The magical thinking of Barack Obama
Are you as thrilled as I am to learn that the recession is over? Heck, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, it hardly happened — well, that’s not quite right. They acknowledge that it was the worst recession “since the Great Depression.” That’s the standard formula isn’t it? But not to worry. It ended ages ago. In June 2009, if you can believe it.
No, I don’t believe it either. Even The New York Times has registered the problem: “Second-Quarter Economic Growth,” blared one column, “revised down to 1.6%.” Meanwhile, nationwide unemployment is hovering close to 10%. In Nevada — so long, Harry Reid! — it’s a whopping 14.4%. The Washington Times put it well when it said “Recession over, but recovery not felt.” The operation was a success, madam; unfortunately, the patient died.
Nevertheless, the president thinks that “we’re moving in the right direction.” He actually said that to a lady at a Townhall-style meeting the other day. I like that lady. Here’s what she said to the president:
I’m one of your middle class Americans. And quite frankly I’m exhausted. I’m exhausted of defending you, defending your administration, defending the mantle of change I voted for, and deeply disappointed with where we are right now.
The frozen smile on the president’s face is something to ponder (“Who let her in here? Why wasn’t she vetted?”) His response was of the “Rome-wasn’t-built-in-a-day” variety, and ended up with “we’re moving in the right direction.”
I guess that must be part of the official White House play book. Vice-President Joe Biden wheeled it out a few weeks ago, to universal derision. No matter. Someone obviously likes the way it sounds: “We’re moving in the right direction,” i.e., we’re whistling in the dark to keep up our courage.
During the 2008 campaign, many commentators, myself included, highlighted Obama’s total lack of executive experience. What did he have going for him? A left-wing ideology and a mixed-race background that could be counted upon to appeal to white liberals intoxicated by the multicultural agenda. Noting the contrast between Obama’s high-flown rhetoric and his almost comical lack of substance, many commentators (again, myself included) compared Obama to the Wizard of OZ who nervously tells Dorothy to “pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.”
The President is the man who keeps harping about running the economic car into the ditch. While he and his party are the ones who keep using it to race a Train to the crossing.
Which outcome do you think would be best? Call a tow truck to get you out of the ditch or having people looking for all the parts strewn along the right-of-way?
Talk about a heavy crash indeed.
“But more bearish analysts said there was little evidence that the economy was recovering in anything but name only. With more recent indicators showing a shrinking housing market, dwindling orders for factory goods and rampant discounting among retailers, some economists saw far more clouds than sun.
“Given all the stimulus and all the steroids and all the medication, the economy should be ripping right now,” said David Rosenberg, chief economist and strategist for Gluskin Sheff & Associates. “The fact that it’s not should lead people to believe that this is certainly not a common recession.”
Let’s see, if I award trillions of dollars with one hand, then beat business with a stick, a whip, a chair, a billy club, a cat’o'nine tails, a hammer, a claw…with the other, and I wonder why the “stimulus” isn’t working…doesn’t anyone like my “redistribution” theory?
“Mr. Rosenberg pointed out that during the Great Depression, the economy experienced several quarters of official growth, despite the presence of bread lines and rampant unemployment. Now, he said, “it seems the diagnosis is pretty clear, but people don’t like to talk about it, because Depression depresses people.”
The diagnosis is clear, but the prescription has been scribbled so that nobody can read it. Let me decipher: “pretend nothing is wrong, then blame the other guy when it really gets bad”.
Economists have been revising their forecasts for growth in the second half, with Goldman Sachs now projecting annual growth of 1.5 percent. Ben Herzon, a senior economist at Macroeconomic Advisers, a forecasting group, said the firm had taken its estimate for third-quarter growth down to 1.7 percent from 2.5 percent at the beginning of July.
Mr. Herzon said that he was not expecting a double-dip back into recession, however. “It’s difficult to point to a shock that would be bad enough to put the economy back into a recession,” he said. “I just think it means that this recovery is going to be slower and more painful than we originally expected.”
Ok, let me get this straight. The “recovery” feels exactly like the thing we are recovering from? Ummmm, how…precisely…is it DIFFERENT?
There is no recovery. The “recovery” is a sham. Are we still trillions of dollars in debt? Is unemployment still at the exact same levels? Is the housing market still in a shambles? Is consumer confidence still in the toilet?
