This week's National Journal poll of top political bloggers finds some broader areas of agreement. Asked to "Grade the performance of the president's economic team in inspiring public confidence," neither the Left nor the Right thought that the team was doing a good job, although there was disagreement about how bad they were doing. The Left gave Team Obama a C+, while the Right awarded an F. My comment: "Like McCain, the Obama team is right that the economy is not nearly as bad as the hysterics contend. But the Obama team itself was a prime promoter of hysteria -- not only during the campaign, but also during the push for the so-called 'stimulus,' which was based on aggressive use of the politics of fear. So at this point, some people are understandably skeptical when Obama now tells us: 'Never mind. The economy is fundamentally sound. Trust us. Stop all those Tea Parties.'"
Question two was "How much will bailout fatigue hamper President Obama's ability to advance his economic agenda?" Sixty-four percent of the Left said "a great deal" or "a moderate amount," and did 88 percent of the Right. My comment: "At this point, it is difficult to believe that the Obama administration is competent at spending money efficiently, or much interested in adhering to its admirable campaign promises in favor of transparency and against pork and earmarks. Given the record so far, giving the Obama administration even more money to spend -- especially on something as monumental as restructuring American health care -- would be like putting Kathleen Blanco in charge of disaster relief." Not that the performance of the Bush administration--either in its handling of Katrina or of the corporate welfare bailouts--was any better.
Left/Right bloggers agree: Obama team weak on promoting economic confidence; bailout fatigue will impede Obama agenda:
Everything is relative.
IMHO, were there any other person as president, for example, Senator McCain, things would be as bad or worse. And there could have been no-one worse than Bush.
So, while you are not real happy with Obama, I think you would not be happy with anyone.
You are simply pouting. Perhaps a time-out would be appropriate.
Why does this matter any more? People need to get out of campaign mode with respect to Obama.
/s/Prof. Einstein
And anyone who doesn't agree is a racist.
I am not sure I agree with your first statement. I am sure that I disagree with your second.
We would have been better served with a fiscally conservative president from 2001 to 2009. Perhaps a fiscal conservative would do well now. But there were none of those nominated by the Republicans and not enough libertarians voted for Bob Barr.
I would rather have Obama than Bush or McCain and that is the only measure I can use.
Why not use a model of competency? Surely, any President from Reagan through Clinton would have done better? FDR certainly did better in a much more difficult situation, and with a lot less economic knowledge than we have today.
I frankly don't care whether Bush or McCain would have done better, since they are not in office. All I care about is whether our current President will do the job. So far, the evidence is far from encouraging.
He would not have proposed, let alone let pass, a spending bill that our children and grandchildren will have to pay off. He wouldn't have considered increasing taxes during a time of a recession, for anyone. He wouldn't have the idiocy to think that if you tax the more affluent there would be no repercussion or changes in buying habits from this group.
I do believe that "change" does not consist of wrapping the same old crooked cronies in a new package. Change is bringing in new and different people, from outside the political sphere, with new visions and ideas.Change is being creative and doing something new and distinctive.
Also... though McCain and Palin were far from what I would ever want for President/Vice President at least they had some experience, executive experience as compared to Obama and his 150 present votes and years and years of campaigning and forcing of competitors to drop out.
No, I'm not a racist. It's sad that so many Obama supporters bring up race constantly. I find those who say anything about race to be the true racist. I don't vote based on race, I don't care. I generally don't talk about it, only respond to the idiotic comments of others.
I don't like nor support Obama because he has no experience. He is extremely radical in his beliefs, I believe he is leading us to a socialist regime and I don't like that. I don't like how he wants to penalize people for being successful. I dont' like how he is spending my hard earned money and turning around and calling for "fiscal responsibility."
I don't like Obama for his lack of professionalism and inability to speak graciously without a teleprompter and I do not like his lack of respect for the office and this nation.
Of course, this is just my opinion.
I have problems with how the new Administration is handling issues, and especially with their inability to communicate their plans effectively. In a way, this is Obama's version of the "Old Europe" statements from the Bush Administration; in both cases policy was made needlessly more difficult via communication missteps.
However, the American public has a memory longer than 2 months, and it's pretty clear to most of us that Obama might be struggling, but he's struggling with somebody else's demons.
Let's see how well the "Obama didn't fix the Bush-Paulson AIG bailout!" line works for folks like you.
So he may not be the best of all possible Presidents, but he's the best of all available Presidents. And I'm pretty happy with that.
This is the case only because of the steps taken by the "Obama team" and the Bush finance team as well as the Fed. To think otherwise displays a profound ignorance of the recent past and current economic situation.
