Budget talks: This is getting nasty

I'm not absolving banks for their role.

You shouldn't absolve the Federal Government of theirs. (Or the people who took out the mortgages they didn't understand and/or couldn't pay.)

 

Too abstract. Need specifics.

 

It's good that you aren't absolving the banks of "their role," since "their role" was to create and gin up the whole thing, then lie to the world about what they were doing. You are creating the false equivalency of "Everybody did something!" when one of the groups did a good 80-90 percent of the damage.

 

In theory, maybe. In reality, most voters don't study the details that closely. If the economy sucks, they blame the incumbent President. It doesn't matter how much or little he had to do with it. The President is the guy in charge, so he gets blamed and often takes others in his party down with him.

At this rate, next November is going to make 1980 look like a minor hiccup for the Democrats.

 

But banks are given the tremendous responsibility to care for our money. We give them our money to care for it and protect it.

They should be held higher than the government and john q public.

 

I think your percentages are off.

Also, lots of money made my the folks at Fannie Mae & Freddy Mac.

 

More than 80 percent of subprime loans were from private institutions. Fannie and Freddie were backing a quarter of those loans. Those are just the percentages of how the programs played out. Add in the banks' role in putting the whole Ponzi scheme together -- and their continued thumbing of their noses at anyone who dared question them and their refusal to let anyone inside the operation to see what was really going on -- and I might be underestimating it at 80-90 percent.

The home loans weren't the cause of the mortgage crisis. The actual loans were simply a necessary link in the chain -- basically the way the bond creators laundered their money to make it look real.

 

I would like to see Obama renew his pitch for cap and trade and green initiatives as a way of creating jobs.

 

Not sure I understand what's too abstract about

Which was to monkey-wrench American government as an act of ideological sabotage.

By remaining intractable they've punished the president; dropped the economy on its head; stalled the operations of government and cut the legs from under us on the world stage - all while pissing on the notion that governance is compromise.

They're nihilists. They're done. They've done what they came to Washington to do. Nothing else will come from them.

 

Obama could have derailed the Tea Party by hanging his hat on the 14th amendment and showing some leadership.

 

The Democrats could have avoided a lot of this by passing a budget and raising the debt ceiling before the 2010 midterms.

Obama could have had additional revenue, if it was so important to him, by letting the Bush tax cuts expire instead of extending them.

But, Democrats were afraid of being punished by the voters if they enunciated their governing principles too clearly.

The Tea Party has never been afraid of this. They are more than happy to tell you their beliefs and they govern just as they promised they would during the campaign.

They stood before the voters and ran on this platform.

The Dems hid their platform from voters, and they wonder why it has no support.

 

For all the other factors causing people not to spend, I'll throw in one more: the rapidly aging population of the developing world.

Generally, as a population gets older, it spends less (not taking in as much in retirement, don't need to spent on the kids or so much for necessities), and costs society more (health care, for instance). I'm not saying that to mean, KILL THE SENIORS! But it ends up being an economic challenge to societies that are rapidly aging.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ageing_of_Europe

I hate to point to Wikipedia, but it's a good place to start to look at how rapidly Europe is aging. Without immigration, its population is going to sink like a stone. There is a note in there that the median age in Europe in 2050 could be 52 years old -- while the U.S. stays at 35, in large part BECAUSE it has taken in so many immigrants (particularly Hispanic immigrants, who are pretty much solely responsible for U.S. population growth).

For all the talk of how China is, the demographic shit is going to hit the fan very soon, thanks to its "one child" policy.

http://www.prb.org/Reports/2010/agingchina.aspx

And Japan is the world's oldest nation, and its population is sinking quickly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aging_of_Japan

Of course, the U.S. is supporting more people over 65 with each passing year, too. But its replacement rate is higher than other developing countries'.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/02/04/business/aging-population.html

I'm not enough of an economist to know exactly how this will affect the U.S. economy. We might be helped that our population is not as aged as others', but we'll still have to deal with its effects. And it may well hurt companies that export a lot.

But it seems like the numbers show there is one way to help the U.S. economy that is probably counterintuitive to what a lot of people feel, and what politicians will do. Not only should we provide amnesty to every illegal immigrant in the country, but we also should make it EASIER for immigrants to come here. Most of the rest of the developing world isn't so friendly to immigrants already, but creating an Ellis Island-type system where you check in as you arrive, and be on your way, will help guarantee the U.S. a growing population.

I know that's simplistic, but the numbers, to me, indicate it's time to rethink immigration in a world economy where countries are competing for people.