What is plaguing the US economy is unrelated to the “structural problem” of too much innovation. It is a hangover from the era of federally subsidized cheap credit and the housing bubble it inflated. Households are paying down debt instead of spending, and people aren’t building and flipping second houses with the expectation that they’re bound to double in value in a few years.

Obama prolonged the woes by handing out subsidies for cars and houses. He discouraged business and raised gas prices with new restrictions such as his moratorium on deep-water oil drilling. His health-care law makes it more expensive for employers to hire, a fact his administration has implicitly acknowledged by granting more than 1,000 waivers from the law to businesses including McDonald’s.

The only “structural issue” is the structure of Obama’s mind, which keeps telling him to pass a law or regulation first and pick up the pieces later.

Yes, the Bush years were truly a Golden Era for the United States. Budget surpluses, health care for all, peace throughout the land. Fucktard, you need to put down the crack pipe for a while.

Lets talk about that for a second...healthcare...

Do you honestly believe that by the end of Obama's term more people will have healthcare or be without healthcare then during Bush's term? Do you honestly believe that Obamacare will make healthcare costs more affordable? As I see it, healthcare is less affordable now then at any point in history. More people are jobless and have less access to healthcare.

If you are paying less for healthcare now then at the start of Obama's Presidency, then I would like to know your provider...

Obamacare is not a mandate to make insurance more affordable or to give people more access to healthcare. They are basically saying buy an insurance policy or pay a fine...insurance policies that are now less affordable then at any point in the history of the world.

Portege is so smart.

Wow, I never knew we had a problem of "Too Much Innovation".

Portege must really be an advanced thinker. I have never heard that "Too Much Innovation" was a problem.

I would think that any other country in the world would like to have "Too Much Innovation".

We should all listen to Portege a lot more so that we all have the great insight he does.

Please let us know where you learned this amazing fact Portege.

Thanks for making us aware of the problem Portege.

MM

(Message edited by majormajor on June 19, 2011)

I don't know anything about Portege or how he's forming his opinions. So I don't know that we should all listen to him.

I do know that the guy I've learned a lot from, about this economic crisis, saw it coming from a long way off.

Here's a clip from an interview he gave, on a small local TV station, back in 2002. (He wasn't being invited onto mainstream programs until around 2005 or 2006).

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhJaVEWAG24
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emvMqjtcO7o

Total run time is just under 20 minutes.

The clip is important in that it establishes credibility. Most of the experts that, today, comment on how well the recovery is going; what's being done right/wrong did NOT see the crisis coming - so why listen to them now?

Here's another clip of a speech Peter gave to a room full of mortgage brokers in 2006.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6G3Qefbt0n4

That clip is longer - being eight clips of nearly ten minutes each. You'll have to find the remaining clips - if you want to watch it.

As with the shorter clip above, this one establishes credibility - since what he says during the presentation is now well known.

So what's this got to do with the way things are today? Well, according to Peter, NOTHING that is being done today will result in a real, sustainable recovery. QE 1, 2, and 3 are only serving to prolong the pain - and will ultimately make matters much worse when, finally, the powers that be empty their bag of tricks.

What's "much worse,"? Extreme inflation, maybe even hyperinflation. Meaning anyone with money in the bank could be wiped out.

See, the US has two choices in regards to the money they owe:

1: declare bankruptcy and restructure their debts to a MUCH lower amount

2: keep creating US$ and pay it off with increasingly worth less money

Option number one is the honest one. Guess which one they're going with...

Listen to him; don't listen to him. It's up to you. I think he makes sense. A LOT of sense. He's one of the only guys that does. Plus he explains thing very clearly.

By the way here's another guy that should be listened to - squeaky voice and all:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5nGCpzel6o

CC

(Message edited by ChicaChaser on June 20, 2011)

ChicaChaser,

I like Ron Paul too. Close to 3 years ago, I read his book End The Fed. It is dead on about the root cause of all our American's economic woes. The bizarre thing is that none of the other candidates including Obama ever talk about the Fed and what a jack ass Ben Bernanke is.

It is not Bush or Obama that is destroying the country it is Greenspan and Bernanke.

Ron Paul has been a lunatic for a long time. He'll be a lunatic for as long as he's alive. Defaulting on bonds is the ultimate Republican wet dream since it would give them reasoning to kill off Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and every other social safety-net program there is. It would gut the middle class and turn the US into a rich/poor nation, with nothing in the middle. Since most of us have been in more than a few countries where that's the norm - like Brasil - can any of us say that that's what we want?