I prefer to trust the opinions of Bernanke, Paulson, Geithner et al (as flawed as they are) over Kopel any day.
Six? You were only admiring Obama since he was an undistinguished Illinois Senate backbencher? Dude, I was pledging fealty to Obama back when he was "community organizing," whatever the hell that is.
Nick
Realistically, if you dislike Obama's policies, you should probably want him to start trying to restructure health care as soon as possible. Chances are high that this will be the legislative equivalent of a land war in Asia, or death being on the line against a Sicilian. He (and Congress) will get bogged down in endless interest group fights and cost projections, hampering his ability to carry out other policies.
I had assumed health care reform wouldn't begin until early 2010, after the Congressional elections and when Obama would have some kind of track record and political capital. But I've read that he plans on moving forward later this year, which is a "positive" event if you're concerned about what Obama &Congress would otherwise do.
I assume you mean 2011. Why would Obama put off anything of importance until after the mid-terms? The odds are against him expanding his majorities. If he manages to expand his majorities, than the public must be pretty happy with him, and he'll be able to push his health plan through with no difficulty.
I don't want Obama to do anything right now. It's going to be hard for him to become more popular. He's never going to get more of a free pass from the press than he gets right now. The sentiments of "don't just stand there, do something" will never be higher. If he can't ram a program through now, he never will.
"...Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary. As chairman of the New York Fed, he was deeply involved in the original AIG bailout and helped create the current mess."
There is no evidence whatsoever that what you quoted, is in fact, reality. Just because you say it doesn't make it so.
The "current mess" was caused by overly leveraged homeowners, overly leveraged corporations, and too many individuals and organizations taking on too much risk. The AIG failure is merely an example of this callous disregard for leverage and risk. One might argue that bailing out AIG was an error, but that is simply not what "helped create the current mess."
By current "mess" I mean the AIG bailout mess, not the general economic mess.
raimo1@hot.ee
Schwacher Dollar-Bank Fed
Der Dollar ist unsere Währung und euer Problem,“ nach diesem altbekannten Motto versuchen sich die Vereinigten Staaten wieder einmal aus der selbst verursachten Wirtschafts- und Finanzkrise zu mogeln.
Die Ankündigung der amerikanischen Notenbank Fed am Mittwochabend, Staatsanleihen über 300 Milliarden Dollar sowie hypothekenbesicherte Wertpapiere über 750 Milliarden Dollar zu kaufen, hat die Kurse für Staatsanleihen deutlich steigen lassen, dagegen den Dollar stark fallen lassen.
Dollar wertet in wenigen Tagen mehr als fünf Prozent ab
Waren am Mittwochmorgen noch 1,2987 Dollar nötig gewesen, um einen Einheit der europäischen Einheitswährung Euro erwerben zu können, so waren am Freitag bis zu 1,3738 Dollar nötig. Das entspricht einer Abwertung von rund 5,5 Prozent in gerade einmal zwei Tagen.
Sorry, I did mean 2011. For the mid-terms, depending on what sites you look at (such as 538), there seem to be more Republican Senate seats at risk than Democrat, and so the Demoncrats could pick up seats there.
Also, my general belief (perhaps wrong) is that we'll start to see the economy begin to rebound before the end of 2010. Obama and the Democrats surely will take credit for this rebound and blame Bush and the Republicans for the collapse, regardless of whatever evidence there is or is not for either proposition. Thus, I expect Obama will be more popular by the mid-terms than he is right now, or will be a few months from now.
As for the idea of pushing through any health plan with little difficulty, I think given current US politics any broad health care plan is going to be difficult to get passed. Because of the lobbying and various criss-crossing interests at stake, it's not going to be easy regardless of the President's popularity.
His current popularity isn't all that high compared to what other presidents have had at the start of their terms. The "don't just stand" sentiment is certainly (and unfortunately) true for the economy, but I doubt it's there to the same degree as health care reform. Also, his handling of the economy so far has raised doubts, and those likely will become more severe as things continue to get worse through 2009. If he starts trying to reform health care in late 2009, he's going to get bogged down and may cause another backlash in 2010.
I think that, especially for bloggers (and what is blogging, if not all about instant gratification) they want to see results.
In fact, when it comes to the economy getting better, I want to see results immediately too. But, it is going to take some time. End of story. Obama has only been in office for two months.
should be
I think Obama said it well on Leno. It took us some time for the failed policies of the Bush administration to get us into this economic crisis, it is going to take some time to get out of them.
As for whether McCain would be better, we can't say. I can say that, with McCain, Romney might be Secretary of the Treasury. That would be a definite improvement.
