicans blocking almost everything and prevnting the Democrats from passing good policies.

But it could be worse, they could have voted Libertarian.

A whole new spelling of disaster.

Did Democrats have the supreme majority (veto proof and filibuster proof) in both houses (House of Reps and Senate) and the White House too? How could Republicans block them? Oh, I got it, it was Bush's fault. 🙄

Tell me what good policies them Democrats passed? Oh, you mean like the HC bill that did not bother to do anything with the huge cost? Or the so call "financial reform" bill that did not deal with Fannie and Freddie? (and that bill was from the same idiots of Barney and Dodd). Shall I go on? I know, I know, it was ALL Bush's faults, darm baster.

 

[Darwin333]

I must assume that those economists know middle school math so that leads me to believe that they are flat out lying or insane. You can read all the articles from those so call economists all you want but at the end of the day the math doesn't lie .

That's not what economists are saying. Even if the government has to pay higher interest to offset inflation, it's not really paying more in inflation adjusted dollars, but it's liabilities are declining when adjusted for inflation.

Incorrect.

Almost ALL of our debt is on the very short end and almost all of it must be rolled over every 4 years. That makes any rate hike on that debt immediately show up in greatly increased interest payments on EXISTING debt. We are talking adding hundreds of billions to the yearly Federal budget with a relatively small rate hike, you are talking about adding even more with a 4% targeted rate of inflation.

Then we have the entitlement spending. You see, we kinda indexed that to inflation, so you also get 4% y/o/y increase in entitlement spending due solely to inflation. So servicing our debt takes up a much larger chunk of our budget and so do our entitlement programs (which happen to be the largest expense we have).

Revenue will not keep up with those increases.

Then you get yourself into a situation in which we are still borrowing insane amounts of money, while rolling existing debt, all at MUCH higher rates. If the bond market, for whatever reason, gets jumpy we can find ourselves in a real bad way real quick just like Greece did.

Current 1 year bonds are at .25%, your plan would necessitate them increasing to AT LEAST 4% just to get a net zero return. That is a 1,600% increase on 1 year notes. 2 year notes would go up at least 800%, again for a net zero return. Hell, 30 year bonds aren't currently paying 4% so even if we could magically roll all of our debt into 30 year bonds (not gonna happen, period) you would still be talking about a clean doubling of our interest payments on EXISTING debt. That would add roughly $400 BILLION to the Federal budget and that is the impossibly optimistic option.

Plus there is strong incentive to spend and invest instead of keeping money in mattress, just to keep ahead of inflation.

Not really. Right now people are willing to take virtually no return on their money because of whatever reason you want to think. Even with the inflation they will just put their money into bonds or something similar. Simply increasing inflation does not solve the underlying reason of WHY people are keeping money in their mattress.

And all those houses that are under water are going to have their values rise relative to fixed rate debt levels.

Incorrect.

Most people purchase a home based on "payment" and not necessarily price. If Joe can afford $1K a month for a mortgage at 4.5% interest he can afford a $200K house. At 7.5% he can afford a $150K house, so a 3% rise in rates literally removes 25% of Joe's "house purchasing power". That would be the nail in the coffin for the housing market. Prices would plummet because houses are still relatively unaffordable (the median family income can not afford the avg. house) and then you want to make the payments drastically more expensive. That $200K loan would cost $1,400 at 7.5% a 40% increase from the original $1K due solely to your intentional inflation. I would really like to hear your argument on exaclty how that increases property values.

To make matters worse, if the banksters haven't already fucked Joe and jacked his CC rates to almost 30% on his CCs that interest rate goes up. So do auto loans which again are almost always "payment" based purchases. (BTW, all this consumer spending people are saying we need to get the economy going again, what they really mean is consumer debt.)

That leaves us with wages. First of all, a 4% increase in wages does not cover a 40% increase in the cost to purchase the same house. Secondly, given the current job market and our offshoring jobs and mass importing of cheap labor, there is a very good argument to be made that wages will NOT rise with inflation. Just the current unemployment and underemployment alone are enough to reduce wage increases due to simply supply/demand. I think .gov workers might get a pass on this one but I am not positive.

4% targeted inflation will kill the Federal budget and destroy the housing market much worse than we have seen to date. Why do you think the Fed did their entire QE thing to try and get mortgage rates down?

 

[Darwin333]

You've got my vote.

If the Pubbies take Congress then the economy will definitely pick up, as gridlock will stabilize the business environment. Problem is neither party has any real way to fix the economy and our underlying problems, so a Republican Congress likely just means a slower decline rather than a return to earlier prosperity. And as we've seen with a Republican President AND a Republican Congress, that decline is only minuscule in deficit spending and arguably greater in other non-fiscal areas. I really hope that the Pubbies and moderate to conservative Democrats have some sound plans to restore our country, but nothing I've seen to date gives me any hope they've learned anything.

