Obama: Pass stimulus or recession lasts ‘years’

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Source: MSNBC

WASHINGTON - President-elect Barack Obama warned Thursday morning that the nation’s recession could “linger for years” unless Congress acts to pump unprecedented sums from Washington into the U.S. economy, adding that the current economic crisis is “unlike any we have seen in our lifetime.”

“I don’t believe it’s too late to change course, but it will be if we don't take dramatic action as soon as possible,” Obama said in a speech at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., outside Washington. It was his highest-profile case yet on an issue certain to define his early presidency.

“A bad situation could become dramatically worse,” he added, painting a dire picture — including double-digit unemployment and $1 trillion in lost economic activity — that recalled the days of the Great Depression in the 1930s.

The current economic crisis is due to “an era of profound irresponsibility,” Obama said, adding that it is “time to set a new course for this economy, and that change must begin now.”

Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28555437 /

[onehandle]

1. The first Republican to filibuster this is invited to leave the country.

And bite my shiny metal ass.

[bstender]

3. love it or leave it? nc

[bstender]

2. exactly the opposite is true

all of this bailout and stimulus is designed to blow a new bubble rather than allowing bad investments to fail and savings to increase. Allow the failures to work themselves out on their own and the recession lasts months, creating trillions of taxpayer debt only transfers that reckoning to later, with interest. whether it succeeds in inflating remains to be seen, but even if successful, it will drag on the economy for years and lead to another reckoning down the road. the current severity of the crisis is the result of previous 'bubble-blowing" activities by the Fed. eventually one's credit gets cut off and the end game is bankruptcy.if not this time, then the next...(but at least it will happen during someone else's term in office say the decision makers)

Pleasing rhetoric notwithstanding, i'm still waiting for any departure from the agenda of the elite by Obama.

[tom_paine]

5. "Pleasing rhetoric notwithstanding, i'm still waiting for any departure from the agenda of the elite

by Obama."

You and me both.

You know, the funny thing is, if I take my political positions alone, though they have shifted a bit left the last 8 years, only natural when the Right is so villainous...but if I take them alone, I am closest to the Blue Dogs.

Isn't that a laugh riot? If this country's left-right calibration wasn't so blown out by the wild success of Bushiganda and the stunning lack of opposition by the Democrats, I'd be one of the ones pissing off the Liberals, not standing with them to the death.

God certainly has a sense of humor, doesn't She?

[Winterblues]

7. Well that is your opinion, but I see little to back it up

I know Obama is surrounded by economic experts from all areas, how many surround you?

[bstender]

18. i call to witness

the ongoing failure of the unprecedented amounts of cash and credits poured on this fire.

and btw,
know Obama is surrounded by economic experts from all areas, how many surround you?

is the fallacy called "appeal to authority"

i surround myself with every "expert". i read them and then i use my actual own mind to reach my conclusions. you are free to refute by other means. i know i will continue to learn more and look forward to it, but i feel pretty good about the analysis of this situation currently.

[Sanity Claws]

8. It is an attempt to maintain the status quo

and prevent it from totally falling apart.
Maybe this will buy time until he has more control and able to convince others of the real changes necessary.

[Odin2005]

17. Libertarian BS.

You are saying the exact same "let it work itself out" BS the Republicans were spewing as the Great Depression got worse and worse.

[bstender]

19. no, not exactly

the Great Depression was a complex thing of course, but at no time was it left to 'work itself out', in fact, lots of govt. intervention was heaped on and many believe that those measures only exacerbated the situation. I would tend to agree as govt. tends to throw lots of imbalances and corruption into every situation attempting this or that magic and politically correct bullet, and always with a nice cut for the insiders. the economy is as complex as a human body, and the govt. is like the modern doctor throwing pills at symptoms which create new problems rather than empowering the body to heal itself through an holistic approach.

it would be nice if centralized authority could bring the benefits of the 'enlightened dictator', but it can't and doesnt and never will.

i trust my family and friends first, my community and my local govt in order of trustworthiness and by the time we get to the Fed. i see a complete and utter mafioso extorting around a third of my labor to fund things that i find 98% criminal. if that makes me a Libertarian, then so be it. if my beliefs are wrong or criminal, at least i wont be in a position to impose them on you and yours. (unlike our dear leaders)

[Odin2005]

21. You need to read op on your economics, starting with Keynes.

The only people that believe that "those measures only exacerbated the situation" are right-wing propagandists and ideologues. In fact, the New Deal actually wasn't enough spending, it took a burst of government spending called "WW2" to get out of the Depression completely.

Big Government for doing Big Things is back and if you don't like that, too bad.

[bstender]

23. hah!

