1. The White House attacked the US Chamber for its lobbying against health care, cap and trade, and financial sector reform. To me that says that the lobbying has been effective – perhaps its why there’s been such difficulty making “progress” on these issues.
2. Maybe you can be skeptical when Steve Forbes or Mitt Romney or Stephen Moore (or me although I’m not in that company) say that this administration is anti-business. When the White House actually attacks the leading organization of US businesses, that’s pretty damning evidence.
3. Whether the Chamber is a friend or foe is open to debate – they supported immigration reform and probably would support moderate health care reform. Like most business organizations, they are center-right with the emphasis on center.
4. In effect, the Chamber’s dream world is one in which companies have free reign to make profits while all expenses are picked up by the taxpayer via social services. That world can not exist – you have to tax someone to pay for all of this stuff, and one by one industries will be targeted. Yesterday its finance, today its sodas, tomorrow its health care, etc. US industry via the chamber is compromising itself to oblivion, like a moderate Republican. Conservatives should not consider the chamber an ally because they will fold at the drop of a hat in an effort to be “reasonable” with unreasonable demands.
5. And let’s put this in perspective – the government is demanding that every American buy health care insurance while the it heavily subsidizes a low-cost provider and taxes everyone else. That is an unreasonable demand.
6. However the fact that the US chamber is centrist is a good thing politically right now, because when President Obama attacks them, he looks more like the far-left anti-business idealist that we know he is. The attack on Fox News was ineffective – this attack will be even worse, because in some ways you are defined by your enemies.

So that’s the chamber – don’t assume they are allies, but this may be an indication that the moderates are breaking our way on some issues.

One other point that didn’t quite make it into the article. The reason the government can print more money and inflation is still low is because inflation is not just money supply but money velocity. Velocity is how fast you spend the money in your pocket, and in a recession (depression?) velocity plummets. In some ways, Obama’s anti-business rhetoric helps to keep inflation low and the government’s borrowing and purchasing power intact so long as our expectations remain low.

Funny… I didn’t speak of that. At all.

When you join Moho in stooping to the use of a straw man, just to avoid responding to valid criticism, you’ve already lost claim to being taken as a serious person – especially when you do so using Rule #5 ridicule of a notion that is fully supported by ALL of BHO’s past and every single one of the actions he’s taken as POTUS.

I bet if we got to talking he and I might have common ground. We both want better healthcare and hate the way banks are being rewarded for their failure. Heck, neither of us like Bush. But we remain divided because this man is a paranoid conspiracy nut.

When you speak of Obama wanting to become Dictator for life and control your healthcare in order to ultimately control our life. Well, you don’t sound very different from the man I avoid at Ground Zero.

Didn’t read your post as closely as I should have. Even so, all you are saying is that there is a difference between consumption and investment. OK, so in a health care context, are you saying that when someone takes a drug and pays 10.99 for it, they are doing the equivalent of drinking 10.99 worth of beer? After all, they will just piss out most of the drug’s inactive ingredients. However, you still have to go back further in the production cycle and look at the money you’re spending on beer as recouping an original investment in beer-making equipment.

So, again, I’m not really sure what your point was in response to my point that “economic growth” is a generic category and can encompass health care spending (and the investments necessary to make health care possible) just as well as any other kind of spending (and the investments that make those products/services possible). About the only real distinction I would make is between high value-add products/services and commodities. But, since health care products/services are primarily high value-add, as measured by the amount of intellectual property embedded in them, I would argue that more health care spending is actually a good thing for an economy, so long as that spending is on high value-add aspects of health care. Just like, in your beer example, it would be better for the economy if we were able to product high-quality beers, as opposed to cheap swill.

Who’s talking about “recirculating” anything? What do you think was used to create the medical technology used to serve patients, if not “investments”? Those medical technologies didn’t just fall out of the sky.

Speaking of beers, were you drunk when you wrote that? Even in your beer example, the money you used to pay for the beers goes to pay the ballplayers who are playing in the game your watching, as well as goes into the building materials to build the urinal you’re using.

Oh, boy, my self-esteem is being wounded over here.

Again, the topic is “expectations” and why Obama can’t seem to raise people’s.

Got anything to say about that, jackhole?

Simple. Recirculating wealth does NOT create more wealth. Investing wealth creates more wealth.

Investing and recirculating are NOT the same thing.
There is overlap, but it is one sided. Investing money puts it into circulation, but putting wealth in circulation is NOT automatically investing.
If I go down to the store and buy a case of beer for 10.99US$, take that beer to the ball park and sell those beers for 3.50US$ each, I have made an investment. If I sit in the parking lot and drink them,I have put that 10.99 in circulation, or will have as soon as I find the Men’s room.
Big difference there, one you don’t seem to be aware of. You must have a PhD. in Economics, right?
Actually, what you are doing is inflationary, since you are putting wealth in circulation without increasing production. So you have more dollars chasing fewer goods. There are other models, of course.

Milton Friedman, “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.”

Ol’ Milton isn’t perfectly correct, but he is closer then most. Keynesian died when Carter tried to apply it and it didn’t work. The academic world tried ‘adjusting’ his theory. Which is evidence that Economics isn’t a science. In Science, when a theory is proven wrong, it is discarded. In academics a theory is discarded only after all it’s supporters have died. Witness AGW.
Now you can argue that all my business of one is doing is re-distributing the wealth, since I haven’t actually produced anything. You would be half right. That is because the brewery did all the production, I’m just nicking a piece of the wealth they are creating. The half you are wrong about is not counting my labor.
Production is a function of labor. Anyone doing labor is producing something. That is what makes it labor and not a hobby.

Dow 10,000 is an indicator of systemic fraud, corruption, criminal activity and manipulation perpetrated by Wall Street.

Dow 10,000 is an indicator of the extent to which the US has become the bankster-owned banana republic oligarchy it is, which is why the dollar is falling.

Wall Street hopes that Dow 10,000 is a flashing green go-light for all those useful idiots who think recovery is around the corner and that investing in the stock market is a good idea. Dow 10,000 is an indicator of Pump’n'Dump.

The only actions taken by our government (Obama, Bush and BOTH parties) is covering up this reeking pile of dog squeeze so the public doesn’t see the train wreck that is our economy. Add to that, I’m still gobsmacked there are conservatives out there who think the current administration, who’ve consistently demonstrated that they are American-hating, anti-capitalist fascists (as in a “merger of state and corporate power” — Mussolini), has any interest whatsoever in reversing and/or fixing our economy.

I sure hope “Dow 10,000 is just faith in the American people descending on Washington with pitchforks.” But I don’t see many Americans, outside of those who are financial types, yammering/upset about the looting of the American taxpayer and the corresponding destruction of our economy by our oligarchy.