Nope, we be fucked. Thats why I say we borrow and spend as much as possible, preferably on actual "stuff" that will be here after the money is gone (like a new grid) and then void the debt. If they are dumb enough to loan us money at this point, fuck em.

 

[werepossum]

I must assume that those economists know middle school math so that leads me to believe that they are flat out lying or insane. You can read all the articles from those so call economists all you want but at the end of the day the math doesn't lie .



Incorrect.

Almost ALL of our debt is on the very short end and almost all of it must be rolled over every 4 years. That makes any rate hike on that debt immediately show up in greatly increased interest payments on EXISTING debt. We are talking adding hundreds of billions to the yearly Federal budget with a relatively small rate hike, you are talking about adding even more with a 4% targeted rate of inflation.

Then we have the entitlement spending. You see, we kinda indexed that to inflation, so you also get 4% y/o/y increase in entitlement spending due solely to inflation. So servicing our debt takes up a much larger chunk of our budget and so do our entitlement programs (which happen to be the largest expense we have).

Revenue will not keep up with those increases.

Then you get yourself into a situation in which we are still borrowing insane amounts of money, while rolling existing debt, all at MUCH higher rates. If the bond market, for whatever reason, gets jumpy we can find ourselves in a real bad way real quick just like Greece did.

Current 1 year bonds are at .25%, your plan would necessitate them increasing to AT LEAST 4% just to get a net zero return. That is a 1,600% increase on 1 year notes. 2 year notes would go up at least 800%, again for a net zero return. Hell, 30 year bonds aren't currently paying 4% so even if we could magically roll all of our debt into 30 year bonds (not gonna happen, period) you would still be talking about a clean doubling of our interest payments on EXISTING debt. That would add roughly $400 BILLION to the Federal budget and that is the impossibly optimistic option.



Not really. Right now people are willing to take virtually no return on their money because of whatever reason you want to think. Even with the inflation they will just put their money into bonds or something similar. Simply increasing inflation does not solve the underlying reason of WHY people are keeping money in their mattress.



Incorrect.

Most people purchase a home based on "payment" and not necessarily price. If Joe can afford $1K a month for a mortgage at 4.5% interest he can afford a $200K house. At 7.5% he can afford a $150K house, so a 3% rise in rates literally removes 25% of Joe's "house purchasing power". That would be the nail in the coffin for the housing market. Prices would plummet because houses are still relatively unaffordable (the median family income can not afford the avg. house) and then you want to make the payments drastically more expensive. That $200K loan would cost $1,400 at 7.5% a 40% increase from the original $1K due solely to your intentional inflation. I would really like to hear your argument on exaclty how that increases property values.

To make matters worse, if the banksters haven't already fucked Joe and jacked his CC rates to almost 30% on his CCs that interest rate goes up. So do auto loans which again are almost always "payment" based purchases. (BTW, all this consumer spending people are saying we need to get the economy going again, what they really mean is consumer debt.)

That leaves us with wages. First of all, a 4% increase in wages does not cover a 40% increase in the cost to purchase the same house. Secondly, given the current job market and our offshoring jobs and mass importing of cheap labor, there is a very good argument to be made that wages will NOT rise with inflation. Just the current unemployment and underemployment alone are enough to reduce wage increases due to simply supply/demand. I think .gov workers might get a pass on this one but I am not positive.

4% targeted inflation will kill the Federal budget and destroy the housing market much worse than we have seen to date. Why do you think the Fed did their entire QE thing to try and get mortgage rates down?

Very, very well said and reasoned, thanks.

Nope, we be fucked. Thats why I say we borrow and spend as much as possible, preferably on actual "stuff" that will be here after the money is gone (like a new grid) and then void the debt. If they are dumb enough to loan us money at this point, fuck em.

The USA has in recent decades provide half or more of the profits of foreign corporations. We've been borrowing money to maintain our high standard of living, and I think the only reason we haven't lost our AAA rating is that foreign countries are hoping we will somehow find a way to return to profitability and continue to provide that profit. I can't see any way that will happen, but I really hope someone smarter will figure it out because at some point it has to crash, whether quickly under the Democrats or ever so slightly more slowly under the Republicans. Part of me wants to put that moment off as long as possible because it will be a new Great Depression. Another part says get it over with, because at the moment we still have a fair number of successful corporations and we still have people who remember how to make the things we'll need after the crash when we no longer can get them on credit - things like making steel, printed circuit boards, wafers/chips, LEDs that currently all come from overseas.