You see, President Obama had to surrender to the Tea Party Republicans on every major economic issue in order to get the debt-ceiling deal. If the president had not agreed to massive cuts, the establishment of a structure that could undermine Medicare and an approach to future economic debates that virtually assures that the United States government will have neither the ability nor the will to stimulate job creation. he would not have gotten the deal. And if Obama had not gotten the debt-ceiling deal, the markets would have tanked.
Americans for Prosperity just sent misleading information about voting to thousands of Wisconsinites.
A Democratic Senate endorses a plan that Bernie Sanders warns risks “devastating cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid...”
That was the calculus at the White House, and among the Democrats who made the mistake of backing Obama as he veered far to the right in the debt-ceiling negotiations.
Unfortunately, it was wrong. Not just morally wrong. Not just politically wrong. Not just economically wrong. It was wrong with regard to the cherished markets.
The Dow finished Thursday down 512 points for the day—a 4.3 percent loss.
The S&P 500 and Nasdaq experienced similarly dramatic declines.
The three major indexes have in recent days erased all their gains for 2011—and they are nearing the 10 percent drop from the year's highs that would be defined as a major market "correction." The correction could, in fact, accelerate, especially if jobs figures that are expected tomorrow turn out to be disappointing.
The market dive started July 25, when it began to become clear that the Obama—who refused to take decisive action to raise the debt ceiling himself and declined to hold firm for new revenues that might have gotten the government some flexibility—was going to defer to the Republicans in the debt-ceiling fight.
There was never any question that the debt ceiling needed to be increased. Nor was there much question that steps needed to be taken to address concerns about debts and deficits.
But there was a right way to do the deal and a wrong way, The right way was to increase revenues—with tax hikes for billionares and the ending to tax breaks for corporations that invest offshore—and cut wasteful defense and corporate-welfare spending. The wrong way was to maintain tax breaks for the super-rich while cutting education and safety-net programs that actually pump money into the economy.
The point here is not that the debt-ceiling deal, in and of itself, caused the markets to tank. The nation's economic challenges—high unemployment, a widening gap between rich and poor, tight credit, weak consumer spending, declines in manufacturing, a slowing of home sales—extend far beyond Washington and its silly fights.
But Obama's refusal to lead, and his seeming inability to check and balance the craziest excesses of an economically-illiterate Tea Party Republican caucus—which has few qualms about creating a crisis in order to score political points—is the problem. Bending to the right does nothing to stabilize the economy, let alone to start creating jobs or renewing hard-hit communities.
The United States needs a federal government that is in the fight for economic renewal—as it was under the leadership of Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s—not on the sidelines. Or, worse yet, imposing cuts that actually make things worse.
Of course, the latest news will lead to renewed Republican demands for more of the same: tax cuts for the wealthy, tax cuts for corporations that offshore jobs and profits, deregulation, free trade and the shredding of the social safety net. Some GOP Congressional leaders may actually believe that making the rich richer will lead to economic growth.
But billionaires don't open factories in the United States with their tax-cut largesse, they invest in "emerging markets" on the other side of the world. To imagine differently is to buy into a fantasy that Wall Street abandoned years ago—when it started rewarding companies that lay off American workers with spikes in stock values.
The Congressional Progressive Caucus has made the right points about how best to engage in the debate about debts, deficits and the economy. Obama does not have to reinvent the wheel. He simply has to speak as an unapologetic Democrat in the tradition of FDR and those who defined the party at its most successful moments over the past century.
If Obama does not reject the failed fantasies of the past and start promoting a jobs agenda that is based on federal government investment in infrastructure, education and the stabilizing of state and local governments so that they can continue to deliver needed services, the Tea Partisans will continue to control the discourse.
Obama must take the lead—with an absolute rejection of the extreme right's extremely wrong agenda—if he hopes to rally the popular support that is needed to define the debate and, ultimately, to start winning the fights that will determine the future of the US economy.
Obama has to climb into the bully pulpit and take charge. If he does not, the circumstance will just get worse.
Compromises do not build confidence.
Cuts do not inspire.
Tax breaks for the rich do not does not jumpstart a stalled economy.