A more precise comment might be: "we tried it with your [neo-con/con/Republican] guys for eight years." Whether or not they did it "your way" is between you and them. "Conservatives" must live with the actions of other "conservatives". Re Romney, why would you assume that he of all people would be against anything done by investment banks, lenders or the AIG's of the world. He's a "hands off"-no regulation guy. How is Bain Capital doing?
Funny how this idea never came up (from the left) during the election, when everyone bent over backwards to assure us that Obama was so very different from everyone else in his party, his circle of friends, his political comrades back in Chicago, his Che-shirt-wearing supporters, and everyone else on his side of the aisle.
But back on topic:Many of the complex financial instruments that went belly-up were invented in the 80's. The failure to regulate, or blame for specific tweaks to financial/real estate market regulations, falls squarely in Congress' lap (both in the 90's and in the 00's). And arguably the biggest enabler of the entire mess was the Fed, who is nominally an independant institution from the Administration proper.
I agree that it took quite some time for us to land in this mess. But where, exactly, did our non-economist-in-chief dredge up the idea that it was all Bush policies, which in any case had less than 8 years to affect things?
* - I find both Harding and Obama quite likable, and their administrations in many respects preferable to the ones that preceded them.
incompetence.There, fixed it for you.
What many seem to forget is that we have a Democratic Congress and have had since after the 2006 elections. People seem to view the President as some kind of all- powerful demigod who can change reality by Fiat. The problem is a Democratic President coupled with an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress. If McCain had been elected, this would have prevented the more radical legislation from getting through. It's called checks and balances, but some have the bizarre idea that it isn't necessary for *their* guys because they are so incredibly ethical.
You are confused. Very confused.
Not only that, he has corrupted Eric Cantor who is now a 90% tax rate, back to the Eisenhower era, "tax and spend" guy. This is truly a remarkable achievement. So much for Virginia Commonwealth.
Still, Obama is going so far off the deep end that one can at least hope he may lose control of Congress much like Clinton did (and Bush, just took a little longer). Gridlock appears to be the best we can hope for.
On another note, it takes only a smidgeon of common sense to realize that Bernanke et al. are roughly the modern-day economic equivalent of those benighted physicians of centuries gone by who though to cure the sick by bleeding them.
By the time FDR came into office, the financial panic and associated depression had been in progress for three years. And Hoover had been quietly spraying down the nation's surviving banks with low-cost capital for years...The equivalent of TARP. Hoover took the blame for the pain on main street, and FDR didn't have to take any of the blame for propping up cigar-chomping banker fat cats.
Obama is entering office near the beginning of the crisis, not in the middle. His political position, at least, is a lot more difficult.
But yeah, FDR did better. He took an interest in getting Treasury staffed. And then made attending to the epicenter of the crisis, the financial system, his first priority....instead of putting it somewhere below ladling out pork to government contractors and figuring out his Final Four picks.
Harding has a reputation for competence? Who knew? About time, I say.
And how much longer does he get to blame Bush for everything? Is it Bush's fault he snubbed Gordon Brown? Is it Bush's fault he can't find Democrats who paid their taxes to staff his cabinet?
You're speaking of Glass-Steagall, the firewalling merits of which I may have neglected back in the day, no doubt due to my free-market fundamentalism, to which a continue to cling out of my antipathy to babies, science, and reason.
I am curious to hear what other libertarians have to say on your firewall point.
Banking is probably one of the most regulated businesses in existance ... which probalby explains why they are in such deep guano.
"President Barack Obama's budget would produce $9.3 trillion in deficits over the next decade, more than four times the deficits of Republican George W. Bush's presidency, congressional auditors said Friday.
The new Congressional Budget Office figures offered a far more dire outlook for Obama's budget than the new administration predicted just last month - a deficit $2.3 trillion worse. It's a prospect even the president's own budget director called unsustainable."
Remember the good old days when the country had another 20 years or so before it was bankrupted by entitlements? Remember when we had a federal reserve that wasn't working overtime to monetize the debt? Remember when Congress only ran up defecits of $500 billion? Good times, Good times.
I beginning to think it is broader, more like "Obama fatigue". In sixty days he's been in public face more than Chavez and Fidel in their salid days. The man is on a mission, and with more than a dash of narcissistic need to confront every sprig of opposition and doubt.
Obama has flip-flopped on the economy, raised expectations through promises of transformative change, dashed expectations fearing he might be held to account in the short term, then back again...all the while stuffing the budget with new social bromides.
The bottom line is while he economic program is a long-term disaster (as are his social policies) in the short term nothing he does matters much. The economy was projected to start recovery this summer without the stimulus program (Nick Bloom's forecast) and hum along at a modest pace in 2010. By Nov. of 2010 Obama and he Dems will claim they saved America.