I think it is interesting that the majority of people complaining about so called entitlement programs themselves are not financially well off to truly absorb such a dramatic change to Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and every other social safety-net program and would end up financial destitute. All those beating the drum for changes , such as Paul Ryan, (cut pasted from a weblink from the Center of Budget and Policy Priorities) call for crazy policy changes that would result in a massive transfer of resources from the broad majority of Americans to the nation’s wealthiest individuals. The Roadmap would give the most affluent households a new round of very large, costly tax cuts by reducing income tax rates on high-income households, but with large benefit cuts to the social safety that we have in place today that allows the majority of middle class to live with some senses of dignity as they age.

From my perspective, most of those people pounding the drums in support of the Tea Party and the other lunatic ideas from individuals like Ron Paul would drive themselves into poverty and not being able to make ends meet if all these proposed change crap would go through.

All the changes being proposed by these radicals would indeed wipe out most of the middle class and lower end income people in case of any financial hardship and transfer this wealth to the rich. Do any of this people have even a bit of common sense on how bad these proposals are on the average joe????

Shifting more wealth to the rich will not magically fix or economy, nor create millions of jobs!!!

I know there are some well off people on this board, but I also know as a fact that many are not - the latter would be fucked, quite literally with all the proposed changes.

Since some individuals on this board, like Protege, love to use links to web based articles to support their "facts"...here is another -> http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3114

The answer is for BOTH parties to work together towards a solution to keep and maintain a stable middle class, without continuing to expand benefits to those already rich and not needing them.

A lot of the poor support these nuts. They've been convinced that their situation is because of unions and liberals and everyone else wasting their money. If they make $10 an hour, then why should a teacher or engineer make more than that? Republicans have done an excellent job in turning poor whites against the middle class. The campaign slogan should be "if I don't have mine, then you shouldn't have yours". It's sickening from an intellectual perspective. People with no health insurance are screaming to repeal the healthcare laws. People with no education are screaming for teachers and college professors to take pay cuts and have their benefits crushed. It's a real caveman mentality that leaves Republicans in power laughing since they don't want a middle class at all. The middle class demands good schools, health care, stuff like that. The poor usually don't since they're preoccupied with just getting through the day.

The Republican goal is the same as the one all conservatives have wanted for centuries. Maintain the status quo, do what you're told, be happy for little, stay out of the way.

Bluestraveller,

"The bizarre thing is that none of the other candidates including Obama ever talk about the Fed and what a jack ass Ben Bernanke is."

They don't talk about it, if they're even aware of how dangerous the FED is, because they're not supposed to. They're all stuffed shirt puppets.

and

"It is not Bush or Obama that is destroying the country it is Greenspan and Bernanke."

Hear hear.

Obama is just a better puppet than Bush. He can actually read a teleprompter competently and really sound like he knows what he's talking about.

Cat, LM,

Ron Paul is a decent man (and physician) that, if elected President, would do his best to follow the Constitution and Bill of Rights. For that reason, he'd be assassinated - by the same sort of people that killed the Kennedys.

The powers that be, the ones pulling the strings attached to the politicians, HATE those two documents.

Did you know that the Bill of Rights isn't about the rights of the people? No. It stipulates what the limitations of the Federal Government are - and they are many. The Federal Government should be miniscule in comparison to the size it has grown to nowadays. It's because those two documents are only paid lip service nowadays that it isn't.

CC

Cat,

I forgot to respond to your statement:

"It would gut the middle class and turn the US into a rich/poor nation, with nothing in the middle."

As I alluded to two posts above, that's what all this stimulus spending is going to do: anyone with savings in the bank will be wiped out. That means the middle class by the way. The poor have no savings and the very very rich are savvy enough to buy hard assets.

As Peter (Schiff) has said:

"If governments could print their way out of debt everyone would do it," (Or words to that effect).

All countries, not just the US, should go back to using sound money and GREATLY shrink their federal (national) government. I'm not holding my breath on that ever happening though.

CC

"Did you know that the Bill of Rights isn't about the rights of the people? No. It stipulates what the limitations of the Federal Government are - and they are many."

Well, you're partly right. The Bill of Rights is a mixture of amendments protecting the rights of individuals (by restricting the scope of the State) and amendments shaping intergovernmental relations (e.g., 9 & 10). Keep in mind that these are just 10 amendments to the Constitution, which is the guiding document of the Republic, not the Bill of Rights.

And if you think interpreting these articles and amendments is straightforward, it isn't. There's a reason that Constitutional Law is one of the most vibrant areas of legal scholarship.