Barreconomics: How to Wreck the American Economy

[deliverance]

southy, I have to give you credit. I have never seen anyone cry as about one person as you. In a way, it's really sad, but at least you keep at it. The sad part is you would rather see the country fail, so that you can be right, rather than Obama do a good job. Your 7,6, and 3 year olds will be really proud of their bawl baby father when they grow up.

[southpaw]

You would cry too if you were getting $800 dollars the next two years in exchange for $50,000 in debt. That's a real investment in America. I really don't want Barry to fail but since you voted for him enlighten me as to how this $800 billion pile of **** bill is going to work? Please someone on here who sung the praises of Barry Boy back in October please defend him! OAR, Lemmy, deliverance? Can liberals articulate an intelligent response or argument? Can you defend your president's "stimulus" plan? Or are going to be like deliverance and stoop to name calling or Bush Bashing. Please tell me how this plan is going to stimulate the economy.

deliverance...Maybe you will be crying when you graduate college in the next few years and find nothing in the job market.

[deliverance]

I have made enough money over the years to survive a few years without a job for awhile once I graduate. Keep worrying about what Obama does. That's what your life revolves around. It's actually pretty pathetic. I think you might actually have a crush on him. Is what you do actually considered a job since all you do is brainwash people?

[El-Moldo]

Let's not confuse "worrying" with "concern". Obama has given us alot to be concerned about.

[southpaw]

Cows are pretty hard to brainwash. I don't speak bovine. Teaching Biology is pretty benign and apolitical except for evolution which can be a tightrope from time to time. So no I don't really brainwash anybody. I hope to finally meet you face to face at district wrestling on Saturday.

[deliverance]

It doesn't matter that you're just a Biology teacher. You're around kids giving them advice on life every day. If you talk to kids anything like the way you talk on here, then you should reconsider what you do. Maybe you're completely different in the classroom. If not, that's sad.

[El-Moldo]

Why is he giving advice in school? He's not a guidance counselor. Shouldn't he be teaching the Krebs Citric Acid Cycle, or something like that?

[vman]

I have to agree with a lot of the aforementioned statements and I was not a big backer of Bush's bailouts of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the investment banking firm of Bear Stearns, Bush turned to activist government practices to prevent a financial market meltdown.

It's an odd mixture of policies--socialism for Wall Street and capitalism for Main Street. Many investors who made bad choices by trying to make money off a housing bubble were being bailed out while ordinary Americans struggle with higher prices and fewer jobs.

This was a remarkable transformation for a president who considered himself a conservative on economic policy. He was an avid free trader, generally liked tax and spending cuts, and believed, as Ronald Reagan did, in the "magic of the market."

Bush advisers will tell you that there was little choice, considering the alternatives. Indeed, fear of a stock market crash had been the main driver of government policy.

I mention this to show it is not a partisan issue.

Keeping this in mind:

If we continue on the course Barack Obama has chosen not only will job creation cease but unemployment will reach double digits, inflation will rival that of the 1970's and jobs lost to countries overseas will never return.

From Jan. 31, 2001, through Jan. 31, 2009, 4.4 million manufacturing jobs, 26 percent of all of the manufacturing jobs in the United States, disappeared.
Semiconductors and electronic component producers lost 42 percent of their jobs. Communications equipment producers lost 48 percent of their jobs. Textile and apparel producers lost, respectively, 63 percent and 61 percent of their jobs.

As a source of American jobs, manufacturing, for the first time in our history, fell below health care and education in 2001, below retail sales in 2002, below local government in 2006, below leisure and hospitality, i.e., restaurants and bars, in 2008.

Between this unprecedented loss in manufacturing capacity and jobs, and the $3.5 trillion in trade deficits in manufactured goods alone the correlation is absolute.

Final trade figures for 2008 came in. They make for riveting reading for Americans who yet believe that manufacturing is an indispensable element of national power.

With China exporting five times the dollar volume in goods to us as she imports from us, Beijing's trade surplus with the United States set yet another world record: $266 billion.

In those critical items the Commerce Department defines as advanced technology products (ATP), our trade deficit with China in 2008 reached an astonishing $72 billion. Since 2000, our total trade deficit with China in ATP exceeds $300 billion.

Which of us, China or America, has the trade profile of a mature industrial and technological power?

Americans deplore our deepening dependence on foreign regimes for the vital necessity of oil. Are they unaware that the U.S. trade deficit in manufactured goods, $440 billion, is $89 billion greater than our all-time record trade deficit of $351 billion in crude oil?

Why is a dependence on Canada, Mexico, Venezuela or Saudi Arabia for oil a greater peril than a reliance on China and Asia for vital necessities upon which our prosperity and military depend?

Recently ex-Fed Chair Paul Volcker told Congress the "massive trade-related imbalances in the United States economy were the source of the financial crisis."
Pressed by Sen. Chris Dodd, Volcker said, "Go back to the imbalances in the economy. The United States has been consuming more than it has been producing for many years."

What "imbalances" was Volcker referring to? Perhaps these:

Since 1982, the United States has run $5.7 trillion in trade deficits in manufactured goods, and $2.1 trillion in trade deficits in auto parts, trucks and automobiles. Since 2000, the United States ran more than $1 trillion in trade deficits in auto parts, trucks and cars.
These statistics, these realities -- factories closing in the United States, manufacturing jobs being outsourced in the millions to China and Asia, enormous, endless trade deficits in goods -- testify to a painful truth: America is a receding and declining world power.

And in dealing with this systemic crisis, Obama's stimulus package is as irrelevant as were the Bush tax cuts.

How do we correct those "trade-related imbalances" of which Volcker spoke? We must export more and import less, save more and spend less, produce more and consume less.

But how do you tell that to two generations of Americans who have been raised in an era of entitlement?

[deliverance]

We must export more and import less, save more and spend less, produce more and consume less.

That quote is exactly right. There's just not too many people that will live by that. That's not George Bush's fault, not is it Barack Obama's fault. As Americans, we know the service industry has taken over and the manufacturing sector of employment is way down. We won't really be able to change that much. I just hope someone or something can right this sinking ship, but as of right now it's not looking too good. Giving billions of dollars to people that already failed is not the answer.

[froggyfan]

Today's signing of the disaster package and the tremendous drop in the market are not coincidental. I'm not an expert, but those who are just told us what this signing means to our economy...not good!