But that's not real money. To get real money ($1.4T), you can take everything they have!

SI

I'll be damned, economics IS a science.

I disagree about Libya and think Syria is yet to be determined.

Obama has done okay in Libya. Regardless of the number of tomahawks, NATO is definitely front and center and this is not a US-NATO war. Its great relief to not see any muslim country protests (that I know of) vilifying US (or NATO) on Libya.

Syria is interesting. I think the intent was to get Libya out of the way first and then focus on Syria ... not sure the number of Arab countries that have condemned Syria already but building consensus is the right way to do it vs go it alone.

Libya, Syria Show Obama In Way Over His Head | FoxNews.com

That's just a guy that is looking to fault Obama no matter what. He trashes him for intervening in Libya and not intervening in Syria. If Obama had done the opposite I'd bet this guy would have the same criticism in reverse.

Yup, looks as if Libya is done (e.g. hopefully the post mortem will limit killings to only top henchmen and no Iraqi-like lawlessness) and time to start focusing on Syria.

I hope Obama can (or wants/planning to) start organizing the other countries. Unfortunately, with Iran backing, problems Syria can cause in Lebanon vs Israel etc., this one will be a tougher nut for Panetta and CIA. It was before my time and I'm sure there are good reasons why we got rid of the policy, but I'm all for targetted assasinations ...

I'm a little surprised with the last sentence below, didn't realize that.

Syria's Assad warns against military intervention - World news - Mideast/N. Africa - msnbc.com

Interesting development, probably not coincidental. I speculate there is going to be some bad news coming out on the investigation.
Standard & Poor's President Reportedly Resigns | FoxNews.com

FWIW. I didn't see what the total $ would be. I would prefer to see the money go to some sort of "bailout/relief" of home owners who are underwater.

Parts of Obama jobs package coming into focus - Business - US business - msnbc.com

Payroll tax cut makes no sense considering we just had a massive debate over the deficit where we agreed to cut a ton of money. It doesn't feel like a fix for the entitlement problem is to cut what is currently funding it.

I've read through his patent reform ideas and they are shit. Doesn't get anywhere close to solving the problem.

The infrastructure stuff makes sense. Not sure on the school thing, but there are a lot of things that need to be upgraded. This should have been done 2 years ago. His jobs bill should almost be exclusively this. Just find necessary projects where we can enhance our infrastructure for 50+ years and do it. No pet projects, just real enhancements.

More tax breaks, even though he just got mad at the Repubs for refusing increases? Hypocritical much?

I'm trying to understand who exactly thinks this is a good argument. This statement just stinks of complete incompetency and being out of touch with the "little people". If we ever slip into despotism or some sort of widespread civil unrest, people will hang wealthy Democrats (save maybe for Matt Damon :) ) just as quickly as wealthy Republicans.


Hint...when the banking industry needs nearly $1T to stop from collapsing civilization as we know it...the problems are FAR WORSE THAN YOU CAN CALCULATE.

I understand what you're saying, but there were recent revisions to the growth rates for 2008/2009 that showed much more contraction than thought at the time of the first stimulus.

But I won't argue the point that the bankers that run the Treasury aren't connected to the millions of unemployed.

Right, but there are 2 fundamental disconnects from the President & his administration/advisers...and it has little to do with bankers (though they are certainly living in a different world and by different rules than the rest of us).

Was it really not obvious the country was in massive contraction mode? Did it not appear obvious that the jobs being contracted were the construction & tradesmen sectors? This is on the President & the crap his party wanted to work on instead of getting these people to work. If unemployment were at 8% or 7.5% right now with rising inflation, we'd have different issues to debate but people would be working and focused on increasing their personal wealth (to the extent they can) rather than just surviving. We'd be talking about how to reduce the cost of essentials instead of how f'd everything is.

I disagree. The stimulus and auto bailout were the first things done. Now there was plenty of talk at the time that it wasn't enough, but then again at that point the GOP blocked any idea of a bigger package with the filibuster.

I also don't think you can say that the lost jobs were mainly in construction and tradesmen. If you look at labor charts unemployment has been rather equally spread over all sectors. There are certainly plenty of people in construction and trades that need work, but there are also plenty of teachers, retail workers, etc. that need jobs.

