StrangeSox

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 25, 2011 -> 09:30 PM) And you are ignoring Obama, over and over, to shoehorn this into your ideology. Yeah, business is just so askeerd of big, bad Obama. It's not because there's a total lack of demand. If a good Republican were in office, they'd be hiring like crazy to fill demand that doesn't exist!

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 25, 2011 -> 09:29 PM) In the survey, conducted July 8-13 and released Monday, 53 economists—not all of whom answer every question—... Oh I'm sorry, please feel free to provide data for your claims any time. You have a very distinct pattern of never doing that.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Jul 25, 2011 -> 09:25 PM) And you keep conveniently not counting QE I and II, which were trillions added to this so called stimulus, that never touched the votes of Congress. The goalposts keep moving. Except they explicitly differentiate between fiscal and monetary stimulus and their effects. It's not goalpost moving to say you guys keep deliberately obscuring exactly what the Keynesian minded economists call for (and when they did it, unless they went back in time to write editorials in early 2009).

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 25, 2011 -> 07:38 PM) Here is the biggest problem with the stimulus plan, and the main reason it failed. You can't go on television and be anti-bank, anti-wealth, and anti-business and expect banks, the rich, and business to lead a recovery no matter how much money you throw at the problem. When you are publicly talking in punitive terms, yet bemoaning the lack of creation in this country, you are either clueless or blinded to your agenda. That's why the stimulus failed at a trillion, and would have failed at two, three, or however many hindsight trillion dollars you want to make it. The talk about it needing to be bigger is a complete smokescreen for the real failure of the plan, and that is Obama's complete failure at installing any confidence into this economy. I know this is your ideology, but you keep ignoring that the criticism came in January 2009. It's hard for Obama to have failed at instilling confidence that quickly, for the claims that the stimulus was too small to be a smokescreen for that, or especially to be "hindsight." It's not like there wasn't quantitative analyses behind the claims that it was too small and predicted that it would have a weak effect on unemployment. You keep ignoring that, over and over, to shoe-horn this into your narrative. But it just does not fit.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 25, 2011 -> 08:37 PM) Yeah, why would you take CEO's and banks at their word for why they aren't hiring and investing. It has to be a vast right wing conspiracy, not the words of the Democrat in office. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405...1063763332.html

lol, that's pretty incredible.

Balta, this is not voter disenfranchisement, just making sure we stamp out the 1 thousandth of one percent of voter fraud that destroys our system every election.

A review of how plausible the link is and whether or not you've been distorted, and then hopefully deep introspection. But we mustn't talk of motivating political ideologies in an act of political terrorism, no no! It's simply pure evil what done it, no need to examine his extreme-but-coherent writings and philosophies!

I also wanted to explicitly point out how you're arguing contradictory positions here. On one hand you're saying that "we don't know" whether it'll be another protracted fight to extend the debt ceiling in 6-8 months. While this is literally true, I see no reason to assume it'll be any easier, though you seem confident it will be. Obama is being "me first" by insisting that this deal go into 2013 so that we avoid this becoming a political issue for the campaign. This is narcissistic on his part, putting his campaign ahead of the country. He should acquiesce to Boehner's plan and allow this to become a political issue for the 2012 Presidential Campaign. How, exactly, will allowing this to become a campaign issue in what is likely to be the most heated election we've had result in anything but a protracted, partisan fight against raising the debt ceiling next year? You cannot simultaneously claim that it is selfish to want to push this out of 2012 and thus minimizing the 2012 political implications while at the same time claiming that the second debt ceiling raise will be the typical easy vote to not destroy the economy.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jul 25, 2011 -> 05:07 PM) We might. We might not. Like I said, at this point I don't think there's an option. I don't think they could draft a bill, get it through all the various committees and then vote on it in under a week. So, blame the GOP or Obama or whoever, but some short-term measure is gonna have to come out of this. I'm a fan of the one that doesn't take another year to or more to figure out. Why does it have to be short-term? It could be what Reid's proposed, or it could be what Boehner's proposed but pushed out to 2013. Or it could be a straight increase to 2013. There's a whole lot of ways that it doesn't have to be short-term.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jul 25, 2011 -> 02:06 PM) How on earth is that talking in circles? My "it's routine" argument is that I don't understand why Wall St would all of the sudden freakout just because the decision for the terms of raising the ceiling is being kicked another 6 months. Has the market been freaking out the last 6 months because of uncertainty? No. But that doesn't mean we don't have a deficit problem that needs to be addressed. It's not a democrat me-first f*** the country move, it's Obama. Reid was on board with the two step plan. And i'm fine kicking it for 6-8 months because that gives them more time to negotiate a good deal going forward. At this point we don't have the time. And i know, i know, those soulless republicans could have just agreed to Obama's plan weeks ago! Klein with some commentary on a potential compromise between Boehner's and Reid's plans, but I'd like to highlight this: I still don't see how anyone could believe that we won't be right back in the same spot 6-8 months from now, or why Republicans insisting on this being a campaign issue is "Country First" but Obama insisting that it not is "Me First"

