What wonderful new laws do you expect from a Clinton/Obama administration?

[Parmigiano]

Originally Posted by renrich

The sooner everyone learns that whoever is in the Whitehouse is not going to have much short term impact on the economy the better off we will be. The president gets too much credit when the economy goes well and too much blame when the economy does poorly. Remember, congress controls fiscal policy and the Fed controls monetary policy. The president can only make suggestions and do a little jawboning. If one does not understand that, one does not understand how the US government works. Even the Fed and congress have only limited impact on the economy. Our economy is like a giant super tanker. Once it gets moving a certain way it is going that way pretty much until the momentum in that direction is gone. We have not been in a recession since 2001. It is time for one again.

Nobody can fix economy 'short term' but President in the US (like in any presidential Republic) is definitely a power that can set and influence economy behavior mid-long term.
Eight years are a long term.

According to what I can find in books, President (and Congress) controls taxes and spending of the nation, President controls foreign policy and treaties, President (being executive head of the Federal government) controls monetary policy, he is Head of State, Head of Government (like a Prime Minister in Parliamentary republics)

What more power should he have to control/influence economy?

Economy is not something independent from policy, nowhere in any age or form of government.

[renrich]

Parm. with all respect, you need to read more closely or get different books. The Fed controls monetary policy. The president may, if there is a vacancy, appoint the chairman of the fed, but congress must approve the appt. The president proposes a budget for the congress to approve but congress is the final arbiter of all spending. Same with all tax bills.In other words, the congress controls the purse strings. If the president does not like a bill which is passed by congress, he may veto it but congress may pass the bill over his veto with a certain majority. The president has more power with foreign policy but congress must approve any declaration of war and appropriate funds to wage war. The only way a president can have much influence directly on the economy is if congress cooperates with him completely. Indirectly he can have some impact long term through his supreme court appointments but then only with the approval of congress. I certainly should not expect a foreigner to understand how our government works as most of our citizens have not the foggiest notion themselves.

[Parmigiano]

Renrich, that the power of a President (or Prime Minister) is checked and limited by other institutions is normal, otherwise it would be a 'dictator' not a president.

Formally, you can say the same for any Prime Minister or President of any democratic state (excluding of course the dictatorships disguised as democracies)


That does not means that the President and his team (in systems like US and France) or Prime Ministers (like in UK, Germany, Italy) are not the leaders in setting the trends.

If I have to take your points literally the US would be the only Country where the one who is at the Head of Government, wield executive power, approve legislation etc. has not a major and leading influence on the policy and so a direct influence on economy.

True, I surely have no deep knowledge of the mechanics of US federal systems, but to claim that the US President has no (or extremely limited) influence on the politics and economics sounds a bit strange.
The veto power alone is more than many other constitutions grants to their leaders.

Anyway, whether it was Mr Bush directly or the people who actually governed during his presidency the problems are here, and is better that the new crew will take steps to change the course of action.

[renrich]

If you expect a new administration to have a positive impact on our economy you are barking up the wrong tree. Now if a dem congress and a dem president get together and abrogate all or a portion of NAFTA in order to pander to the ignoramuses in this country, then you could see a huge negative effect long term, perhaps on the world. Since you apparently hold strong opinions about how our president has done his work, would you mind telling me what he should have done differently to keep us out of an impending recession.

[Parmigiano]

It's not my opinion, it's a series of facts that the economic situation worsened under this government, and that now there is a critical point and something must be changed asap.

Not only for the US (although I am personally involved, because half of my family is there) but for the whole world, because the US economy is by far the most important economy in the 'western world' and everybody is directly impacted by it.

Bush (means GW Bush+all his team) cannot be blamed for everything that went wrong in the world, but that he took wrong strategies is not only my personal opinion, at least i am sharing this opinion with a few Nobel prizes.

So, what in my opinion the Bush administration did wrong? (and this is my personal opinion, that does not pretend to be the absolute truth)

Internally, to pursue a policy that has brought an exhacerbation of the inequality of wealth distribution.
If you constantly act in favor of corporate revenues and squeeze the middle-class, sooner or later the system stalls. Now the system is not stalling yet, but is on the edge (see statistics about family debts and foreclosures and the struggle to keep interest rate artificially low)

Economy run well when 'average Mr Jones' can change his Ford or Fiat or VW every 3 years and does not have to top all his credit cards to keep going.

This sometimes requires painful things like taxes, rules to control the corporate profits and active involvement of government in the market: if this means 'let's go back to J.M. Keynes' well, for me this is welcome.

Internationally, the results of his policy are shown by the price of the oil barrel and the Arabs refusing to increase production (or do we want to blame OPEC because they don't want to increase production since they can only be paid in dollars and because of this they have already lost 20% of revenue in the last few months?)

As you said economy goes in cycles: perhaps the 'neo-liberism' has finished his positive cycle and now is time to change course.