Big Government for doing Big Things is back and if you don't like that, too bad.

hah! this is the exact response i used to get on the boards when i was arguing against the Iraq War. from the repugs of course, but goes to show that a certain number of ignorant bullies exist in every population. its not a repug thing per se.

and you can stuff Keynes up yours, he is flat wrong. Big govt. will screw it up as always, what makes this time any different?

[Odin2005]

24. And you can take your Free Market Fundamentalism and stuff it up yours.

If facts bother you that's not my problem. People that reject Keynesianism are the Economics equivalent of Creationists.

[Enthusiast]

32. More Republican talking points!

Stealth Republican alert!

[bstender]

33. ideologue alert!

slurs instead of reasoning are a sign of a lack of original thought. i am neither republican or democrat, both are corporate-state parties with very little difference in the things that matter to real people. they are here to facilitate the corporate profit agenda. is that not obvious???

and gawd, don't believe that obama is the messiah and the Dems will bring us all to the promised land, i beg you, it is only asking to be raped. power needs to be in the people, and that starts in your own brain. think about things rather than just regurgitating Dem talking points! make him prove it and put some of his own skin in the game.

it is quashing debate that has led this country to a right-wing and a farther right-wing corporate political landscape with a decimated manufacturing base, a decimated school system, an expanded military with imperialist wars raging, constitutional rights rescinded and an economic crisis brought on by a Central Bank promising to watch out for you. The Dems have fallen in line throughout this process. they line up at the corporate feeding trough as ravenously as the Repugs. they could stand up and make a speech that shifts this spectrum to the left, to put actions behind campaign promises, but for some reason they don't get around to it. maybe their corporate funding would dry up? you think?

the bailout was and is a boondoggle which was passed just as soon as it had enough pork in it for various side projects. the coming 'stimulus' program is a trojan horse. if they were serious about putting america to work and rebuilding the nation, they could have been facilitating that in many ways for 50 years. now suddenly there's a crisis, a crisis that has been ill-defined and conclusions rushed to the podium ala the run-up to the Iraq war, and what do you know, it only needs a half trillion of your money and they'll get right on it. this exploitation of not-too-deep-thinking citizens is exactly what allowed the war debacle to go down. so what could go wrong with dumping a half trillion into pubic works? well, it is borrowed money for one, so it will have to be paid off, but since it is not an investment in a productive venture, there is no solution to the root problem. if everyone in the country borrowed 100,000 dollars and spent it on things, we'd have a nice economic bump, but then we'd have the payment to make. in other words, the stimulus as proposed is a temporary, get-your-mind-off-of-it type of solution. investing it in productive ventures have some better chance of success, but opens a can of worms as to what the bureaucrats decide are the wise investments rather than the experts in the field.

sorry, i don't actually mean to dis Obama, but i'm seeing a lot of "yes HE can" thinking going on. He is a human who has already shown that he is very pragmatic and willing to compromise. without real public criticism that compromise just goes its merry way along the familiar paths, getting us nowhere.

[Bluenorthwest]

27. Tell me, specifically, why local gov is automatically better in

your eyes. Most of the people I know live in large cities, where the local gov represents millions of people and billions of dollars. Trust that if you wish. But why?
Many others live in small towns, let's use the local gov of Wasilla Alaska as our example. Trust that if you wish. But explain why please.
The facts of history tell us that the Fed government has often been the only recourse for people oppressed by more local governments. Or maybe the locals standing in school room doors were far more trustworthy than the evil integrationists? Because the integrationists were Feds? Is that how it works?
"many believe". Who is many, and where do they state these beliefs? You agree with them, so you must know who they are and what they said. There are 'many' after all. Name 5 please. Or four, even. Just for fun.

[bstender]

34. anarcho-syndicalism

is what inspires me. but to answer your question briefly, trust levels diminish as the governmental bodies expand and move farther away. I can walk up to my city counselman and talk to them, that counselman lives here and shares similar problems. it gets harder as you climb the ladder to the State and Federal level. even if these federal politicians are 100% well-meaning, i can't trust them to really care a rats ass about me or my locality's particular needs. therefore, the more distant they are, the more important that they have jurisdiction over as little as possible. only vest them with the power to cover overarching needs. Like fundamental civil rights as you point out, a perfectly valid federal function. like national defense. and to be sure, just because some govt is local doesnt make it trustworthy, but they are a lot more accountable, we know where they live:>


the opposite of this philosophy is a powerful central authority, one that you can hope believes the same things you do and will act fairly otherwise and won't extract too much for their services. Historically, this has not been a very good deal. The USA was an inspiration for many years because they broke from that traditional top-down model and created a constitution that guaranteed individual liberty and put most power in the local and state level and that any power not specifically given to the govt. was retained by the individual. that has been chipped away at relentlessly--usually in times of crisis when people are looking for someone to fix the problem. 9/11 opened a political door for a huge power transfer. this economic crisis is opening a similar door and we should be careful not to give away our cash or agree to additional economic centralization without careful consideration of the downsides.