Reality and truth are in short supply in politics.
Harding? Wow, that is damning with faint praise Harding is regarded as being among the worst Presidents in American history. His return to normalcy campaign was popular and led him to an easy electoral triumph in 1920. But he fell down when it came to governing. Harding was a poor judge of character. He had the first cabinet member sent to prison, many of his Ohio Gang were manifestly corrupt, and the Teapot Dome scandal broke on his watch. Harding did, however, preside over an improved economy. By 1923, the year of his death, the postwar recession was giving way to an increase in prosperity ("Roaring Twenties" to follow), and newspapers hailed Harding's success in following through with his campaign promise--"Less government in business and more business in government." (Kinda the opposite of what we are doing now, no?)
Its too early in the Obama administration for me to draw much of a comparison with Harding. The only similarity I see between Harding and Obama so far is that both men seem to be very poor judges of character. (Something to keep in mind the next time Obama says, "He is not the [insert name here] I thought I knew.")
"Wow, that is damning with faint praise Harding is regarded as being among the worst Presidents in American history."
That's what passive voice will get you. Clearly I dissent, largely for reasons you go on to chronicle yourself (I contend that Teapot Dome, et. al. were overblown, however).
As an American first and Republican at no more than fourth, I hope and pray that you are correct in this statement. In fact, I hope the economy recovers so well that Pres. Obama is reelected.
However, at this stage of the game, I have real doubts. It looks to me like no one in power in Washington is thinking of anything but politics when everyone needs to be thinking of economics. People vote their pocketbooks, and good economic policies are the best politics.
A number in errors in that one sentence:
1.The phrase "too big to fail" was first applied to Continental Illinois Bank back in the 80s.
2.The government solicited commercial banks to acquire investment banks last year to prevent the failure of the investment banks. There is nothing intrinsic in the repeal of G-S that led to this situation.
3. The main reason the commercial banks are in danger of failing has nothing to do with their acquisition of investment banks. The main problems, leaving "mark-to-market accounting rules and the SEC's repeal of the "uptick" rule for short sales out of the picture, their acquisition of home mortgage originators like Countrywide, which, I believe, would have been permitted under G-S, and their excessive investments in poorly understood mortgage pools and derivatives based on those mortgage pools.
4. President Clinton, who signed the G-S repeal, has said more than once that he thinks the repeal helped in this crisis. He has said he has seen no evidence that the repeal has anything to do with causing this crisis, and has asked to see the evidence (as have many other economic commentators.) So far, I have not seen any.
5. To the extent any banks fail, the FDIC will still pay off the depositors; it is the impact on the overall financial health of the economy which is feared.
It is way too early to know whether the steps taken by the government in the last year of the Bush Administration and so far in the Obama Administration are (1) necessary, (2) helpful, or (3) effective in dealing with the banking situation.
"That's what passive voice will get you. Clearly I dissent, largely for reasons you go on to chronicle yourself (I contend that Teapot Dome, et. al. were overblown, however)."
In contrast with your vews, I do not have a strong opinion on Warren Harding. He was a poor leader of an ethically challenged administration, but his policies were generally conservative and ultimately helped promote growth. But Harding's policies of calling for a "return to normalcy" and "less government in business" sure seem far removed from the current state of affairs.
Finally, given the predominantly poor opinion of Harding among historians, you will have to forgive me for viewing a comparison to Harding as less than complementary, even if it was not intended as such.
My opinions on Harding are far from strong (Rushmore is safe), although I do consider him underrated. I see parallels in the easygoing temperaments that appeal more to the average joe than the elites, the resulting bummish raps, and the two returns to normalcy after grand Wilsonian presidencies.
Policywise, though it makes me sad to say, limited government was not on the table this go round, and in the area where government has been most unlimited - playing world policeman and billing future generations for the service - Obama seems preferable to anything else on offer.
I agree with your first point. This past election lacked a champion for limited government. But if you prefer limited government, it is a mistake to regard Obama as the lesser of two evils. Obama's proposed budget quadruples the deficits of the Bush administration. And while McCain might have spent more on policing the world had he been elected, it is entitlements favored by Obama, not defense spending, that threaten to bankrupt our country (Social Security, subsidized health care, and other means tested entitlements have grown to claim over half of the federal budget -- while national defense spending is roughly 20%).
I'm afraid that entitlement reform will require a Nixon to China. The vested interests are too strong and too allergic to Republicans. I saw the meat grinder that consumed Bush when he bravely broached the subject.
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