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Obama Destroys Economy with Socialism

Fascism is an economic system in which the government uses its regulatory powers for benefit of large industrial and financial institutions. It is usually accompanied by high levels of corruption and the failure of government to prosecute criminal activities by such powerful entities.

This definition of fascism describes every government in the history of the world.
I don't think it describes what used to be our US government. The tax payers did not have to bail out any too big to fail banks during the great depression. And Theodore Roosevelt actually went after business leaders for being corrupt instead of giving them blow jobs.
 
This definition of fascism describes every government in the history of the world.
I don't think it describes what used to be our US government. The tax payers did not have to bail out any too big to fail banks during the great depression. And Theodore Roosevelt actually went after business leaders for being corrupt instead of giving them blow jobs.

The Reconstruction Finance Corporation, established under Hoover and operating through the FDR presidency, was essentially a taxpayer backed bailout for too-big-to-fail organizations. In either case, that doesn't make the 'Fascism' definition provided by Bill anymore accurate.
 
How about we be grateful that neither Obama nor the spendy Keynesians have had much to do with the economy these last few years and it's recovering like it always does.

You say that the Keynesians didn't participate in the recovery and yet Bush's last budget, enacted virtually unchanged as he submitted it, resulted in a 1.6 trillion dollar budget deficit, a deficit that dwarfed his previous record ones. Surely even you recognize that this is a huge "spendy Keynesians" economic boost? It is an example of the most effective Keynesian active compensations, an automatic one that kicks in from the beginning of the recession.

It doesn't really matter if it was like most of Bush's policies, a huge, accidental, unintended consequence, it was a classic Keynesian response.

Oh, and about the damage from the sequester, which you touched on, you must remember that you are concentrating on the federal government's spending. Keynes recognized that what was important was total government spending, including state and local governments. And because the state and local government's had to balance their budgets even in the recession, their cutbacks dwarfed the federal government's sequester, in both magnitude and duration. And were one of the main reasons for the slow recovery, along with debt deflation, the cutbacks of the private sector to pay off debt, and the unprecedented refusal of the opposition party, the Republicans, to do anything to help the economy, in fact they opposed any and all steps to speed the recovery insisting on austerity, the one thing guaranteed to delay the recovery. As we have seen all over the world, austerity failed in every country. In Greece it has produced 26% unemployment and an increase in debt.

From previous discussions with you it is obvious that you don't seem to have a very good grasp of the theory behind the economics that you claim to believe in and try to use, so it is not very surprising that you don't understand Keynes. Here is a Businessweek article that might help. It is an article that I was reading just before I read this thread. There are many more, but I would recommend that you start with his book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. It is not too terribly easy to read but it is because it is so dense with ideas, a welcome change from most economics books that are short of ideas but long on verbage.
 
How about we be grateful that neither Obama nor the spendy Keynesians have had much to do with the economy these last few years and it's recovering like it always does.

Oh no. The economy isn't recovering "like is always does." This recovery has been extremely slow, and that is especially disturbing when you consider that severe downturns like 07 to 09 usually produce robust recoveries.

The economy is recovering better from this recession than it did from the 2000 recession, even ignoring the Bush deregulation derangement financial crisis, that is the current recession. It is just that the Bush deregulation derangement financial crisis and recession was a much deeper recession, in magnitude much closer to the Great Depression.

I would appreciate a cite for your statement "that severe downturns like 07 to 09 usually produce robust recoveries." Since the BDDFC&R was a caused by a financial crisis unprecedented by any since the Great Depression I assume that it is the Great Depression that you are comparing it to as producing a "robust recovery." Is this correct, you consider the recovery from the Great Depression to be a robust one?

If not what other severe recession are you talking about?
 
Obama has been bombing and droning and maintaining wars all over the place.

He has been spending a lot. Unless you think non-stop war is cheap.

The problem is there is way too little Keynesian spending.

That is why the recovery is so sluggish.

The only time things are ever improving for the working man is when there is a lot of Keynesian spending and strong unions.

That is why things have been worse and worse for the working man over the last 40 years.

But of course there are those who imagine all is good when it only the lives of the rich that are improving.

You don't seem to have a firm grasp of spendy Keynesianism. They think you can end the depression by fighting a world war and cause prosperity by burying jars full of money in the ground.

Also, spending has not been going up. It went up a lot in 2008-9 but is flat to down since.

We had a huge deficit because revenues went down, not because of spending.
 
Obama has been bombing and droning and maintaining wars all over the place.

He has been spending a lot. Unless you think non-stop war is cheap.

The problem is there is way too little Keynesian spending.

That is why the recovery is so sluggish.

The only time things are ever improving for the working man is when there is a lot of Keynesian spending and strong unions.

That is why things have been worse and worse for the working man over the last 40 years.

But of course there are those who imagine all is good when it only the lives of the rich that are improving.

You don't seem to have a firm grasp of spendy Keynesianism. They think you can end the depression by fighting a world war and cause prosperity by burying jars full of money in the ground.

Also, spending has not been going up. It went up a lot in 2008-9 but is flat to down since.
I thought Obama was spending us into oblivion?
 
Really? When was the last time we had an equivalent downturn, pray tell?

That's just the point. The recent recession was the worst since the Great Depression so the recovery should be more robust than usual. After the 80-82 recession, we had growth rates of over 7%. This recovery has a growth rate in the 2% range.