[Enthusiast]

31. Republican pamblum. nt

[Enthusiast]

30. Odin, he is a Stealth Republican.

and not so stealthy.

[Enthusiast]

29. Stealth Republican alert. nt

[mikelgb]

4. he learned well... fear, ultimatums

[tom_paine]

6. I KNOW. Fucking creepy, isn't it?

Of course, OTOH, his could be a legitimate warning and we are just freaked out by The Tyrants That Lied About EVERYTHING For 8 Years.

But yes, I do see EXACTLY what you are saying and it was the FIRST thing that jumped out at me when I saw the thread.

ANOTHER VERY BAD sign, IMHO. Very telling.

God, let me be WRONG about this and let me be SHOWN to be wrong about this within a year!

[TheWraith]

9. You're wrong, and you won't recognize it when shown...

Unless you take off the tin foil hat.

[TheWatcher]

10. So we just all blindly follow unquestioningly?

That worked SO well with the last guy.

[tom_paine]

13. ROFLMAO. In the words of Bugs Bunny, "He don't know me vewwy well, do he?"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

As to your comment about tinfoil hats: Nonsense. Piss off.

When YOU can fucking say in pre-9/11 2001, time and time again, Bush will leave us with $10,000,000,000,000 is national debt when he leaves, and be ABOLUTELY RIGHT a full SEVEN-PLUS years later (it's all archived on DU somehwere), maybe THEN you can talk some shit about tinfoil hats, Coincidence Theorist.

Or how 'bout THIS one, also archived on DU, where I said MANY times BEFORE we invaded Iraq, during the run-up, "You watch, as soon as the victory is won and the cameras are off, we will return torture to Iraq."

Though to be fair my prediction was too lukewarm because I thought we'd get Iraqis to do the torturing, I did NOT predict we would gleefully, as part of Avowed National Policy, do the torturing ourselves! Guess my tinfoil wasn't screwed on TIGHT ENOUGH there, huh? Reality kicked my ass by being fifty times viler than my conservative prediction, and far too conservative is what it WAS, as it turned out, NOT too tinfoilly.

Ever do anything like that even ONCE (I have done it at LEAST a half-dozen times since my late 2000 awakening)? I thought not. Not many have. Even not many DUers, and this is one hell of a smart site.

If my Tinfoil Hat caused me to say those thing YEARS before they happened with predictive certainty WHEN I SAID IT (look it up - DU archives Apr. 2001 to Dec. 2002 or so), then maybe you might want one to shield your own brain from the microwaves.

[bahrbearian]

12. I was thinking the same,

[eridani]

11. Go to change.org

Demand the stimulus package that will work--namely one that puts ordinary people back to work.

[Trillo]

14. The entire monetary system itself is, or seems, highly flawed;

particularly within the context of the words in the DofI regarding life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness ("happiness" defined as mundane English dictionaries define it).

Therefore, putting people back to work is not "change" to a new paradigm, but rather reassertion of an old economic paradigm. More of the same, in other words. As near as I can tell, common people have been working our asses off for millenia, and what do we have to show for it? Nothing but debt to keep us working for more millenia....

It's arguably the core element of a vicious "power" game, and is very old and familiar. Not "change" at all!

[eridani]

15. What you are talking about is way deeper than mere politics

Those changes will be made by individuals and their daily choices, not by policy initiatives.

[blue_onyx]

16. My state has been in recession for 8 years

so we're almost use to having a poor economy. I hope the stimulus package focuses on things that will prepare our country for the future (infrastructure, energy) and putting people to work soon and not too much on tax cuts.

[Paula Sims]

20. Personally, I really do think there is a wolf

it's just that we've heard the warning signs so much about "terra" that we're becoming immune. The true "terra" is the implosion of this country. In the words of the great philosopher Pogo: "I have seen the enemy and he is us."

[taught_me_patience]

22. Bad idea

talk about bankrupting the country. Also sad that he's resorted to fear mongering so early in his tenure. This sounds eerily like Paulson claiming the banking industry would collapse within days if the first 700b tarp funds were not authorized. Gov't has been crying wolf too often now...

[Art_from_Ark]

25. It sounds eerily like

bu$h and Cheney running around the country saying how bad the economy was, around this time 8 years ago.

[Telly Savalas]

35. Are you suggesting that the fundamentals of the economy are fine?

That sounds eerily like someone else who's not very popular around here.

[ryanmuegge]

26. Reevaluate trade policy and create decent jobs or the recession will last for years.

Tax cuts will do nothing in the long-term.

This is structural.

[4dsc]

28. Regardless, this recession is going to last a long time

If you consider there is no sector of the economy that's going to lead us out of this recession we are in one for the long haul..