The recession is not over, we are not in recovery. We are in ICU. And Alice doesn’t live here anymore. Her looking glass was repossessed.
“Are you as thrilled as I am to learn that the recession is over?”
Yes. Then the next one will unquestionably be Obama’s.
Apparently, the economy is a lagging indicator.
JM Hanes FTW!
“The Ruling Class sat on a wall, the Ruling Class had a great fall. All the Ruling Class’ horses and all the Ruling Class’ men couldn’t put Business As Usual back together again.”
The recession *is* over. The problem is not that the country is in recession — it is that there was no recovery after the recession ended. Seriously.
A recession is defined as a period when the economy shrinks for two or more consecutive quarters. When the economy stops shrinking we are no longer in recession. However — all that means is that the economy is no longer getting smaller. It does not mean that the economy has regained the ground lost during the recession. For that you need a recovery. In order to recover the economy needs to grow at faster than the break-even rate, which is about 3%. Unfortunately the economy has been growing at only a 0.5% to a 2% rate each quarter, which is insufficent to keep unemployment from growing. For a recovery we need at least 4% and really 6% or more for a full-bore recovery.
Normally *any* recession is followed by a recovery, because that is the nature of an economy. If you are running the economy and really, *really* stupid (or perhaps just too invested in bad economic theory), you can stifle a recovery through bad public policy. *That* is what has happened. Large increases in government debt have sucked up the capital the private industry needs to expand. Expanded regulation has increased the cost of doing business, preventing business from generating growth capital internally.
So no, we are not in a recession. The economy is not shrinking. We are in an economy that stinks like stagnant pond water because the government has sucked all the life out of it. Call it the odor of decomposition.
“So no, we are not in a recession. The economy is not shrinking. We are in an economy that stinks like stagnant pond water because the government has sucked all the life out of it. Call it the odor of decomposition.”
Thus the woman’s question to Obumpty-Dumpty, “Is this the new reality?”
“the recession *is* over”
Yes, by the official definition. Also by the official definition, then, it didn’t start until the 4th quarter of 2008, and ended 9 months later. So the official definitions are ludicrous.
The problem is that government spending is included in “the economy”. The only reason the economy hasn’t been shrinking for the last several quarters is because of the huge increase in government spending. The private sector HAS BEEN shrinking.
So what’s wrong with that you may ask? What’s wrong with it is that it has been done by enormously increasing the national debt. Frankly, the criminal government could force the end of a recession any time they want to. Just print a trillion bucks and sprinkle it around. Oh wait, that’s what they DID.
It’s no different than an individual who has taken a 5% pay cut. He then goes out and borrows 15% of his annual income, and tells his friends that he got a big raise! By the government’s definition he did!!! But he and the government are fools.
Despite the “official” definitions.
Sorry Rog, but the perfect analogy is Peer Gynt’s onion. Keep peeling, there’s nothing there.
Except tears!!
They are even inventing new terms to describe the economy, to try to mask the fact that the emperor has no clothes. Yesterday I heard we were in a “growth recession”. (To differentiate it from those other pesky recessions which are actually worse, I guess!)
President 0.0 seems to be the mental and spiritul captive of another Humpty Dumpty, the one who blithely observed, “”il n’y a pas de hors-texte.”
Your comparison to the Wizard of Oz was apt. Last year when I went and saw “Wicked”, I kept saying to myself “this is Obama, this is Obama”.
“Second-Quarter Economic Growth,” blared one column, “revised down to 1.6%.”
… and by the informal rule-of-thumb I learned long ago, anything under 2% nominal growth means no actual growth at all.
As long as 40%+ of American voters buy into Obama-like illusions, we have a very serious lack of education.
Hmm … so, if the recession is over, then why do we need to spend the balance of the original stimulus? Why do we need more stimulus? Is 9.6% unemployment the “new normal”?
I suppose that a “drowning” is finished once the swimmer has died.
Were you to discount the “Cash for Clunkers” and First Time Home Buyers Credit, along with the hiring boom for the census, I’m pretty sure you’d find that any “lack of shrinkage” in the economy is merely smoke and mirrors. The facts are that housing starts are down, purchase of existing homes are down, new major purchases (such as cars and home appliances) are down. Further, most of the uptick in the stock market is due to the buying and selling of zombie stocks — the stock of nearly-dead companies.
