A symptom of the problem Options

[Snuffysmith]

"More Empires Have Fallen Because Of Reckless Finances Than Invasion"


While Eric Margolis' entire comment in the Toronto Sun is a must-read, the following two quotes really hit the nail on the head:

More empires have fallen because of reckless finances than invasion...

If Obama really were serious about restoring America’s economic health, he would demand military spending be slashed, quickly end the Iraq and Afghan wars and break up the nation’s giant Frankenbanks.

Margolis is right.

As I have repeatedly shown, war is bad for the economy. According to a Nobel prize-winning economist, the head of JP Morgan and others, the Iraq war and the war on terror in general were huge factors in destroying our economy.
America is a dying empire, destroying the last of its resources to fight unnecessary wars. Instead of rebuilding our economy so that we can once again be a strong nation, we are wasting trillions fighting those unnecessary wars, thus guaranteeing that we do not have the economic resources to defend ourselves in the future from real threats.

Don't believe me?

Well, our military and intelligence leaders say that the economic crisis is now the biggest threat to America's national security.

And as leading economic historian Niall Ferguson recently wrote in Newsweek:

Call the United States what you like—superpower, hegemon, or empire—but its ability to manage its finances is closely tied to its ability to remain the predominant global military power...

This is how empires decline. It begins with a debt explosion. It ends with an inexorable reduction in the resources available for the Army, Navy, and Air Force...

If the United States doesn't come up soon with a credible plan to restore the federal budget to balance over the next five to 10 years, the danger is very real that a debt crisis could lead to a major weakening of American power.

The precedents are certainly there. Habsburg Spain defaulted on all or part of its debt 14 times between 1557 and 1696 and also succumbed to inflation due to a surfeit of New World silver. Prerevolutionary France was spending 62 percent of royal revenue on debt service by 1788. The Ottoman Empire went the same way: interest payments and amortization rose from 15 percent of the budget in 1860 to 50 percent in 1875. And don't forget the last great English-speaking empire. By the interwar years, interest payments were consuming 44 percent of the British budget, making it intensely difficult to rearm in the face of a new German threat.

Call it the fatal arithmetic of imperial decline. Without radical fiscal reform, it could apply to America next.

And William R. Hawkins (formerly an economics professor at Appalachian State University, the University of North Carolina-Asheville, and Radford University) fills in some details on the fall of the Hapsburg empire:

Spain was the first global Superpower...With Spain as its political base, and gold and silver flowing in from its American colonies, the Hapsburg dynasty became the dominant power in Europe. It controlled rich parts of Italy through Naples and Milan, and Central Europe from the Netherlands through the Holy Roman Empire to Austria. In the 16th century it added the far distant Philippine islands to its empire. The Hapsburgs held off the Ottoman Turks, whose resurgent wave of Islamic conquest in the 16th century swept across the Balkans and nearly captured Vienna.

The Hapsburgs went into decline in the 17th century, and while any such momentous event has many causes, for our purposes the focus will be on the economic collapse of Spain, which not only sapped the empire of strength but served to build up the power of its rivals.

The demands of empire required a strong and growing economy, but Spain did not keep up with the economic expansion that was taking place in other parts of Europe. Madrid’s financial base fell out from under its empire. Spain could continue to consume in the short term because of the flow of precious metals from American mines, but it could not produce the goods it needed at home, which in the long-run proved fatal to its standing as a Great Power and as an advanced society.

Spanish imports were double exports and the precious metals became scarce within weeks of the arrival of the American treasure fleets as the money flowed to Spain's many creditors. What industry there was, along with banking and shipping, was in the hands of foreign owners. As a modern historian, Jaime Vicens Vives, has concluded, “This was one of the fundamental causes of the Spanish economy's profound decline in the seventeenth century, maritime trade had fallen into the hands of foreigners.” This, plus the “opening of the internal market to foreign goods,” produced a “fatal result.” Spain's exports were at the same time under heavy pressure by competitors in third country markets. A nation that cannot control its domestic market will seldom be able to sustain itself in foreign markets, which are inherently less accessible and more unstable.

Yet, Spanish leaders were deluded by a sense of false prosperity. This is testified by the statement of a prominent official, Alfonso Nunez de Castro in 1675: “Let London manufacture those fine fabrics of hers to her heart's content; let Holland her chambrays; Florence her cloth; the Indies their beaver and vicuna; Milan her brocade, Italy and Flanders their linens...so long as our capital can enjoy them; the only thing it proves is that all nations train their journeymen for Madrid, and that Madrid is the queen of Parliaments, for all the world serves her and she serves nobody.” A few years later, the Madrid government was bankrupt. The Spanish nobleman had foolishly elevated consumption, a use for wealth, above production, the creation of wealth.

