Emergency lights are an alert to serious error, but their absence does not preclude it; more importantly, there were many flashing lights before he took office, which demand an activist government, and thus an activist president. Presidents have many short term tools to employ while awaiting long term policy effects, on the economy as with many other things. Even Nixon and Ford did not fear price controls when stagflation required them, though they would have been needless had Nixon not abandoned Bretton Woods. FDR used them during the Depression, too, and made gold hording illegal while closing banks to prevent a run on it while implementing that law. Alternatively, presidents can attempt a short term solution to economic disaster by throwing staggering amounts of money at bankrupt businesses in the hopes they spend it building new facilities and hiring new staff. Unfortunately, it does not WORK, but many have tried it: Hoover, Bush, Obama....

The pathetic thing is Geithner is supposed to be an expert on the Great Depression but approached the Great Recession like Hoover. Where is my change...?


Very few people SEEK war with the worlds largest most advanced military, and with two already on his plate Obama lacks the resources to seek one of his own.


He has not done anything to fix it either and, like the wars, that had already set off emergency lights before his inauguration.

No: Robamacare.

Actually, he largely has, which is the greater sin for having restored it for the first time since Nixon. The Republicans owe their House majority to Obama renewing peoples faith in government only to betray it again. If even the idealist young outsider not yet tainted by the system is just another manipulative cynically selfish politician who forsakes the public, our choices are reduced to experienced mercenary leaders or inexperienced ones.

Even if he stumbles to re-election on Romneys blatant insincerity, his legacy will remain "Americas Sammael:" Less Hope and Change than Betrayer of Hope.


Except for Robamacares handout to Big Insurance and allowing Wall Street to feloniously create the Global Financial Crisis with impunity, no. When they destroyed the planets economy with illegal fraud in the '20s, FDR responded by creating the SEC. When they did it in the '80s even Reagans Justice Dept. prosecuted the worst offenders. Obamas response was to hand them a bailout that let them stay in business AND retain all their fradulently obtained forclosed properties, without a single person going to prison for deliberate felonies that eradicated the economies of whole nations. Republicans like to talk about regulations making foreign investors afraid to invest in the US: How many folks in Iceland are eager to re-invest in America right now? How many even CAN?

What was the penalty for inflicting the worst domestic and global economic damage since the end of American subsistence farming and the Dawes Plans collapse paved the way for Mussolini, Hitler and Franco? Two executives fined $160,000. Between them. I am confident they and their colleagues learned the lesson of Obamas broken pledge to justice. I am equally confident consumers and investors at home and abroad learned also. Yet that kind of "public education" harms Americas long term economic health more than our federal debt ever could: The world has seen, not only that America runs a crooked shell game, but our cops do not care.


At the risk of paraphrasing Joe Wilson, Obama lied to us, more times than I can count. Again: Betrayer of Hope, which was a monumental screw up.

Yeah, well, all that could have been accomplished by restoring the Glass-Steagall Act preventing incestuous mergers between lenders, insurers and investment firms, thereby creating the housing bubble and subprime mortage disaster leading to the Global Financial Crisis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall_Act

Supposedly Dodd-Frank does that, but it is a toothless tiger. Are you upset Obama spent the first six months of his presidency handing corrupt and bankrupt industries bailouts instead of passing a new New Deal like FDRs First Hundred Days? Me, too; so fine a historian well knew the problem AND solution—but inexcusably punted.


Which was a screw up of epic proportions, as already demonstrated. The nations chief law enforcement officer cannot even handle THAT job.


Considering the many divisions over that, I cannot fault him much there; there is little consensus even within, let alone between, the major parties. We SHOULD greatly expand legal and greatly restrict illegal immigration, so we do not encourage people to break the law because it is so expensive, time consuming and rare to move to America legally, and so easy to do it illegally with impunity. I am not holding my breath; the most likely scenario is probably still that the GOP will give Dems a majority for an immigration "reform" law that lets illegal aliens remain in the country provided they have jobs.

