When will Obama succeed in ending the Bush Depression?

[scheming daemons]

Poll question: When will Obama succeed in ending the Bush Depression?

At SOME point, we'll get positive growth again.... no matter how hard the rich fat-cat Republicans try to bury the economy.

The American people are too resilient.


My guess? Early 2010.... just in time to kick in before the fall elections, and sweep out the remaining ditto-heads

[Idealism]

1. I am a little less optimistic than you, but only by 6 months.

Change is a slow-moving vehicle, and there needs to be structural change to avoid this in the future.

[BuyingThyme]

2. I have no idea.

None.

[stillcool]

3. My "Bush Depression" has..

subsided quite a bit already. I think when we know how bad the economy is, we can start predicting the recovery.

[depakid]

4. Depends on whether he's willing to do what it takes to stabilize the banks

On that issue, he still seems wedded to the center right economic policies that got us into this mess.

[No.23]

5. The Mayans and the year 2012.

According to them, the world as we know it will undergo a paradigmatic change.

This prompts me to believe that we will undergo ash to rise as a phoenix from.

[iamthebandfanman]

15. arent there a lot of predictions

from a lot of different sources that 2012 is the final year of existence?

[No.23]

17. There are, but....

everything I've read about the Mayan predictions pointed to them saying that the world "as we know it" will end then.

Which has caused some to change that to the end of existence.

The two are not the same.

You can have the world as we know it disappear... and a new unknown one appear... without the annihilation of the human race.

The key here, I think, is the disappearance of the world as we know it.

[scheming daemons]

6. So far... 4 out of 17 have no faith in Obama or the resiliency of the American people

[No.23]

8. A strong majority of Americans also believed...

that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

I don't have much confidence in majority opinion anyway.

[MercutioATC]

10. No, 4 in 17 think the problem is bigger than many realize.

Make that 5 in 17. I won't vote "never", but the course we've set certainly isn't encouraging.

[blue_onyx]

7. I'm not optimistic...I say not until his second term

[MercutioATC]

9. Other: Second term IF he makes the right moves early.

Two things need to happen: The banking system must be stabilized and employment needs to increase.

Since we need $1.6T in infrastructure spending over the next 5 years anyway, we should be funding every responsible shovel-ready project immediately. The government should also be making direct loans to businesses and offering tax incentives for job creation.

Failing banks should be broken up and their assets sold to healthy banks. No more handouts...if you can swim on your own, great...if not, you die. The shareholders and bondholders pay first, with the government making up the difference.

Pass universal health care legislation and legislation that requires pensions to be fully funded. If that requires a temporary federalization of some pension plans, so be it.

Above all, STOP handing trillions of dollars to the same people who created this problem, expecting them to fix it.

[4lbs]

11. I said sometime in 2011.

The economy will unfortunately still recede until later this year when it will bottom out and flat-line until early 2010.

Then, we'll see a gradual, increase in jobs and production for a year to 16 months.

We'll reach the break-even point sometime in 2011.

[MercutioATC]

12. Break-even as in positive growth or as in return to Dow 14k?

Turning the corner or back to where we were in late 2007?

[4lbs]

13. Break-even as in job creation.

Jobs created from Jan 2010 to summer 2011 will about equal that which were lost from Jan 2008 to Dec 2009.

[MercutioATC]

14. Just curious...where do you see those jobs coming from?

It's an honest question.

We'd obviously have to get credit flowing again, but we'd also have to increase consumer spending. You need to have people consuming to create jobs, yet you need to have people employed in order for them to consume. How do you accomplish this?

[Toucano]

16. "The American people are too resilient"

Sounds an awful lot like a Palinism, to be honest.

More correct to say that the American people are fat, lazy, coddled, insecure, willfully ignorant, and gullible. Resilient? Like a pair of last years pantyhose, I'd say.

The boomers have known precious little sacrifice. The ones who did, haven't been with us for awhile. And their children? Heaven help us!

"You had to cancel the (sniff, sniff) CABLE? You poor thing!"

[woodwrite]

20. I don't know about a "Palinism" ...... but

The rest of your analysis was on target. However I'd add another item to your list containing "fat, lazy, coddled, insecure, willfully ignorant and gullible." I'd add that they are folled into thinking that the existing political industry is going to fix this mess or help them in any way. The political industry has the assignment, if you will, of keeping the great mass of people from rioting or revolting against the miniscule handful of predatory elite who, in fact, run the whole goddamned planet. Sorry for the bluntness, but that's how it is.

[Toucano]

22. You put it in a nutshell. n-t

[aquart]

18. Obama's got 8 years and this is at least a decade of chaos.

[eridani]

19. Too early to tell

I'd be more confident if he started to regard the financial sector as an enemy force. Which he may very well eventually do--he's pretty quick on the uptake.

[L. Coyote]

21. There will be no end to the damages.

[Tesha]

23. The American economy will never be the same again.

There was a worldwide economic shift going on for quite a while and
its ramifications are now hitting home. America will never again be
the same dominant economic power that it was in the first half of
the Twentieth Century.

Combine that with the end of oil and the absolute certainty that our
planet is reaching its carrying capacity for humans and I'm certain
that things will *NEVER* be the same again.

The good times are over; let's hope the bad times aren't deadly bad.

Time to re-read "Ecotopia"...

Tesha