Are recessions different based on the cause? The Bush minor depression was caused by a financial crisis brought on by mismanagement of mortgage backed securities by the financial markets and the inattention of the conservative regulators to prevent the mismanagement based on their bizarre belief that the financial markets could self-regulate. These types of recessions take much longer to recover from because the entire banking system is called into question.

I would appreciate a citation on the 7% growth rate out of the 80 recession. Presumably you are talking about some other country than the US. Go to Fred and produce a graph.Yes, the growth rate exceeded 7% for one quarter, but only nominally. corrected for inflation growth was pretty flat.
 
You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.

http://www.pegc.us/archive/Articles/eco_ur-fascism.pdf

I'm sorry, but I'm not going to take the trouble to read a multi-page article on Umberto Eco's non-authoritative reminiscence about fascism. The definition I offered refers to fascist economic thinking. There are, of course, other elements to fascism, especially the political. But this discussion is about economics.

Yes, the predominate economics today bears a lot of resemblance to the corporate kleptocarcy that you see under fascism. But "fascism" is such a loaded word that I think that it doesn't help the discussion. If you want to start a thread about the similarities between the economics under fascism and the current supply side, neoclassical economics I for one would participate.
 
I don't think it describes what used to be our US government. The tax payers did not have to bail out any too big to fail banks during the great depression. And Theodore Roosevelt actually went after business leaders for being corrupt instead of giving them blow jobs.

The Reconstruction Finance Corporation, established under Hoover and operating through the FDR presidency, was essentially a taxpayer backed bailout for too-big-to-fail organizations. In either case, that doesn't make the 'Fascism' definition provided by Bill anymore accurate.

Yes, the banks have to be bailed out. They are a critical part of the economy and the public has to trust the banks for there to be a recovery, especially from a recession caused by improprieties and mismanagement in the financial markets. This is why it is so important to separate the banks from speculation as it was twenty years ago. Especially from speculating with government guaranteed deposits, which Dodd Frank took away but Congress is sneaking back in by canceling this provision of Dodd Frank.
 
You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.

http://www.pegc.us/archive/Articles/eco_ur-fascism.pdf

I'm sorry, but I'm not going to take the trouble to read a multi-page article on Umberto Eco's non-authoritative reminiscence about fascism. The definition I offered refers to fascist economic thinking. There are, of course, other elements to fascism, especially the political. But this discussion is about economics.

Your loss. Fascism is a pretty loaded word and most historians, or for that matter economists, can't seem to agree if there is a consistent economic model which was applied across fascist countries. Hell the Nazis alone couldn't be described as having a considered economic model.

Have you even read the 25 points programme? (11, 13, and 16 specifically) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Program
 
You don't seem to have a firm grasp of spendy Keynesianism. They think you can end the depression by fighting a world war and cause prosperity by burying jars full of money in the ground.

Also, spending has not been going up. It went up a lot in 2008-9 but is flat to down since.
I thought Obama was spending us into oblivion?

He was increasing spending a lot back when the economy sucked. Then the Republicans won the house, we got the economy killing government shutdown, sequester, etc.

It's weird how the economy didn't get better when the spending was increased and now is getting better when it didn't. It's almost as if the Keynesian religion is wrong.

For the record, here are the Federal spending numbers:


2007 2,728,686
2008 2,982,544
2009 3,517,677
2010 3,457,079
2011 3,603,059
2012 3,537,127
2013 3,454,605

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals/
 
I thought Obama was spending us into oblivion?

He was increasing spending a lot back when the economy sucked.

He was? I wasn't aware that he signed the 2007-2009 budgets into law.

Then the Republicans won the house, we got the economy killing government shutdown, sequester, etc.

It's weird how the economy didn't get better when the spending was increased and now is getting better when it didn't. It's almost as if the Keynesian religion is wrong.

For the record, here are the Federal spending numbers:


2007 2,728,686
2008 2,982,544
2009 3,517,677
2010 3,457,079
2011 3,603,059
2012 3,537,127
2013 3,454,605

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals/

How is Keynesianism almost wrong since we've been at elevated spending levels since 2009?

We've had elevated spending levels and tax cuts since the Great Recession which sounds exactly like a Keynesian prescription.
 
He was increasing spending a lot back when the economy sucked.

He was? I wasn't aware that he signed the 2007-2009 budgets into law.

Then the Republicans won the house, we got the economy killing government shutdown, sequester, etc.

It's weird how the economy didn't get better when the spending was increased and now is getting better when it didn't. It's almost as if the Keynesian religion is wrong.

For the record, here are the Federal spending numbers:


2007 2,728,686
2008 2,982,544
2009 3,517,677
2010 3,457,079
2011 3,603,059
2012 3,537,127
2013 3,454,605

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals/

How is Keynesianism almost wrong since we've been at elevated spending levels since 2009?

We've had elevated spending levels and tax cuts since the Great Recession which sounds exactly like a Keynesian prescription.

Tax cuts? What tax cuts?

But anyway just to be clear your position is the reason the economy is doing so great now is that we had a big increase in spending in 2009?

And that current spending levels are "elevated"?

Since the economy is so great now, should we be cutting the spending back to non-elevated levels?
 
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