Obama News Conference
 

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2...ws-conference/

I thought he did a great job and actually tried to answer the reporter questions.:thumbup:

Gloom and doom sales job trying to push through legislation laced with Pelosi big gov't programs. As soon as he went off script he fumbled and bumbled with lots of ummmm, ahhhhh and pauses where he looked like he was confused about what he actually felt. Sorry to say but it sure feels like he is in WAY over his head. Big gov't programs is not the way to get us on track.

I think he went off script and took the the time to think about the questions and answer them. The fact that he paused to think about the question showed that he cared. The biggest pause was for the A-Rod question which was totally out of left field. He also paused on the Iran question but gave a great response.

You can agree or disagree with his politics but his performance in the news conference was light years ahead of Bush. The fact that he actually answered the question is also much better than Clinton.

There were a number of word whiskers.
Who knows why. Not sure though that
those word whiskers are an indication
of confusion about anything.

I don't think Bush or our president are the best of speakers - Once the script is over, our president quickly runs into problems. Those long pauses along with some of his other I think we will and I hope we will type of positions do not inspire confidence. Reminds me of Jimmy Carter.

not old enough to have experienced jimmy carter, but i know what mean and :iagree:.


at one point it looked like a tennis match with how he was looking to the left then right and back again. i guess the teleprompters were all over the place.:D

Exactly - we were talking about how he needs a teleprompter in the middle - it was annoying and distracting how he kept going back and and forth. It makes it seem like he had to read which is less than what you would want to see from him even if he is reading.

I especially liked the Q&A session regarding the economic stimulus:

Q. What is an Economic Stimulus Payment?
A. It is money that the federal government will send to taxpayers.

Q. Where will the government get this money?
A. From taxpayers.

Q. So the government is giving me back my own money?
A. Only a smidgen.

Q. What is the purpose of this payment?
A. The plan is that you will use the money to purchase a high-definition TV set, thus stimulating the economy.

Q. But isn't that stimulating the economy of China?
A. Shut up.

Q: What about the people who didn't work and pay taxes? What will they get?
A: They'll get a smidgen of the taxes you paid as well, maybe even more than you, so don't worry about them.

Below is some helpful advice on how to best help the US economy by spending your stimulus check wisely:

If you spend that money at Wal-Mart, all the money will go to China.

If you spend it on gasoline, it will go to the Arabs.

If you purchase a computer, it will go to India.

If you purchase fruit and vegetables, it will go to Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala (unless you buy organic).

If you buy a car, it will probably go to Japan.

If you purchase useless crap, it will go to Taiwan.

And none of it will help the American economy.

:iagree:

What skill.

With respect to passage of the stimulus bill, I enjoyed Obama's argument that while there are some "politicians" who argue that no stimulus package is needed, there a few economists who are saying that very same thing. Rather, economic advisers to McCain and Bush 1 and 2 all agree that a very significant stimulus is required to prevent our economy from contracting further.

Also, Obama's answer with respect to Biden's random quote of a 30% failure was hiliarious! Loved it.

- 4point4eye

PS. X5 is currently at dealership having cam position sensor, mass air flow sensor, and right-rear window regulator replaced. Symptoms prior to bringing X5 to dealership include: intermittent Check Engine Soon light, and once every 50 ignitions or so X5 had rough/stumbly starts.

:iagree:

However, the same can be said for giving tax breaks to businesses. Give American corporations a tax break, and maybe they open up another factory in China. Only a small percentage of the money actually stays in the American economy.

The problems with the American economy will not get solved by a stimulus anymore than your leaky roof will get fixed by putting a bucket below to catch the falling water. It is a very temporary fix.

I guess the Mkt didn't care for his speech very much, along with the "stimulus/Porko" program
that floated through the system...:rolleyes:

I may be sliding over to the VeryUsedKia board soon. :(

No, the market didn't like it at all - can you blame them?

Phil Flynn, an analyst at Alaron Trading Corp., said investors appear concerned about the inflationary effects of massive government spending.

"People are running to gold as a reaction to the speech and are running away from the stock market. And of course that's pressuring the oil down," he said.

Didn't the market drop with the Bush plan as well?

