The answer as to why Europe is still in the economic crisis the US got out of

They didn't have Barack Obama as their President. That's why we are enjoying job growth and economic expansion while Europe is floundering

Both in his own right and comparative to Shrub.

due to his action to increase the troop presence in Afghanistan.

I don't think he can ever receive NEAR as warm of welcome as he enjoyed during his last visit to Germany.

I forgot that she was some great progressive.

:)

:hi:

he rolls.:)

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so that they can manipulate their hedge bets to the profit side?

There are even fewer restrictions on these cretins when they run their cons internationally.

when you have hedge fund managers that are capable of throwing around as much wealth as many nations, with little to no regulation, you have a situation where natural market forces are destroyed by manipulation. The best thing that could happen to our world economy would be for effective international regulations be created for those funds.

But but but that's not what DU says! :rofl:

Anyone who thinks the US is out from under the crisis is whistling past the graveyard.

:evilgrin:

and all those economists that use facts and reason and then go ahead and dare talk about the economic recovery

you're right, I should listen to you instead:crazy:

It's especially easy to listen to those who are saying what you want to hear.

since you gave me a choice.

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recovers more quickly than Europe.

Whether it is a good thing or not is up to you to decide.

They have different considerations and are not one country.

But we do have a great President.

the old Clinton team that was responsible for the impressive economic growth of the 90s. As I told people who insisted that group would lead our nation further into disaster, 8 years did not suddenly make all those people stupid.

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:crazy:



:7

fact that we are recovering while Europe is floundering?:shrug:

to make sure that disaster doesn't happen again isn't recovery. But go ahead stick your head in the sand and continue in ignorance it's your right. But don't expect others to pretend as if you aren't talking out of your ass.

But then I don't get paid to post propagandist bullshit on internet message boards.

They really should get their money back. You're a piss poor representative of the DLC position.

Europe is indeed having a tough time. If I want the bare facts on economic issues, I get them from my brother. he has two PhDs in economics and is an economist for France and Spain. He regularly travels to Brussels to the European Economic Council Headquarters. He also has written several books on the subject and has a Saturday morning radio show in Spain. I trust his many years of experience and his judgment. Therefore, let me tell you that we are far from doing well in this country.

;-)

until then I will let the results speak for themselves and go with the team that produces them.

;-)

unfortunately for you things like jobs and GDP growth and corporate profit turn arounds are not fantasy.

And it's reflective of how partisan politics and the disciplined narrative triumph over knowledge and a willingness to recognize problems as they are and entertain real solutions to them.

Europe has problems going back decades. Like America, part of it is structural, though their economies and governments are structured much differently than ours. Part of it is the same financial criminality that afflicted us and continues to afflict us to this day. Part of it is the difficulty in integrating smaller economies and larger economies into one big European market. When you attempt to impose a measure of uniformity and inter-connectivity between differently structured economies and governments, some of them will feel disproportionate strains - especially smaller countries in comparison to the larger ones.

And, in case you aren't aware, our economy isn't "fixed". The bubble is re-inflating. All of those things the banks did to cause our collapse in the first place? They've been doing them again. Still. Except this time, they're not using companies like AIG as their parachute for the inevitable collapse of the ponzi scheme - they're using the U.S. government.

And unless there are deep, structural, significant changes in our financial sector, starting with the return of Glass-Steagall, the U.S. government will suffer the exact same fate as AIG, only at nuclear holocaust levels.

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maybe the disconnect from the reality that President Obama put together the same economic team that was responsible for the impressive economic boon of the 90s?

Are those the ones you are talking about?

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And I hope my words can be heard that far down the rabbit hole. Look up Fed policies while Geithner was in charge, and how banks like Goldman Sachs used them to literally print money from the U.S. Government. Look up how the Fed gave the banks loans with no interest and how they used that money to buy Treasury bills that paid interest from the government. Look at how the SEC mumbled about flash trading but then refused to enforce a ban on it. Look at Geithner's role in creating PPIP - a program that made it profitable and desirable for the banks to re-buy all those toxic assets we were told they had to get rid of immediately because it allowed them to resell them to the government at a profit. Look up how the Fed approved billions in no interest loans to recapitalize and increase liquidity, and how the banks then held that money hostage until the government gave them even more billions.