What? The Fly was awesome. Reviews abound called it an amazing episode, comparing it to the Pine Barrens episode of the Sopranos.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 25, 2011 -> 04:13 PM) They actually had economists in their group who were saying that it needed to be 1.5-2x as large. The President chose instead to listen to the concerns of people like Larry Summers, who worried that too large of a stimulus package would lead to...guess what...inflation! This is proof-positive that those calling for a larger, better package from the start are wrong and their ideas are failures. Ezra Klein:

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 25, 2011 -> 02:43 PM) Ah yes, hindsight. Paul Krugman's time-traveling hindsight from January 2009. Brad Delong, more time-traveling hindsight from February 2009. Hell, here's a whole list of people with time-traveling hindsight saying it was too small from Jan to March 2009.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 25, 2011 -> 03:58 PM) I don't know why you think I am referring to them the whole time. I think you are placing too much reading on your own into what I am trying to say here. You are trying to claim that the entire idea of Keynesian stimulus is a failure and are pointing to the 2009 stimulus as evidence, correct?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 25, 2011 -> 03:53 PM) Our President said it would work. How does not make sense? I've been criticizing him and his economic team over their bad policies. Obama and his administration are not the Keynesian economists who said it wouldn't work in the first place, that it needed to be larger and the spending split up differently. I don't understand why you are incapable of separating the two.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 25, 2011 -> 03:49 PM) No the one where people actually try and avoid things that have failed in the past. Making it bigger doesn't help anything but the deficit and debt. It failed. Period. All of the sectors that were supposed to be helped, haven't had anything in the way of recovery. All of those "shovel ready" projects were supposed to have us back on track by now. The reality is that this hasn't led to any kind of a recovery. In fact all of this lunacy has forestalled the recovery by not allowing ailing institutions to get healthy. But it wasn't a good stimulus. A bad stimulus package loaded with tax cuts and not enough spending failed, not one with appropriately targeted and sized spending. You keep attributing these claims that it actually would work to the people who said it wouldn't in order to criticize their policies. It makes no sense.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 25, 2011 -> 03:39 PM) Yeah, this makes it official, I am still on another planet today. I know, one where Keynesians didn't criticize the stimulus back in 2009 as being too small to be effective (even though they did) and where you can use failure of plans people say won't work as evidence that they're wrong.

Keynesians: "We need stimulus! $2T or more, or it won't work." Obama/Congress: "Here's a stimulus package!" Keynesians: "This is less than half of what we asked for and full of tax cuts." Obama/Congress: "It'll be a Summer of Recovery!" Keynesians: "No it won't, this is terrible" *stimulus passes anyway, is ineffective at lowering unemployment* Republicans: "See, told you Keynesian economics are wrong! We need moar tax cuts!" Keynesians: "WTF?" Obama/Congress: "Here you go, more tax cuts! Republicans/Obama/Congress: "Now lets move on to massive spending cuts!"

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 25, 2011 -> 03:28 PM) Here's the hint, don't do what doesn't work. Which is half-assed quasi-stimulus loaded with tax cuts, a "compromise" position doomed to failure from the start. You can't judge a legitimate Keynesian stimulus package based on the results of a bad, non-Keynesian one.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 25, 2011 -> 03:04 PM) Except you got your extra trillion+ in the QE's. Except those same damn Keynesian guys say monetary stimulus is ineffective in liquidity traps and you need fiscal stimulus. You can't keep doing exactly what they say won't work and then say "Aha! Your policies are flawed!" when things don't work.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 25, 2011 -> 02:56 PM) The same people who are trying to tell us that spending can go on forever without inflation or higher interest rates. Obama's fighting for a huge austerity package, not sure what you're talking about here. You still can't use something that didn't work which those calling for a large stimulus said wouldn't work to discredit their theories. And Krugman etc. say that inflation would be good right now because we're in a liquidity trap and it would incentivize companies to actually start spending.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jul 25, 2011 -> 02:56 PM) Are you paying attention? Boehner got ripped by many in his own party for effectively ok'ing tax increases by closing corporate tax loopholes, anywhere from 800 billion to 1 trillion over the next decade. Obama wanted 1.2 trillion. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/07/23/...g=re1.galleries No, I did not really pay attention over the weekend. My apologies.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 25, 2011 -> 02:46 PM) I was going more towards the line of crap we were sold about this being enough to get us back to 8% unemployment and a real recovery. Yeah, that was from the Obama Administration, not Keynesians calling for larger stimulus packages who said in 2009 it wasn't big enough. You can't use something that didn't work which they said wouldn't work to discredit their theories. Hey, what ever happened to the GOP's focus on JOBS JOBS JOBS? It seems like it went ABORTION ABORTION MASSIVE SPENDING CUTS