Bush who? That's old news.

I'm watching Treasury Sec G, the Boy Wonder, on CNBC...
it's a 5 month long fookin train wreck. Add in the Pelosi
sponsored Save the World and Cover All Bases pork deal(s),
and it's looking pretty ugly for quite some time to come, imo.

Why does everything have to be an "Obama vs. Bush" contest?

I'm sorry, but just because Bush was an awful president does not give Obama any excuses. If the best thing we can say about Obama one day was that he was a better president than Bush, then you can sum up his presidency as a major failure.

My point is that the market does not always rally on good news.

The market rallies when there is good news for investors. Good news for everyone else does not always mean good news for investors. Most people are not invested in the stock market, and thus the target of the stimulus package is not Wall Street.

think about this

If someone left a "BIG TURD" in the
middle of your living room i believe
that would promote some continued discussion.

Bush left a "BIG TURD" for Mr. Obama
and that fact will continue to cause some.
to argue that his presidency stunk.

So... In a way I guess your right.
If the best thing we can say about
Obama one day was that he was a
better president than Bush, then you
can sum up his presidency as a major
victory compared to the last president.

I think you can thank Clinton for a portion of that "turd" as well with all the great things he did for Fannie Mae. I honestly do hope that Obama is a much better President than you know who, or we are all in big trouble.

Clinton left the country with a balance budget.

His zipper might of needed work but he left the country in good shape.

Requirements for borrowers were eased during his administration and he appointed the main people who ended up milking Fannie Mae for millions. He really laid the "turd" before Bush. Bush was just unlucky enough that it started stinking when he became president.

Wasn't there also this little issue about one of Bin Ladens speed boats crashing into one of out military ships? We could have had him then, pre-911.

Still think he left the country in great shape? There are many Presidents who get credit and catch blame for things that really aren't of thier doing.

You are trying to tell us that after eight of Bush, its Clinton fault that the country is in trouble? :rolleyes:

Not entirely. All I am saying is that housing industry (Fannie Mae in particular) is a large contributing factor that the economy is in such bad shape, IMO, and that Clinton DID make it easier for people with bad credit to get Fannie Mae loans and that he DID appoint the people, who years later (just recently) got in trouble for milking Fannie Mae out of millions of dollars.

I never said Bush doesn't deserve blame. I just said that these two things that Clinton did ended up hurting us later. It wouldn't have mattered who was president. Everyone is very quick to blame the current President for bad things and give them credit for good things. Reality of it is that SOME of these things were set in motion long before that president took office.

The worst thing that Clinton did was to sign NAFTA. That has hurt our economy far more than anything in the banking sector.

Yeah, and once again that was something that took years and years to see the full effects.

It usually does. Our economy has been on a steady decline since the early 1970s for a variety of reasons, most of them long term problems which affect things very slow and gradually. There have been a few spikes in the decline like in the late 1990s, but for the most part, adjusted for average cost of living, the average American earns about half of what he did 40 years ago. Two people in the family must work full-time today to have the same standard of living that one full-time wage earner gave them in 1970. My generation ("Generation x") are the first to have a lower standard of living than our parents. Unless we make some major changes to our economy, that trend will surely continue to the next generation.

Nonsense. You prefer protectionism? NAFTA isn't perfect, but it beats the alternatives.

Any economic decline is hard to pin on NAFTA. Reductions in manufacturing jobs, for instance, have more to do with lack of productivity, lack of capital investment, and so on.

And just to link your last two posts, if the economy has been sliding since 1970 (your phrase) then how can you blame NAFTA which was signed in 1992? What caused the first 22 years of decline?

Yes, Americans do indeed lack the same productivity of Mexicans. We lazy Americans refuse to work 80 hours per week for $50, no bathroom breaks, and no benefits. I suppose if we were as productive as those Mexicans, maybe all of those factories would not have moved south.

Or maybe we should be as productive as they are in Burma. They have slave labor over there. That's why so many products now come from there. Maybe if we all worked for free, we could be as "productive" as they are too.


Wage decline caused it. The middle class has been steadily growing poorer over the past 40 years. That means the majority of consumers have less money to spend than they once did.