Besides, there are worse problem in the management of Italian economy (problems that may be even bigger after the elections next April) and you may tell me to 'look in my yard' instead of commenting about the US, but the difference is that an Italian crisis would impact only Italy (and maybe partially some EU Countries) and nobody except the Italians are interested in it.
US is setting the trend for the whole world and so it is at the center of everybody's attention.

[renrich]

Please don't try to buttress your opinions with Nobel prize winners. Jimmy Carter and Al Gore have those worthless awards. All that does is weaken your position. I am sorry but I am afraid that we are butting our heads against stone walls. It is clear your position is diametrically opposed to mine. I suspect you are well to the left and you know I am well to the right. Never the twain shall meet. Every president, if he stays in office long enough will have to deal with a recession. My original point was that presidents get too much blame when the economy goes sour and the opposite. All you do is quote supposed problems his policies caused. You don't say what the policies were and how they should be changed. You don't suppose that unprecedented world wide demand and finite supplies of oil product cause rising prices? Where did you learn economics? As to artificially low interest rates, when loan demand is low, rates are low. The Fed may be making a mistake by lowering rates but that is their decision and Bush has nothing to do with it. If you think differently you are misinformed. Most of the time all politicians want low interest rates but that doesn't mean they get their way. If you think, as you have stated, that the president controls monetary policy, please tell me how. Since 2001, when Bush became president, we have been in continuous growth mode. I don't give him all the credit but a tax cut passed by congress certainly helped. How do you know that the gap between rich and poor has increased? Part of the problem now is because the very people you are saying can't pay their credit cards off, the Mr Joneses, were doing so well in the recent past they went out and signed mortgages to buy houses with adjustable rate loans for houses they could not afford. Did you know that well more than 90 % of the houses in the US are NOT in foreclosure? (I heard 99% but I am not sure if that is accurate) There is one sure way to make sure you can pay your credit card bills. DON'T CHARGE WITH YOUR CARDS. There is also a simple remedy for high gas prices. It is called: Don't drive as much. Maybe take your teen ager's keys away from him and sell his car.We have unprecedented affluence in this country and to listen to the media, one would think we are in the Great Depression. Do you know why the media says the sky is falling? Two reasons, negative news that is exaggerated raises ratings. Also if one is a democrat it helps your cause if the economy is perceived to be slipping. The overwhelming majority of the media is democrat. If people who aspouse your philosophy get their way, taxes on the people who make this country hum will rise and the whole country will suffer and then we will have high unemployment. I submit that if one does not live in this country and can see conditions with his own eyes, one can not have an informed opinion about those conditions.

[ToughOmbre]

Right on ren

Originally Posted by renrich

Please don't try to buttress your opinions with Nobel prize winners. Jimmy Carter and Al Gore have those worthless awards.

And nothing could be more true than the first two sentences of your post.

Parmigiano, remenber this. At a ceremony in Oslo, Norway on December 10, 1994 Yasser Arafat, master terrorist, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

TO

[Parmigiano]

It's not a matter of left or right, it's a matter to look at reality.

Personally I have never subscribed to any party and always tried to separate facts and opinions from ideologies.
This has often brought me accusations of being a 'fascist' when i deal with 'leftists' and 'commie' when i deal with 'right wings'.
btw the Economist that I mentioned and whose theory I hope will be applied (John Maynard Keynes) was everything but not a 'leftist'.

I try to elaborate my opinions based on actual data, and I try to cross-compare different sources of data before believing it.

Foreclosures as example: this is what you find everywhere when you look for information. Is all the information doctored and cooked by the 'leftists'?

"The U.S. Conference of Mayors held in November 2007 also was unanimous in projecting that 2008 U.S. foreclosures will go up and property values will sink to the tune of $1.2 trillion. Further the impact of 2008 U.S. foreclosures will cause reduction in property tax collection revenue by millions of dollars. "

I have no time to fetch the original documents of the U.S. Conference of Mayors to double-check this statement, but the data you can see reported by different sources makes it credible.

The following is from realtytrac, Q1 2006, that shows and increase of 72% vs 2005, and this is before the 2007 scandal
Foreclosures Up 72 Percent From Last Year - RealtyTrac

for 2007 the same source reports an increase of 75% vs 2006 and 97% dec vs dec

U.S. FORECLOSURE ACTIVITY INCREASES 75 PERCENT IN 2007

by the way, 1% of foreclosures is not a small percentage: it means that one family on 100 who bought a house via mortgage is on the edge of bankrupcy.

I am pretty sure that over 90% of households is not on foreclosure:10% of foreclosures would be a global disaster, there would be a revolution long before reaching that point!

I could link many sources about changes in wealth distribution and growing debt of families with credit cards, but I realize that numbers are useless in an ideological discussion like this seems to be.