I'm not sure there was anything legislatively that the Dems could have gotten passed due to their moderates and the GOP in the Senate. However, the big failure, IMO, is not having an agenda to fight for. I have no idea what the Dems would do if they could. Maybe if they had a plan they could convince the public that it's the right thing to do.

I do agree with this. If I recall correctly Obama wanted a larger stimulus package and had to negotiate down. Its disengenious for the GOP now to say it didn't work ... not to say Obama's original would have worked in the first place. I think the rootcause is the housing mess.

Complete anecdotal evidence, the building sector is WAY down. That is affecting everyone associated with it (architects, engineers, contractors, etc).

MONEY IS FREE! SPEND MONEY!

How hard is that concept?

Sure, we can find ways to spend it better, eliminate waste and all of that, but seriously if someone was offering you what is essentially free money, what would you do?

Give me some, and lets see. Call it an experiment. :)

So when the Dems sponsor & pass bad spending bills, that the Repubs vote object to & vote against anyway, then it is the Repubs fault because they didn't go along with it or agree to do more. I don't really follow how public talking points espoused by some/certain members of a party really has any bearing on the bill the Dems can & should be pushing.

The problem I see is that its always more convenient to point to how crazy the Repubs are & not blame the party that actually passed the bill...or blame them for not submitting a bill to vote because it might get filibustered. If that is of concern then let them try it & be held accountable to the voters for it as opposed to a platform of "we wanted to do more but the other guys are meanies who will vote it down so we won't even try & get an official record of it". That's lame & lightweight.

The real problem as I see it though, is that the Dems had (have) no idea how bad the economy really is, nor how to actually correct it. The Repubs don't either but they will have nobody to blame for that but themselves in 2012...for the bills passed (or not passed) since 2010. Rest assured...the Dems will get another shot at it.

Large businesses all over the US have been banking that cash, and not spending it on expansion, workers or company infrastructure. So, the money has been made available, the onus was given to spend, but the end result was that rainy day funds were filled and execs took huge bonuses.

I wholeheartedly agree the Dems need to stand for something, but your initial post was that the Dems should have passed different legislation. That wasn't going to happen. The agreed to stimulus was watered down from 1 trillion to 800 billion with @40% of that being inefficient tax cuts due to GOP and moderate Dem intransigence. It's not about blaming anyone, but that's what really happened.

And my point only point about the stimulus is that bad legislation is worse than no legislation which is why the Dems were voted out in large part, at least in my opinion.

But I guess the nuance I'm speaking to (in the first post you mentioned) is more about leadership. Its intangible in a sense...but its clear to me that we don't have it in the right positions. I actually think Hillary has it but I don't think Obama has it at all. And that is why the Repubs believe they can get away with being detractors, rather than working with him.

They had large advantages in both the House and Senate. They had a new President riding a populist surge. That's on them if they couldn't get something passed. Can't blame the Republicans for that.

The problem is that Obama told us it would work. He showed us charts on what it would do for unemployment. None of this happened the way he said. So he has no trust on the issue. He can't come out and say "this will help" when it was shown his previous estimates were complete shit.

I agree with spending, but I don't think he has anyone's trust on it, including mine.

BUT IT WILL TRICKLE DOWN!!!!!111

You're right. Money needed to be pumped into the country and instead the people who were given it cheap just sat on it. Lot of people saw this coming a mile away.

Yeah, including many random pop-economists on message boards I believe. I'm not sure how an administration could possibly have been more out of touch with what needed to be done. Which is why I both, was glad to see the Dems get kicked to curb in 2010, but saddened to see the Repubs come in as I know they won't solve anything either.

Yes and no. I wish they had pushed harder, but the GOP voted in a block to stop anything greater than the stimulus that was passed. The decision to filibuster everything really has made it nearly impossible to pass legislation. I don't see a failure in legislation so much as a failure of political will to push for something knowing the GOP would oppose. The Dems are far too willing to cave because of GOP opposition.