That might sound good if it did not simply mean businesses can abuse them freely, knowing no one will report it since closing the business would eliminate their jobs and result in their deportation. Illegal immigration would be even EASIER: Just sneak in and find a job, making deportation illegal (suddenly we care about US law. ) Meanwhile, millions who spend their life savings on application fees only to wait in decade long immigration lines are left wondering why they are so stupidly honest. Not only is it bass ackwards to deny most legal immigrants and wave in most illegal ones, it means the first step in immigrating to America is breaking US law. All that does is ensure practically the entire next generation of US immigrants are criminals; apparently, the law abiding are unwelcome in the US.


Corporate and wealthy America (to the extent there is a difference) lives off the loopholes, shelters and exemptions that create that complexity. Not that you are unaware, I am sure, but I mentioned yesterday when Tom argued for a simpler tax code: According to the NYT, that complexity lowered the corporate tax bill $150 billion in 2009, only slightly less than the final bill; it literally cut corporate taxes IN HALF. According to the same article I posted then, a seven year GAO survey of corporate income tax said 55% of US corporations avoided ANY tax burden at least once.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/business/280-big-public-firms-paid-little-us-tax-study-finds.html?_r=1

If Obama were as good as advertised, simplifying the tax code would be as automatic as it was indispensable, but he is the exact opposite of what it says on the tin.


See the blurb on his recent Google Q&A? Google was going to ask the most popular public submitted questions. Of the top 20, 18 were on marijuana. None of those was asked. The vast majority of Americans AND ELECTED LEGISLATORS support decriminalization. Screw democracy, hippie: You go to prison.


It is done for the next decade, except for fighting over it constitutionality. Just as a decade ago, the insurance lobby and its GOP cronies convinced the public it must do without healthcare because government involvement would deny it healthcare. That Obama actually found (or, more accurately, let Joe Lieberman write and then signed) a way to make an awful "system" WORSE actually supports that argument, but perhaps that was the idea. At least insurance companies are promised $900 billion in tax money alone and 40 million new customers, without any restrictions on what they can charge; that should convince them to lower prices....

Obama slammed the window of opportunity on Americas fingers, which would be bad enough, but now we cannot even get medical care for it.


Incrementalism implies movement, and in the right direction. The Roosevelts (from BOTH parties) were an economic incrementalists, as was Wilson. Truman and Ike were racial incrementalists. JFK and LBJ were incrementalists on both. Obama is simply a bait and switch, a means for corporate America to receive more supply side crony capitalism and immunity from prosecution despite a public sick of Republicans providing it: Just have a Democrat promise the opposite, call him a liberal and socialist at every opportunity, and gutting the public education system will ensure almost no one catches on except the people who already knew.


They do consider it radicalism, not incrementalism; only patriotic Republicans, not Obamas restraint, prevent their nightmares of Obamas "Marxism." Even that was not enough to avoid Obama raising taxes and nationalizing industries (despite him actually CUTTING taxes, and government having controlling interest in only a single US company—as a silent partner, for about a year—before GM bought back about half its government held stock.) It is in the best interest of both parties, and corporate America, for EVERYONE to believe Obama is as socialist as both parties present him to be. Unfortunately, that is the most shameful slander—against socialism.


That, as well as establishing universal healthcare while ending the Iraq war and erosion of civil liberties, IS what we elected him to do. He accomplished none of those things, even when his party had supermajorities in both chambers of Congress. And do not give me that "filibuster" or "centrist Democrat" crap. The Dems had no more Senate seats in 1933 than they do now, and FDR needed 64 votes to break a filibuster, not 60, but passed the New Deal anyway with a lot more centrist Dems: What has Obama done for the working man?


Again, incrementalism requires movement, and positive incrementalism requires it be in the right direction. What has changed...?

Seriously, name three major changes in the last three years; Hell, name ONE. Oh, we have universal healthcare now; that explains why women who work for Catholic hospitals and schools are HOPING economic incentives get them free contraception directly from private insurers, since their employers can legally refuse it. Hope in one hand, crap in the other and see which one fills first.

Know what has changed in the last three years? The Dow is up 50+%. Hopefully some JOBS trickle down soon; more likely investors will just discover their money is in Romneys Cayman island bank and the company they invested in no longer exists. I take it you are voting for Mitt Romney (D-IL) again though?