If somebody can find statistics and reports that shows opposite data and trends, I will be happy to study them.

Anyway, Renrich is true: we have opposite views of the situation, and it is unlikely that we'll find an agreement, so we'll simply stay with our own opinions.

Besides, none of us can honestly be sure that our own view is the correct one.

PS: actually i was lucky and found the press release of the Mayors conference of Nov. 2007, and it confirms what reported above
http://www.usmayors.org/metroeconomies/1107/report.pdf

[freebird]

Originally Posted by ToughOmbre

Right on ren



And nothing could be more true than the first two sentences of your post.

Parmigiano, remenber this. At a ceremony in Oslo, Norway on December 10, 1994 Yasser Arafat, master terrorist, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

TO

Wasn't he a man of peace?

[pbfoot]

Originally Posted by freebird

Wasn't he a man of peace?

I believe it takes 2 to tango

[Njaco]

Parm, just a quick site about taxes and economic growth....

Taxes and economic growth

as you can see and is explained in the graphs, when taxes are raised, economic growth suffers. One of the BIGGEST reasons that I don't want the Witch or Olabama in office because that will be one of the first things they will do - raise taxes!

I don't have the report but I seem to remember that when taxes are lowered, government revenue actually goes up!

And its not the President who puts earmarks on bills to build a special libray/musuem/cafe in honor of Senator Sumsutch costing $$$$$. Spending is what has to be gotten in control off, by the lowest individual to the President, in good times and bad.

[renrich]

The real estate crash in the 1980s was far more severe than any problem we are having today. It wiped out most of the savings and loans in our country and in the areas where it was most severe, most of the banks came under new ownership. It is most amusing to see mayors quoted about real estate tax revenue. In the past 10 or 15 years values of housing in many parts of the country went up so fast and so far, that the resulting ad valorem tax revenue left the local government wallowing in money. Any retreat in home values will only cause local government to have to become a little more frugal(which will be good for them.) That retreat will also make housing more affordable for more people. However that retreat will and has given the 24 hour media and politicians something to exaggerate and fulminate about. In Texas, many homeowners, my mother in Austin was one, found her taxes on her house were higher than any mortgage payments. Here in Colorado they have a law, called the Tabor law, which limits the annual increase in taxes to a very small amount regardless of how fast home values go up. As to my sources for argument, I don't use the internet a great deal. I worked in the oil patch for 5 years during the 50s. In 1958, my last year there, the allowable in Texas was 8 days. In other words, because of too much oil, one could only pump one's oil well for eight days per month. I started my own homebuilding business in Dallas in the early sixties, was a non-survivor of the real estate crunch in the late eighties. In Dallas more than 1000 of the 1600 builders went broke. I ran the real estate development department for a ski resort for nine years and have been a licensed Colorado real estate broker since 1993. To me, on site observations and experience are quite valuable.

[Njaco]

Heres a thought.....

If the Witch does get the Dems nomination, is there anything keeping her from running Slick Willie as VP?

[mkloby]

Originally Posted by Parmigiano

Internally, to pursue a policy that has brought an exhacerbation of the inequality of wealth distribution.
If you constantly act in favor of corporate revenues and squeeze the middle-class, sooner or later the system stalls. Now the system is not stalling yet, but is on the edge (see statistics about family debts and foreclosures and the struggle to keep interest rate artificially low)

Economy run well when 'average Mr Jones' can change his Ford or Fiat or VW every 3 years and does not have to top all his credit cards to keep going.

This sometimes requires painful things like taxes, rules to control the corporate profits and active involvement of government in the market: if this means 'let's go back to J.M. Keynes' well, for me this is welcome.

Internationally, the results of his policy are shown by the price of the oil barrel and the Arabs refusing to increase production (or do we want to blame OPEC because they don't want to increase production since they can only be paid in dollars and because of this they have already lost 20% of revenue in the last few months?)

As you said economy goes in cycles: perhaps the 'neo-liberism' has finished his positive cycle and now is time to change course.

[Njaco]

Originally Posted by Parmigiano
Internally, to pursue a policy that has brought an exhacerbation of the inequality of wealth distribution.

screw wealth distribution!

Parm, you do realize that the opposite of that is socialism? Sqeezing the middle class is what ALL politicians do well, but to take money from the rich to give to the poor so all things are equal is pure socialism.

Where is the dream? I want to work hard to get comfortable in my life. And I will fight any do-good a##wipe that wants to take my money and give it to some slob who can't get off their a## even to change the channel on the TV! You're right, the recent Republican administration may have helped the rich, who knows, thats the mantra of the liberals (rich liberals BTW) but I have no beef against anybody who works hard to become rich. Thats what I strive to do and what is wrong with that? What the hell am I working for if 1) Its wrong to be rich and 2) everything will be given me by the government. Is that the way it should be?