TABS's Crystal Ball Is Heating Up Again
 

The mist is clearing and I see it now.....Obama is being called...........YES it is clear.... he is being called Mr President. The Dems hold Congress and they have just passed historic social and business regulatory legislation that will improve the lives of every American. Everybody in the US is rejoicing at the beginning of a new era for America. President Obama is a HERO..........But wait there are people in the room who I sense are not happy. They wonder how America will pay for all these new social programs and moreover that the new anti-profit motive legislation will make investing in America not lucrative anymore..........The crystal ball is becoming misty again.....but there it is through the fog of time.....Those people are FOREIGNER INVESTORS.....Chinese, Japanese, Brits, Germans, French, Saudis....OHHHH NOOOOO..they have decided that they will pass on the Treasury Auctions.....and and INTERST RATES have jsut climbed back to 16%....a interest rate not seen since Jimmy Carter.....and President Obama is being called the new Jimmy Carter....a diaster for the American economy...

I have a good supply of Merlot on hand. Should make for a good show.

Gotta admit...it was painful recovering from Carter's misery index...the total of both double digit inflation and double digit unemployment. Many here weren't alive back then. How quickly we forget...

I was alive when Clinton was president and both of our lives were immeasurably better than they are now. I can remember back in '92 on election night when a bunch of dumb Republicans I worked with were saying things like, "better sell our houses now," and other brilliant economic forecasts similar to Tabs' above comments.

As Clinton so rightly said, "If you want to live like a Republican, you'd better vote for the Democrat..." ;)

I was significantly worse off in the 1990's than I am in this decade.

One can never underestimate the predictability of stupidity. Does one think that when a President snaps his fingers the effects of policy are felt immediatley? Or is it more likely that with an economy the size of the US and now world that the effects of policy takes years to show up?

Much of the the Clinton Good Years had to do with 3 things

1. Regan and Bush the Elder's policies that were put into place took time to come to frution.

2. The end of the Cold War allowed not only for a boost to the economy via a reduction in military spending a peace dividend as it were, but also the fact that formerly depressed assets rose to fair market value.

3. After 2 years in office (1994) the Dems lost their majority in Congress and a new Republican majority held Clinton's feet to the fire of fiscal responsibility. Thus creating a surplus.

4. Clinton economic and foreign policies came home to roost after Clinton left office. Does one think that the seeds of Enron were first sown during the Bush Admin? 911 was in the planning for at least 2 years beofre Bush the Younger took office.

Oh, my! So poor Georgie was just a victim. :eek:

Your 4 points are "true dat," tabs. I am continually amazed that Dems think something else occurred.

They're either in denial, or just aren't able to assimilate that sort of information.

I wouldn't return to my economic situation in the 90's for anything. I don't know anyone who is worse off now than they were in the 90's. Well, there is my best friend, whose income climbed exponentially over the last five years, he spent like a drunken sailor, didn't save anything and is in a world of hurt now, even though his wife is making good money. Has eveything to do with his own personal decisions and nothing to do with any president or Congress.

Even though I am making less money this year than the last (first time that's happened in I can't remember how long), my cost of living has gone way down, while my standard of living has gone way up. It has nothing to do with ANY president though.

+1

During the '90's Cindy & I were forturnate to have participated in the greatest bull market of all time...

I certainly never underestimate the stupidity of the average American voter and even they do not believe what you are putting forth here. Who said that a president "snapped his fingers" or that "the effects of policy are felt immediately"?? What is the delay period, in your estimation? Give us the Dem-->Repub. delay as well as the GOP-->Dem and the GOP-->Dem-->GOP rates as well, just for those of us who are less aware of recent U.S. economic history than you. :rolleyes:

Most people would probably agree that bad policy combined with world events can change our domestic economy from good to bad pretty quickly, it does not take several years. Dumbo inherited a freaking surplus, you genius. No president has EVER been handed a U.S. economy as robust as he was in 2000. The stock market correcting in a major way after the tech bubble did not hurt the U.S. economy much, nor did 9/11. Prices were stable and consumer confidence/spending was high and interest rates stayed low allowing for growth and a lot of wealth creation.

It took years of massive deficit spending, driving the dollar to historic lows while simultaneously doing absolutely nothing about the domestic economy, (jobs/out-of-control costs for essentials/healthcare), plus wasting billions of gallons of oil on an ill-advised military adventure that literally no other leader who's ever run for office would have done the way he did it. Some radical towl-heads fly planes into a building? Let's invade Iraq! It will only cost a couple trillion dollars, (which will be worthless later on anyways), and we can cook the intel to sell it to the public as necessary! Yeah, he had nothing to do with the present economy, it was all Clinton's fault. And Reagan was responsible for the '90s, when it looked like Clinton's domestic policies took effect a couple years after he took office and then really went bananas 4-6 years later. That's the ticket. You must be sniffing glue and sprinkling PCP on your cereal.

The truly weird thing is that if a GOP president had a good U.S. economy, Dems would have to grudgingly acknowledge it. It has happened. The dems would focus on some other issue. Here you have a GOP president who served 2 terms, much of it w/ a Republican congress and a scared public behind him, (talk about "sheeple"), :rolleyes: and he has failed in epic terms on every imaginable front yet somehow the lard-ass ignorant voters still think that a Democrat would have been worse?? HTF is that possible? Using which historical precedent? Remember, Carter inherited the end of Viet Nam economy so under Tab's theory it could have been Reagan in '76 and he would not have been able to do anything about the U.S. economy he inherited. Remember this. There is no past U.S. economy that Dumbo could have inherited that he would not have run into the ditch. 1965? He would have punted it into the woods. 1955? Wrapped it around a tree. Everything that Eisenhower and Goldberg warned against occurred w/ this disaster of a team. Everything.

A toothless Dem w/ a broke U.S. economy could not do any further damage right now, but McCain or any further corporatism will bury us permanently, IMO.

like churning stockbrokers and divorce lawyers the politicos get paid regardless of win/loss.

You work in the oil business in Texas, right? Must be one big fuch-dance in the end zone down there these days.

speeder, for you to say that 9/11 didn't hurt the U.S. economy much is laughable... 9/11 had huge, long ranging effects.

BTW, you gleefully contribute good things to the Clinton years. tabs 4 points explained how that goodness occurred.

The goodness did not occur because of anything Clinton did.

It's okay if you want to ignore the facts.





If you wanna talk about how the Repubs screwed it up and overspent during the GWB years, that's fine... that's another whole discussion.

But you're delusional if you think tabs' 4 points are untrue.

I did not say that 9/11 did not have huge effects, I said that it was not enough to sink the U.S. economy. It hurt the domestic airline business pretty bad and several other factions, but W's response to 9/11 was a magnitude worse than the actual event. It takes a lot to permanently affect an economy as large and inherently stable as the U.S.A., they've done it.

The line between facts and opinions gets awfully blurry when people start talking politics, I would say stick to things that can be measured and verified when using the word, "fact". :cool:

The greatest bull market of all time is fact...the numbers are there.

Exactly.


But of course it was all engineered 15-20 years prior by Reagan. He was a modest guy, so he didn't want it to happen during his tenure, he manipulated it so that it could make a Democrat from Arkansas take all the credit.

A big part of the Bull run in the 90's had to do with the Stock market being UNDERVALUED for decades because of the Cold War. When an asset is subject to instantaneous immolation it's value will be depressed. When the threat of annihilation subsided in the 90's those asset came up to fair market value. The other part was lesser military spending due to the peace dividend.

BTW: I blew a big time Stanford economist's LA TIMES Oped piece outa the water with this little gem. My little letter did get published.

Your absolutely right Carter did get the bums rush for something he had nothing to do with. Carter had to pay for LBJ's and Nixons folly.

Lyndon Johnson..DEMOCRAT... was the FIRST US WAR MONGER to say we could have guns and butter that no sacrafice was necessary on the part of the American peple to fight the Vietnam war. EVER SINCE THAT MOMENT THE USA HAS BEEN GOING DOWN HILL. (fight a war and have a Great Society all at the same time)

The second part ot that has been a denial by every politician and nearly all Americans that the prosperity bubble created by WW2 and its aftermath was coming to a close in the late 1960's. That the reemergence of Germany and Japan as industrial competition started to put pressure on American wages and standard of living.

Instead of saving moneies for a rainy day the USA has kept on robbing peter (ss) to pay for paul ( a bloated Federal Budget). The Federal and State Civil Service Bureaucarcies amount to giant welfare programs designed to keep idle hands busy and on the payroll.

The only end to the madness will be when the money is all spent and the US goes BK. Americans act as if they are drunk when it comes to finances, they would rtather have the latest Big Screen than save a dollar for a rainy day.