All of this knowledge is out there. All of these policies, and the theft of trillions from the American taxpayer, had our current Treasury Secretary colluding and creating them.

The current economic recovery is much like the so-called Bush recovery. It's built on paper, and Wall Street has flooded the markets with toxic assets all over again with the U.S. government as their guarantor and personal money printer.

You're very cavalier about a situation just as dangerous as the 2008 collapse. Except we're not in the same place as we were in 2008. Our economy is weakened. How do you think it will fare when the bubble pops again?

And these policies and the bail out philosophies that allow the bank to do these things with unlimited tax-payer money were engineered by the economic team you're celebrating.

Educate yourself.

You need to look at the big picture (our economic recovery) and not just all the details you list.

They talked up job creation, economic growth, etc. Wall Street? Yeah, we should probably regulate that a little bit, but I'm sure it'll be fine. Look at this great economy! Look at the low unemployment!

And then it all went boom.

Wall Street has spent the past two years lighting a number of fuses, and people like Geithner and others on the Obama economic team have been supplying them with a hell of a lot of matches.

I mean, I know it's rather trite to say "Those who don't learn from history . . ." but history was two freaking years ago! People can be forgiven for forgetting things that happened in the 70s, 80s, or even 90s, but how on earth can you ignore what happened 24 months ago?!

Like I said, it is a disconnect from all reality and a brazen, willful, rather frightening attempt to shape narrative over truth in grand Orwellian fashion.

Well, tick tock, my friend. Tick tock. How many jobs and lives are acceptable losses to the narrative? Because that's the forest here. You're not even looking at the weeds.

and ran it into the ground.

This is basic history.

In 2006 and 2007, the annual unemployment rate stood at 4.6% (less than Clinton's best). Until the economic cataclysm, Bush's net job creation from 2001 through 2007 (I'm disincluding 2008 to prove the point) was about 6 million jobs. Again, not as good as Clinton.

However.

That low unemployment rate was trumpeted by Republicans before the collapse. The job creation numbers were spread far and wide.

Of course, it was all an illusion. Of course, so much of it was underwritten by bad paper. Of course, only the bravest souls like Roubini dared say "Clusterfuck incoming!"

We should know better than this. Far better. It wasn't that long ago.

Republicans trying to down play Clinton's economic accomplishments. The 90s economic expansion was more than just the bubble formed by tech stock speculation. We saw a healthy expansion of the US auto industry and the creation and/or the expansion of solid tech companies like Cisco, Microsoft, Google, Dell and many others. To suggest the economic expansion of the 90s was mostly just an artificial construct of the tech spec bubble does a disservice to all real economic growth and expansion that took place.

Clinton's two terms resulted in a net gain of about 20 million jobs.

The tech bubble alone could never account for that kind of record.

I have debated many a right winger that refuse to give President Clinton his due and the tech bubble is their leading excuse not to.

Before quitting last year (I honestly couldn't take it anymore), I worked for one of the big banks involved in the collapse and bail-outs. I worked mainly with mortgage refinances, debt consolidations, financial planning, etc., but was deeply interconnected with our investment house as well. I wasn't very high in the company, but how the behemoth worked interested me, so I tried to pay as much attention as possible.

Internally, a lot of us knew as far back as 2004-05 that things weren't adding up. We watched the horrid mortgages, toxic assets, sub-prime, and said amongst ourselves "This will not end well." The banks knew. We knew. All you had to do is really look at what they were doing to understand not only was all of it totally unsustainable, but that someone somewhere was going to end up holding the bag in the end as millions lost their homes. Some of us, myself included, wouldn't take clients who we knew could never afford their mortgages. Yes it cost us commission, and yeah, a lot of other agents didn't have nearly our scruples, but all of it had the deep stench of inevitable disaster.