Add to all that the continued unemployment numbers which keep on rising “unexpectedly,” along with the fact that a staggering number of the employed are only barely so (part-timers, or in jobs which are below their skillset and former pay levels).
Oh, and let’s not forget that all the equations economists use to determine where we are right now include ESTIMATES of new small business start-ups (and no one will know for another 18 months or so what today’s numbers might be), and you begin to see that the “recovery” is a sham.
All one needs do is look at honest indicators, like, for instance, the number of commercial vacancies. Or the fact that we have a record number (both in total and in percentage of population) of people on both welfare and food stamps than we’ve had since the beginning of both those programs, and it becomes clear that we’re still in deep doo-doo, and no one really cares if the economists call it recession, depression, or recovery. We all KNOW how bad it is out here in the real world.
If this is the “right track,” please put us on the wrong one, post haste!
When Obama said “We’re moving in the right direction,” he meant exactly what he said. We’re moving toward a socialist form of government that will dictate everything to do with our lives, public and private, and there will be no dissent permitted. Never mind that his policies would reduce the greatest nation the world has ever known, in fact the greatest idea the world has ever known, to squalid irrelevance and poverty… of wealth, of creativity, of ideas, of everything. He believes in what he’s doing, and he has not the slightest inkling that it won’t be the Nirvana he imagines.
““We’re moving in the right direction,” ”
That’s the only direction left to move. They can’t move any further in the left direction unless someone has uncovered a never-before discovered Saul Alinsky playbook.
The Democrats have renamed “The Recovery Summer”. It’s now called “Legends of the Fall”
IF they are correct and the recession ended in June 2009, then the “Stimulus” bill had absolutely nothing to do with ending it, for virtually none of the money was yet spent at that time. That same bill does not seem to have had the slightest effect on stimulating a recovery either. So it was pure waste, as most of us thought at the time. For that we went a trillion dollars into the hole.
I think a double dip recession is quite likely, what with the government sucking the lifeblood out of the economy and ramping up its interference in the economy, business, and in people’s lives.
What Obama means by “moving in the right direction” is that he’s dragging the nation behind him on the path he’s taking up his own a**.
cfbleachers….no, no they havechanged “The Recovery Summer” to the “Great Fall” and it will be!
It’s all just noise, I’m afraid – if you think there was a better way to get the US economy back on its feet, just spell out what it was.
As far as I can tell, the conservative position was to do nothing. I don’t think conservatives quite understand what that would have led to. A complete collapse of the US financial industry would not have been pretty.
Screech all you like. A meteorite his the amreican banking system. Obama has spent his first half term putting out the fires and cleaning up the mess. Both of which he inherited.
Reminds me of that line made famous during the Vietnam war, the one that went “we had to burn down the village in order to save it”. So Barry has to destroy the American economy in order to save it. Well come this November we’ll see if the message that Barry is continuing to harp on over and over (along with good ole Joe “Hoof in mouth” Bidum), that we’re moving in the right direction and that everything is going to be fine will resonate with the American people. Or will enough Americans wake up or at least simply have had enough of the BS and start the ball rolling on kicking these socialists out of office.
“Who let her in here? Why wasn’t she vetted?”
You must be thinking of the Bush town meetings (“I’m glad you’re my president!” … “How can I help you, Mr. President?”) You’ve also forgotten, apparently, that you’re not reading the Times any more.
Why does the meme persist so strongly that Obama is a magical thinker, or an incompetant, or simply clueless?
All of the evidence points in the direction that he is accomplishing exactly what he set out to accomplish.
His whole life has been dedicated to bringing down the United States. Why all of a sudden do people think he is a normal President who just can’t quite understand economics, or who doesn’t listen to better advice, or who is too stubborn to change? HE DOESN’T WANT TO CHANGE.
Get over it. The guy is a Marxist and a Ruling Class con artist, and whoever is running the show, they are masters at it.
“All of the evidence points in the direction that he is accomplishing exactly what he set out to accomplish.”
“Get over it. The guy is a Marxist and a Ruling Class con artist, and whoever is running the show, they are masters at it.”
And yet Obama just ordered the take out of Osama Bin Laden.
Oops.
I guess old styled Red Scare tactics aren’t going to hold up in the future, time to bash him on his economic policies instead.