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Monday, 09 March 2009
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Dollar Up, Foreign Capital Flooding In
Once again, we are all going to be fine. The USA is in much better shape than the rest of the world.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/09/business/09dollar.html?_r=1American investors are ditching foreign ventures and bringing their dollars home, entrusting them to the supposed bedrock safety of United States government bonds. And China continues to buy staggering quantities of American debt.
These actions are lifting the value of the dollar and providing the Obama administration with a crucial infusion of financing as it directs trillions of dollars toward rescuing banks and stimulating the economy, enabling the government to pay for these efforts without lifting interest rates.
Wednesday, 04 March 2009
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Which Countries are Pulling their Weight
Other than the USA and China, not many other countries are pulling their weight when it comes to stimulating the economy; "stimulus as percent of GDP":Australia 0.9%
Brazil 0.2%
China 6.9%
France 1.3%
Germany 1.6%
Italy 0.3%
Japan 2.3%
Russia 1.1%
Spain 8.1%
United Kingdom 0.9%
United States 5.5%
Monday, 02 March 2009
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GOP Loves the Wilderness, Part 1,935,641
Link.
Rush Limbaugh headlined the last day of the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington on Saturday, delivering an eighty-minute stemwinder that was broadcast live by Fox News, C-SPAN and CNN and enthusiastically received by those in attendance.In his Washington Times column today, Andrew Breitbart set the scene:
Hundreds of revelers packed the Regency Ballroom and hundreds more filled overflow rooms, hallways and stairways to watch on wide-screen TVs. It was a rare and much-anticipated public appearance of the man so powerful that President Obama singled him out for destruction in his administration’s first days.
Conservative pundits, party leaders and movement bigwigs took special care to position themselves close by so they could hang on every word of the only person who actually could accomplish what the three-day conference was all about — jump-starting the flagging conservative cause.
Breitbart also reported that “spokespeople for CPAC said it was the best-received speech in the conference’s 36 years. And that included Ronald Reagan.”
At TownHall, Hugh Hewitt called it “a speech . . . that will be talked about for years and even decades.”
What did Rush say? You can read the full text here. Two messages have dominated the coverage. First, Limbaugh forcefully and unhesitatingly restated his desire to see Obama fail, a sentiment he called “mysteriously controversial.”Second, he warned fellow conservatives “better policy ideas” are not what the G.O.P. needs now:
Everybody asks me — and I’m sure it’s been a focal point of your convention — well, what do we do, as conservatives? What do we do? How do we overcome this? . . . One thing we can all do is stop assuming that the way to beat them is with better policy ideas. . . .
Our own movement has members trying to throw Reagan out while the Democrats know they can’t accomplish what they want unless they appeal to Reagan voters. We have got to stamp this out within this movement because it will tear us apart. It will guarantee we lose elections.At Newser, Michael Wolff read this as meaning “any deviation from the Reagan grail was apostasy. There was no reform conservatism, there was only hardcore, orthodox, god-fearing Ronald Reagan conservatism.”
At Think Progress, Ali Frick read it as a shot at Newt Gingrich, who in an earlier CPAC address
had told the . . . crowd that the GOP must offer new ideas and policies. “It’s not our job to be the opposition party. It’s our job to be the ‘better solutions party’,” he said. He was echoing a point he had made last year that the party needed to move forward: “The era of Reagan is over.” (Limbaugh attacked him for the statement at the time.)
If, as Frank casts it, the “race for titular leader of the conservative movement” is between Rush and Newt, then the White House is wholeheartedly endorsing Limbaugh. Obama called him out as an impediment to progress out soon after taking office (”You can’t just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done.”)
Now, reports Greg Sargent, the White House is increasing its efforts to “to promote Rush Limbaugh as the public face of the G.O.P. — an effort that will include recruiting Dem governors to make this case on talk shows, getting elected officials to pen Op eds arguing it, and running more ads pushing it, a senior Democratic operative says.”
Sunday, 22 February 2009
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National Debt as Percent of GDP Graph
A few things jump out. First, our national debt:gdp ratio is way lower than it was after World War 2. If deficit spending to get us out of recessions is so bad, then why didn't we have a catastrophic recession after World War 2? Second, Carter had the lowest deficit in history yet he still had huge stagflation problems. Yes, the national debt is very important, but it is ok to go into periods of large deficit spending (as long as they are not too long).
Now, take a look at federal spending as a percent of gdp:
As you can see, Reagan actually increased federal spending when compared with Carter. Sure he cut taxes but at the cost of massively increasing the deficit. So again, many neo-hooverites arguments with regards to the Carter/Reagan policies and their economic effects do not hold. Secondly, even with all the massive spending that Bush did, he only increased spending as a percent of gdp by 2%. This is not that much. Obama's stimulus increases it another 0.5%. This is not that big of a deal when compared with the grand scheme of things. It's also only a temporary spending program to get us through the crisis. After that we can ramp spending down as seen during Clinton years and post-WW2. The sky is not falling. The good old USA will be fine. We will be over this in a year or two. Don't do anything crazy like sell your stocks lock in your losses and buy gold.
Saturday, 21 February 2009
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Bush Increased Spending Twice as Much as Clinton
Newsflash for hypocritical anti-stimulus republicans out there: Bush was the biggest spender in our country's history.Total federal spending has skyrocketed 45 percent since President George W. Bush took office in 2001. Adjusted for inflation, spending has jumped by 27 percent in just five years—more than twice as much as real spending grew during the eight years of the Clinton Administration. Measured on an annual basis, inflation-adjusted spending during the Bush years has increased more than three times as fast as it did during the Clinton years. Indeed, spending as a percentage of GDP has grown more under George W. Bush than it has under any other President since Franklin D. Roosevelt.
You can't vote for a party that for 8 years operates on a "Deficits Don't Matter" philosophy and then all of a sudden pretend like you are a fiscal conservative. You have no credibility on this issue. Now is the one time where increasing deficit spending is justified economically speaking.
ElDuderinoCA
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- Member Since: 7/8/2008
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