Austerity does not create jobs.
And if Barack Obama continues to surrender to the peddlers of the austerity fantasy, if he continues to refuse to use the full strength of the federal government to advance a job-creation agenda, he will have a lot more to worry about than whether John Boehner will still go golfing with him.
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"You see, President Obama had to surrender to the Tea Party Republicans on every major economic issue in order to get the debt-ceiling deal."
"¢"¢
pure tripe. mr. obama got EXACTLY (well, not nearly what he REALLY wanted) what he was looking for.
8. posted by: limoman at 08/04/2011 @ 6:38pm Report abusive | Ignore This User
posted by: aznative at 08/04/2011 @ 6:19pm
I dont know about HAP but it was a very good day today for me.
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My oil stocks got thrown out w/the `bath' water.....
Gold alone isn't enough to stay HAPPY today!
On October 19, 1987 (according to a probably reliable source) the DJIA dropped 512 points. But then it was 22.5%. Today it was only 4.3% or so. Let's see if it was a case of the jitters, or of profit-taking, before we write the eulogy for the recovery. If it's in free fall next week, then maybe it would be wise to start stocking up on potable water and MREs, eh?
Wasn't the Debt-Ceiling Deal Supposed to Avert a 512-Point Dow Collapse?
There you go believing what Obama says and look what it gets you
Wolf, you missed nothing, thats about it, come hell or high water, we are all in this together, the teapubs haven't grasped that yet.
If wall street drops more tomorrow, look to see the fed start giving them more free money....and while that is going on, watch our deficit grow even larger...which in turn will lead to the tea party morons screaming and bitching for more cuts! It's a complete cycle of stupidity. Cut taxes which means less government income, then cut programs which put people to work, which means less government income, then have three colossally stupid ass wars, which increases the government debt and reduces government income at the same time, and then blame the debt on union workers, old people, sick people and college students. Did I miss anything?!
What I see today is quite telling. The stock market taking a dip which in turn means investors loose money is newsworthy, actually front page headline newsworthy. On the other hand, poor people losing their jobs is not. The fallout from the tea party politicking with safety nets was only newsworthy because of what it might do to the markets, not main street.
And the right wingers posting here have the gall to say that media is liberal!! Give me a friggin break.
NewEnglandah: "The great public works projects of the 1930s...That is what the so-called left should be pushing for. It has been aptly demonstrated that granting huge tax cuts for businesses and for the rich does almost nothing to create jobs. Corporations are taking the excess profits and investing in third-world factories to take advantage of exploited third-world labor in a race to the bottom."
"Our" system is completely effing broken, NewEnglandah. Have you noticed?
Electoral politics won't fix a blackened heart of corruption--i.e. these folks are NOT going to heal themselves. WE are going to have to send them a message. Loud and clear, out on the streets of America.
8/1/11, A "Deal" That Will Live in Infamy
[The latest debacle from Washington is an opening salvo in a war on the American people by an economic elite]
Let's cut to the quick readers, shant we? Barack Obama is a rank, miserable, heartless, spineless failure. The astronomical distance between his brilliant presidential election campaign, pregnant with themes of hope and change, and the almost incomprehensible miasma of the present moment is something that can only be beheld with fury and rage. The sight, alone, of John Boehner smugly proclaiming that he got "98 percent" of what he wanted"”even as economic indicators plummet, and new jobs are nowhere to be seen--should be enough to sicken the most iron of constitutions.
In this summer of 2011, as we commemorate the 150th anniversary of the beginnings of the American Civil War, a new kind of civil war is being waged on the collective mass of American citizenry by a hyper-wealthy fragment of a percentage that sits imperiously at the top of the American economic pyramid. That extreme tip of the pyramid might just as well be a space ship that has visited from another galaxy, and it deserves to be met with the same hostility that is de rigueur in alien invasion, summer blockbusters.
The moment we inhabit is every bit as perilous as any that we can dredge from recent human experience"”the aforementioned Civil War, or World War I, or World War II, to name a few. But what makes the current debacle so maddening is the brazen, self-inflictedness of it all. I mean, you can't make this stuff up, folks.
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