After the 2008 collapse, I figured "Well, this is so bad that the politicians will have no choice but to do something." A reinstatement of Glass-Steagall at the very least. And then the Fed started giving away trillions in loans, TARP, and incentives. The Fed was rewarding the banks for their bad behavior. The Fed was making the bad behavior not only desirable, but ostentatiously lucrative - so good, that the banks started buying up the toxic assets all over again.

Read the CEO reports from Goldman Sachs over the past two years. They've learned nothing. They're flaunting that they've learned nothing. They're piling up billions in bonuses because they feel they earned them for being so awesome in engineering various schemes to use interest free government loans to bilk the taxpayers out of hundreds of billions.

Right now, I feel like I'm back in 2005. I'm looking at what the banks are doing, looking at the Fed, looking at the weak reform, and thinking "This will not end well."

But this time, I don't think we will have to wait three years to see it. And like 2006 and 2007, employment numbers and economic gains will be cited to maintain the illusion, the narrative, the "Don't worry, things are fine now, see? Worry not at all." Until things are not well, and the banks who are too big to fail suck the U.S. Treasury dry in the exact same way they did clients, investors, and insurance companies in 2008.

And you have to understand where I'm coming from. I'd really rather not a Republican in office in 2012. If only for the whole LGBT equality thing. A Republican win in 2012 will delay my family's security and safety for years. So when I say, the current financial reforms are inadequate, that putting Geithner in charge is totally insane, that the Fed's policies have re-inflated the bubble, that the current economic narrative has a lot of bad paper and Wall Street hucksterism undergirding it, I'm not doing it out of antipathy towards the President. I have a significant self-interest in seeing these problems addressed.

If this thing is allowed to continue and blows up again in 2011 or 2012, nothing will save Obama. Not a damn thing.

which is good enough for me. Still, we do need to see what comes out of conference. As for letting the banks fail to teach them a lesson, it just wan't going to happen. Rest assured in good times and bad the rich always come out on top. So the people that would have been hurt, had the banks not been saved, would have been the poor and middle class (just as it has been through out man's history). As for banks learning lessons, that will simply never happen. Banks are about short term profits by whatever means possible. Only regulations, like the ones being passed (and hopefully more in the future) will prevent a repeat of what happened.

that Europe's present difficulties spring from the inability of nations using a common currency- the Euro- to respond to their individual economic challenges with effective monetary policy.

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This is a serious question, and not in any way a violation of "the rules".

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The disconnect from reality is that Europe has a completely different scale of economy, different social values, and different level of acceptable risk.

Why don't you instead talk about the economic boom of the 90's being due to the incipient "tech" bubble? Oh because that would imply there was concommitant crash. Why the deep dark problems of that Obama single handedly was the only person able to fix? Because of the real estate and derivatives crashes, caused by wild ass unregulated speculation. What specifically did Obama do to amend that: oh yes, bailout money. That was a good idea.

What is Europe doing? Bailouts. Now before you try to extend that into bailouts were Obama's idea, they were not, and our "bailouts" happened pretty much in the same timeline response to the issue that Europes bailouts are occurring, and can be expected to take as long to see a result. So Europe really just started "floundering" in reaction to the US fucking up the world economy, and it will take them an equivalent amount of time to stabilize and recover. I can connect that to Obama, but benevolently, maliciously, or just misguided and inappropriate, any connection you make to the man himself would be erroneous and miss.

Obama is a better president without having people mischaracterize facts.

or are you suggesting Europe isn't floundering?

:rofl:

Of course, if America's President was Kevin Rudd, it might have avoided the recession altogether, and unemployment would be headed down toward 4%.

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"got out of" the economic crisis yet. And meanwhile, the robber barons on Wall Street are still the ones who are really running the show.