Historians have traced the flow of Spanish gold and silver across the markets of Europe. Those who “served” Spain by establishing industries to manufacture goods for the Spanish market gained the money. Spain’s rivals, France, Holland (which started a successful revolt in 1568) and England, prospered by their trade surpluses, and reinvested the money to expand their own capabilities. Another modern expert on Hapsburg history, Henry Kamen, has cited contemporary sources who referred to 17th century Spain as “the Indies for the foreigner.” The military empire of the Hapsburgs became the economic colony of other powers, or, to use a current phrase, Spain was the “engine of growth” for the rest of the continent.

Where there were jobs and prosperity, there was also rapid population growth, and rising tax revenue. Rival powers were able to field and finance military forces that could defeat the once superior Spanish forces both on land and at sea. The irony of this is that Spain was ruled by a warrior aristocracy tempered by centuries of constant warfare against Islamic hordes and Christian heretics. These nobles looked down on merchants and manufacturers and disparaged their mundane professions only to find that without a strong domestic business class they could not afford the fleets and armies that guarded the empire they had built.

Today, the American “empire” is also trying to consume more than it produces. The U.S. trade deficit is nearing Spain’s nadir of imports being double exports. Both government spending and private consumption are financed heavily by debt. Washington is printing money, the modern equivalent of digging gold out of the ground, rather than earning the means to pay its bills. And the political and military elites are apparently indifferent to the fate of domestic business and industry. Americans must learn ... from the Spanish experience ... and take corrective action while they still can.

As for the need to break up the "Frankenbanks", see this.

http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2010...because-of.html

[TheRestofUs]

OK. Technically that's a foul. So technically you win Bross because you can technically ignore what kind of policies create bubbles and bust in the first place. Technically you can compare budgets during extraordinary times and due to my sloppiness get the prize.

And while it hasn't changed what is actually important and actually true for millions of lives over decades, nor what I believe, I'll be more careful in choosing my "words" in the future.

And all this while the Republicans vie to return to power and finish the job and the matter of your registration remains a low priority.

Yes, but that is not my goal.

My goal is just to spark some thought in people.

If one runs around screaming that the republicans to blame, well by simple logic they have to be wrong, at the very least to some degree. That means they aren't thinking things through.

And if that same person thinks that simply voting for the democrats will fix all of the problems in the country, well then they really need to start thinking because all we would get is a new set of masters.

And my being registered as a republican has absolutely no bearing on whether they will return to power or not because I will not necessarily vote republican; or democrat for that matter.

So your goal was what again? To make people think? This from someone who suggests he will be irrelevant in the direction of the country because he may vote for niether?

Irrelevance seems to be your forte. Indeed you "won" by ignoring so much that was relevant. And by my being sloppy and including "deficits" in my statement that, "The Republican Party has created the biggest deficits and debt in American history." So by ignoring what was happening in 1943, and between 1946-1949, and what the Democrats were spending the money on. And what happened after in the American Economy to everyone's income. The growth of the American Middle Class. The creation of Medicare and with that the millions of lives saved.

Reagan's attack on the Middle Class and his unprecedented debt creation. The stacking of the Supreme Court with corporate shills finally revealed to even the blind. The reality of only two viable choices. The track record of unprecedented lies and corruption on every issue centered in one Party in particular.

Verily the amount of things you ignored amounts to legion.

You constrained the debate to its narrowest and rather than make me think about what I believe you further confirm my opinion that Republicans are about ignoring mountains and straining at gnats.

But I won't whine. With all those caveats and more that you'd no doubt deem "not-pertinent," you are the winner in parsing words and running rings around me in technicalities.

You'd make a great lawyer and remind me to hire you if I ever commit some horrendous crime with massive evidence against me, but a shrunken glove is found that does not fit.

Just my opinion.

First, my vote is mine. What I do with it is my business and my vote is NEVER irrelevant.

Second, I allowed YOU to define the parameters of the debate. That way when you were beat you couldn't complain. But you still did, of course.

You constrained the debate the republicans having run up the biggest deficits and debt in history. I proved that to be statistically wrong. The numbers do not lie. The numbers do not exaggerate. That is a human failing.

And your sloppiness is not my problem. Gain more bearing and let me know when you are ready to try again.

Or just try discussing actual issues in a meaningful manner. You won't ever be a match for me in a debate so it would really be better if you don't try and just start actually discussing things.

You're right you are a "master-debater". But IMO you don't have a clue about "meaning". You started this thread with your take on the Republicans showing everybody what they are for the umpteenth time. And gave your opinion on anyone who disagreed with your absurd view that a bunch of diamond studded liars had anything meaningful to say about anything.

Obama kicked their butts just by letting them ask their BS questions made up of lies about him and issues in general. And for the umpteenth time he asked them to stand by their own oft repeated words and their own stated policies. But eventually a man of sense and honor has to recognize just what he's dealing with.