I had actually recalled seeing labor statistics showing near 20% unemployment for construction a little while back (maybe a year ago?). Given the massive drawback in housing construction, it also would seem to coincide with that. The rest of the sectors such as teachers, retail workers, etc. can be a chicken/egg problem as if 20% of a workforce are unemployed, then certainly nobody is buying retail to furnish the houses, paying taxes (and typically a higher rate for new construction) on the property to keep teachers employed, etc.

If you're the government, How do you boost the construction sector other than, say, infrastructure projects.

SI

Quote from Waters and NYT about attempts to spend a great deal of taxpayer's monies to create so few jobs. Another example of Stimulus of Good Intentions that reality did next to nothing real:

I am actually pro-green jobs (as I have ranted before), but those statistics hold for 'jobs' created across all categories of the stimulus... not just the supposed green sector. I believe ages ago someone even put up a news article in a chart in one of these threads about wasted money (in Delaware or something, been a couple years). At the time the numbers were shockingly bad across the bad even then, I would not be surprised if they are downright terrifying by now.

The stimulus did not work and would not work at any level of funding because it was used as a tool for politcal corruption, funneling millions into the hands of well linked people who did not even make an effort to turn it into jobs (it would have cut into the amount of the pie they would be able to steal outright).

This is why you have to have extremely clear and hard to game scenarios for federal spending for it to have an effect on the economy. You can't just create some massive subsidy that is 80-90% stolen to get 10% effect. You need to find one thing with clear goals and obvious transparency (build X number of oil pipelines or high capacity power transmission stations to shore up infrastructure) and watch it like a damn hawk to see it actually gets done. Instead we gave out billions to the corrupt segment of the construction industry (not to badmouth the good construction companies out there, but when no bid contracts start flying around you see a high number land in the hands of cousin Earl who doesn't even have workers, he just hires out a subcontract...).

Take all the vast amount of money and throw it into a tax incentive directly linked to domestic employment, it might look like a drop in the bucket (say 1-5 thousand per worker after you average it 150+ million ways) but those numbers would be big money for small and large businesses that hire a lot of workers. Even better, cut the loopholes and take the revenue from obvious political corruption (say trillion dollar tax holidays, the multi-billion dollar loopholes around executive compensation, or the ludicrious corp pork) and you can actually give out reasonably large sized per worker incentives.

Good news, you make up a portion of the incentive on the backend as those workers pay their individual income taxes. Even better, you cut the bleed on unemployment costs which will save further money. Even better you have actual employment figures so you get a nice stock rally (okay I have to point out where I get my cut somewhere along here).

For housing construction the best thing right now would be a massive rally in employment figures, because competition for workers will at least stabilize and probably grow wages, give people more certainty on future incomes, and let them buy houses. There is simply too much excess housing inventory, if you look at the numbers it is truly insane, even if we had high paying jobs at like 1-2% unemployment, some places have more inventory than even an ideal world could occupy.

Over capacity leads to price softness, the housing boom in construction was based on making insane returns over expenditures to actually building a house, it should be no surprise that the number of people involved in the industry grew dramatically, the inventory grew dramatically, and that the percentage numbers after a crash will be huge.

We do not want to restore the housing industry to its boom size, it actually needs to be a few degrees smaller, but all the pundits don't understand such mathematics. Sure you may have big double digit percentage declines, it actually should be expected, the sector is just overexpanded, no amount of subsidy (short of a bubble, yuck) will get it back to those numbers. And the efficiency on such spending would be really bad as well (it is possible to spend 2 dollars and only get 1 dollar of value... traditional microeconomics can show that at some point returns are marginal and those numbers conform to reality, not historical employment numbers).

We do need infrastructure spending, simply because we want to be competitive with other countries and in my opinion good infrastructure has a multiplier effect on economies (see Interstate system and the growth of the automobile, one of the bigger positive sum economic phenonmenons of the last century). Boost it by directly building that infrastructure, not shovel ready bullshit that is really just shoveling a pile of money to mobster Mel.

Thats exactly it...but as SportsDino said...not just digging holes to fill them back in projects, high speed rails to connect 2 cities that nobody wants to commute between (not that some HS rail isn't needed....just sayin its not always viable), or building more city halls. Projects that actually accomplish something.

That "something" in my mind is (and has been) energy infrastructure to facilitate energy independence. Not burying power lines for aesthetics or some crap...I'm talking about instituting new standards for energy which, I believe, will require a lot of retro-fitting of "fueling" stations (not necessarily gas), regional & national energy grid construction for increased load sharing/redundancy/supply from anywhere in the country, new energy source facility construction, or even the ability to fuel (or charge) our vehicles from this grid in the comfort of our home. And let's not get hung up on what the energy source is for now...so long as it isn't oil-based.

We have a society that loves powered things. We love our suburban homes with yards, we love our computers & home entertainment systems, we love our AC in the summer & heat in the winter, we love vehicles that can tell us where to go (if not bring us there). In short, we love the the entertainment & convenience that comes with having powered devices so why don't we make this cheaper, cleaner, & more sustainable for the future.

In order grow green energy sources, we are going to need an awful lot more high-voltage transmission lines, and square miles of wind generators and solar farms. But there are significant environmental opposition (as well as nimby) to all three such proposals. The reasons for the failures in reaching a critical mass is that everyone expects reliable energy and that means still being connected to the grid. Right now, solar is a niche market for the well-to-do (and even they are still rely on traditional sources).

Thats my understanding as well Bucc. Aren't you in the industry? Or did I have you confused with somebody else?

I know there is a lot of environmetal & nimby concerns but my thinking is that if you have the national & regional grids in place which can support high capacities of power sourcing, you can essentially source energy from anywhere, to anybody. Then you can allow the states/municipalities that are more welcoming to being a national/regional energy source to be the home for the best possible combination of cost, sustainability, environmental impact, etc. But the key is getting the over the top greenies out of the policy driver's seat, which is something the Dems won't do (i.e. the Tea Party of the left). Simply using today's technology (from what I understand of it) is better than doing nothing & continuing the coal/oil based power sourcing just due to the multiplicative effect it would have on the economy.

Somewhere amidst all this talk of housing & construction this note fits somewhere: Habitat for Humanity is now the 6th largest homebuilder in the U.S. As they continue to climb up the list, I have to think that the pressure on them to stop building from scratch & put more efforts toward rehabbing existing properties is going to increase.

Habitat builds more houses, moves into top 10 in U.S. *| ajc.com

Pretty good news.

Al-Qaeda's No. 2 Leader Killed In Pakistan. U.S. Official Says | FoxNews.com

I swear there are 100 hundred #2 and #3 leaders in Al Quaeda.

I won't complain if they're bogged down by excessive upper middle-management ;)

I guess you can't ever get rid of the #2 guy unless the main guy just goes streaking all by himself.

I used to help with that project back in Shreveport. The rebuilds I was apart of were always for elderly who had no desire to move. Not sure if that was a trend or not.

I know the Newburgh group has been doing rebuilds lately.

#2s are a little more rare, but we have killed at least 100 #3s. For the longest time, it was that any time some middle manager in Al Qaeda was killed that wasn't Bin Laden or al Zawahiri, they were somehow the #3.

SI

It's hard to win a terrorist championship without at least a couple #1 type leaders. You can't just cobble a staff together full of mid rotation guys.

Agreed on all those #3's. And don't forget all those country franchisee's #1's.

I'm gonna move to Azerbaijan and get on the leadership depth chart. Hopefully I won't flop and be known as the Shia Tim Tebow.

You would think there would be more press on this pending vote. Israel is against, US promises to veto etc.

I like Abbas and how he has kept his "part" quiet (for the most part I think). I don't know all details of the "statehood" but my inclination is to support the Abbas part at least.

Should be an interesting Sept 20.

Palestinians to present statehood bid to UN general assembly | World news | The Guardian

I'm rated as post-modern - moderate, liberal on social issues.

Beyond Red vs. Blue: The Political Typology - Pew Research Center

Not that good of a test, imo. Changing one answer can jump you two catagories; changing two answers can take you to an extreme. I did a control the first time and then changed 1 and then 2 answers the next two times.

This is gold in more than one way. :)

And far too black & white on many of the questions/statements.