As any economist knows, in order to keep the economy moving well, you must get consumers to spend money. If they don't earn enough money from their jobs, then you need to get the money to them in another way. That's where the banks and credit cards come in.

Forty years ago, very few people had credit cards. Other than getting a mortgage or a car loan, few people borrowed any additional money from the bank. Today, in order to keep the same standard of living as normal middle class people did decades ago, most middle class families are hugely in debt. That is what has kept the economy moving the last 40 years. Without all that credit, the economy would have shrunk long ago due to lack of consumer spending. The credit has allowed people to live beyond their means, and thus spend more money.

But as we are seeing now, there is a limit to how much you can lend people before they finally default. And we have reached that limit.

Basically, those overseeing our economy have been kiting in order to make the "good times" last. But as always happens, eventually you get caught because the amounts get too high.

You are focusing on Mexico. You should focus on your largest trading partner. And if you want to focus on Mexico, you should talk about textile jobs (and the accompanying legislation on origin) and dumping cheap agricultural products into Mexico, and not just on factories.

When did Burma join NAFTA? Must have missed it. :rofl:

You just disproved your own argument re NAFTA causing an economic slide in the US. First you said that slide had gone on for 22 years. Now you say that US wage decline has gone on for 40 years. Once again, NAFTA came along in 1992.

Your turn. Time to bring the WTO and corporate elite into it, I think.

The general concept of NAFTA (and all the other "free trade" agreements) is not a problem. But there should have been provisions added to exclude countries which do not have proper labor laws and living wages. As I pointed out in my example of Burma, we cannot "compete" with some countries, and should not be expected to.

NAFTA certainly did not cause the problems. If you want to get technical, Capitalism is what caused the problems. NAFTA and the other free trade agreements just helped the problems get worse by sending jobs overseas to places that have cheap labor and no labor laws.

We now have a situation where more people in the family need to work in order to maintain the same standard of living, yet there are fewer jobs available than before.

The only kind of plan which will fix our economy is one that results in raising the wages of the average American worker by a significant amount. No other solution will help.

Just to point out some statistics on wages, below is a graph printed in an article in today's news showing the median hourly wage in both NYC and in the United States over the past coupe of decades. The average wage in NYC has dropped by about 9%, while the average wage in the entire country has gone up by about 7% over that period. Notice how the biggest declines were in the years right after NAFTA was passed.

http://gothamgazette.com/graphics/chart2_economy.jpg



Now take a look at the cost of living, which has gone up by about 50% during the same period.

http://www.economics-charts.com/images/cpi-1913.png

So which is it?

Doesn't NA in NAFTA refer to North America? Now you are referring to overseas agreements. And Burma still isn't in NA.

Your graphs don't distinguish between cause and effect. You can't point to a year and say that is when NAFTA came in, and that is the same year that bad things started happening. It is illogical. Especially when you refer to 40 year slides in economic conditions. But if you did want to link NAFTA to a decline in wages, you would have to accept that when wages came up, it was because NAFTA was repealed. When was that again?

Homey Bush had eight years to
use his pooper scooper and clean
that mess up.........

Instead.... he added to the mess...:dunno:

I believe as time goes by we are gonna
find out how much he stunk it up.

It hasn't happened yet. Wages "go up" when they outpace the rise in the cost of living index. The last time wages went up more than the cost of living index was before NAFTA.

And BTW, I did not mean to single out NAFTA over any of the other "free trade" agreements. I mentioned it because NAFTA was the only one of these agreements that was ever debated in the American news media and by our politicians. Once that debate was over and NAFTA was signed, all the other agreements followed with very little discussion or debate. For that reason, they are all linked to the initial signing of NAFTA, which was the beginning of a major change in our economy.

While the decline in wages started many years earlier, it certainly accelerated greatly in the years following the signing of these free trade agreements. To suggest that there is no relation between jobs moving overseas to places with cheap labor and a decline in wages here in the US is just foolish.

It was actually all Barney Frank's fault. Even though the Republicans controlled both the House and the Senate, and had a Republican President, this Democratic congressman had the power to fix everything and did not do so. Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity said this, so it must be true. :nanana: