Slog: News & Arts

RSS icon Comments on Fundamentals

1

Actually, this is exactly what we need right now. Man I love it when everything goes to shit.

Posted by Republican | September 17, 2008 12:44 PM
2

SOMEONE SEND THIS TO HIM PLEASE

Posted by rockertart | September 17, 2008 12:48 PM
3

If John McCain doesn't give a shit about taking care of the soldiers in the US Army, why would he give a shit about the soldiers in the economic army? Give them a helping hand and they might quit working (or the Army) altogether. Isn't that the general line of thinking? What an asshole.

Posted by Smade | September 17, 2008 12:49 PM
4

I hope Obama’s getting himself a new bunch of economic advisors - he’s been relying on distinguished shmucks who’ve denied for years that all this was coming down the pike. Clean slate time, so somebody can help him figure out what to do.

Posted by toamsyalba | September 17, 2008 12:52 PM
5

For all you kiddies who thought Obama was the next JFK: well you better pray like hell he is the next Franklin D Roosevelt.

Centerism is NOT an option. We need 100% full blown no bars hold NEW DEAL POLICIES NOW!!!!!!!!

Posted by Cato the Younger Younger | September 17, 2008 1:05 PM
6

I'm in self-preservation mode. I'll be voting no on all tax increase proposals this fall. I need to keep what little I have.

Posted by self-preservation | September 17, 2008 1:07 PM
7

toamsyalba @4, come on. Only a minority of Obama's advisers may have been in some kind of denial, and even that minority has always been on the ball as far as the deficits this nation is running (federal budget and trade). I'm thinking Bob Rubin. And I'll take 1990s Rubinomics any day over 2000s Bushonomics.

Even then, wherever a minority of his advisers may have been wrong, Obama has been consistently right about the fundamentally unsound policies leading to the current fundamentally unsound economy.

See The New York Times's recent magazine section cover on Obama's economic views.

I'm perfectly happy making the argument that--on economics as well as foreign policy--Obama has been the grown-up and McCain has been the adolescent.

Posted by cressona | September 17, 2008 1:08 PM
8

Palin is claiming (in her Hannity interview) that McCain was talking about people!

"It was an unfair attack on the verbiage that Senator McCain chose to use…He means our workforce. He means the ingenuity of the American people and of course that is strong and that is the foundation of our economy."

Posted by stinkbug | September 17, 2008 1:10 PM
9

Obama has taken heat from the right for appeals to the wage earner to go for him, over the contract-executive salary do whatever it takes to get rich, puller-downer. Obama should run into that firestorm head-on; he will win in the longrun. .

Obama needs to show, in plain language that doesn't require an Masters Degree to understand (he is good at that, btw), that this economic crisis was built because John McSame did support , over the decades, economic policies which at the time were labeled as "economic reform". Reforming the USA to hell, I say. Those de-reg policies which toppled New Deal era worker & worker-as-consumer-cum-investor protections, over the years since passed in part to Mcains 'in favor' votes, are now being written, this very week, into history as 'failed economic policies'. The US Gov is taking over AIG, that IS history... Obama needs to, now more than ever, get back onto his message that he is out to destroy economic disparities, not rely on a maverick-trickle-down-from-the-top (Mc)Same economic voodoo policies of republican party authoring.

Those authors have a track history of writting failed policies, do they not?

Posted by Phenics | September 17, 2008 1:10 PM
10

self-preservation @6: I'm in self-preservation mode. I'll be voting no on all tax increase proposals this fall. I need to keep what little I have.

And so how is this affecting your vote in the presidential election, self-pres? If you're not so rich that you need to be in self-preservation mode, then you're due to get a far greater tax cut from Obama than McCain.

Posted by cressona | September 17, 2008 1:14 PM
11

Right on with this post.

@6: do you not see how your self-preservation relies on a functioning government capable of regulating a market that is going to shit? or do you not care?

Posted by Trevor | September 17, 2008 1:16 PM
12

Being a pedant here, but doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is also known as... practice.

Posted by NaFun | September 17, 2008 1:26 PM
13

this would work with old people who remember the depression as kids. they may be scared of muslim terrorists, but they're more scared of bread lines.

Posted by max solomon | September 17, 2008 1:28 PM
14

C'mon people, John McCain lived through the Great Depression, and he's willing and able to lead this country through the next one.

Posted by Hmmmm | September 17, 2008 1:32 PM
15

Suggesting that it would be good for the Obama campaign to display quotes from McCain and Hoover side-by-side assumes that voters understand the comparison. I'd guess that anyone who understands Hoover's role in American history has already decided who to vote for.

Better for Obama to point out that the economy is only fine for people who can't remember how many houses they have.

Posted by blank12357 | September 17, 2008 1:46 PM
16

Anthony, to be fair, The New Deal, that came about because of TGD, has created a lot of problems in our country in regards to government financing. Agricultural subsidies? Social Secuirity? Public works pork? This is all due to the belief that the government had the ability and the moral obligation to spend it's way out of a private sector slump...

for better or for worse overall, you have to realize there needs to be regulatory and organizational reform within the government 60 years after The New Deal.

Posted by Bellevue Ave | September 17, 2008 1:52 PM
17

cressona @7, Obama's economic advisors did not alert him a year ago to the likelihood of what is happening *now*. They were on record as not believing anything like this would happen. The August NYT piece certainly made no mention of it, either.

And that is my beef with Obama's economic advisors. They left him relatively flatfooted in his responses right now, and that's given McCain way more room to move than he deserves. This is the signal economic event of our lives so far, and Obama's left being merely good with it, when he could instead be visionary or brilliant as a properly prepared candidate could be, absolutely killing McCain instead of nipping at him.

I'd never say Obama was not a million times better on economic theory than McCain, but his people acted like ostriches.

Posted by tomasyalba | September 17, 2008 1:53 PM
18

also, there had been depressions previous to 1929 and invaribly the economy got back on the rails again a few years later.

Posted by Bellevue Ave | September 17, 2008 1:54 PM
19

New Deal policies? How do you pay for them? We're already in 11 billion dollars of debt, and running a huge deficit. Keynesian style- priming the pumps of the economy- policies take lots and lots of capital. Where's that gonna come from? If the stock market and the economy do not stabilize soon the Fed will have to reduce interest rates down to 0% to stimulate the economy. And the US Dollar will become toilet paper.

Posted by CA | September 17, 2008 2:27 PM
20

oops, thats 11 TRILLION, not Billion. I only wish......

Posted by CA | September 17, 2008 2:31 PM
21

Liberalism is not a solution. Faith in Jesus Christ is what we need now. We must purge the world of the non-believer's by using our nuclear arsonal and that will bring Jesus back!!!

Posted by Sarah Palin | September 17, 2008 2:38 PM
22

With Fanny May, Freddie Mac and AIG backed by the feds, where's the capital for a New Energy Deal? Investment in renewables was supposed to be our way out of the hole the Bush administration dug.

Posted by Morgan | September 17, 2008 11:28 PM

Comments Closed

Comments are closed on this post.