I saw what they were long ago.

And further, that you don't see it and continue to pretend there is something even approaching equivalency between hateful loons and bought out liars with zero credibility, and people who at least try to do what's right makes your assessment of me, my life, and anything else you see as "meaningful" of similar worth to me.

It isn't about me or my baggage or how angry I am. It's about what the truth is and how that truth affects millions of lives. To win a debate using percentages of GDP deficits in the 40's, and ignore the massive documented facts I posted about the deliberate attempt over the decades since, to destroy the American way of life by running up huge debt, and then cutting life-giving services to people, tells me what is and isn't important to you. Those "un-pertinent" facts tell me a lot more about what is important and meaningful than winning some debate on some bullshit technicality that means nothing.

And hopefully someday what that does mean to me about the Republican Party, and their actions, will also mean something to the vast majority of the American people.

But until that day enjoy your technical victory and whatever so-called "meaning" you get out of it.

Just my opinion.

This post has been edited by TheRestofUs: Feb 9 2010, 05:22 AM

[Snuffysmith]

The U.S. Can No Longer Afford Its Empire
February 3, 2010
Ivan Eland

President Obama has presented Congress with a spending request of $3.8 trillion for the next fiscal year in 2011, but with a third of it not paid for with taxes, thus resulting in a $1.3 trillion deficit (a whopping 8.3 percent of GDP). The small piece of good news is that this deficit is smaller as a portion of the nation’s economic output than this year’s gargantuan 10.6 percent for FY 2010 (that $1.6 trillion deficit is a post-World War II record). Budget deficits of this magnitude have occurred before, but only during cataclysmic wars—the Civil War and World Wars I and II.

Contrary to the rhetoric of congressional Republicans, who are stridently criticizing Obama for his excessive spending, these budget deficits are largely the result of George W. Bush’s new entitlement program (Medicare prescription drug coverage), the usual Republican fake tax cuts (tax cuts without concomitant reductions in government spending), bank and insurance bailouts, and the conduct of two disastrous U.S. occupations of foreign countries. Of course, Obama is far from blameless.

Using the key statistic of deficits as a portion of GDP, when Obama took office during FY 2009, the budget deficit was more than 9 percent of GDP. Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package and bailout of car companies increased an already gaping deficit into the 10.6 percent post-World War II record. The 8.3 percent figure for FY 2011 starts a downward projection but is still much too high. In fact, all budget projections for years out past the current and requested years (in this case, FY 2010 and FY 2011) are usually malarkey, because policy changes are unpredictable in the “out years.”

However, if history is any guide, Obama, a Democrat, over the long term will probably be better on deficits than George W. Bush, a Republican (he couldn’t be much worse). That’s because, according to conservative economist John H. Wood of Wake Forest University, historically, U.S. budget deficits have been closed after a crisis has passed.

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2724

Democrat Bill Clinton, with tax increases, cuts in military spending, and robust economic growth, managed to defy predictions for indefinite deficits from the Republican Reagan/Bush Sr. years and turned them into budget surpluses ending with FY 2001, the year he left office. Obama now faces a similar task of cleaning up the fiscal mess from the junior Bush’s eight years.

Obama made his task harder by buying into the flawed Keynesian argument that increased government spending is good for the economy. His stimulus package and car company bailouts just dug the fiscal hole deeper. But now the good news is that he seems to have quit digging and may have turned the corner to smaller deficits as a percentage of GDP. Only time will tell, but the wake-up call of the loss of Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat in liberal Massachusetts (in addition to dramatically lowering the probability that Obama’s stealth budget-busting health care program will be enacted) may cause Obama to become a “deficit-reduction Democrat,” much like his forebear Clinton.

After the Cold War, Clinton cut the defense budget despite the prosecution of many frivolous small wars that were unneeded for U.S. security. So far, Obama continues to increase military spending while freezing only a small part of non-security spending. Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, has prudently said the avoidance of cutting security spending is unacceptable.

And security spending is massive. According to Winslow Wheeler of the Center on Defense Information, the annual U.S. security budget—including spending on the wars, the Defense Department, the Department of Energy nuclear weapons programs, homeland security, veterans compensation, international affairs, non-DoD military retirement payments, and interest on the national debt accounted for by defense programs—is well over $1 trillion per year.

Cuts to such spending should not entail just slashing a few weapon systems—as was done in FY 2010 but not in FY 2011—but need to result from a total reassessment of the non-traditional post-World War II U.S. foreign policy of U.S. militarized interventionism. Such a policy should have been pronounced a failure when it caused the horrendous retaliatory terrorist attacks on 9/11. Instead, the tragedy triggered the initiation of a neoconservative hyper-version of this same foreign policy, the War on Terror (which includes two unneeded and counterproductive occupations of two Muslim countries), which statistics show made the problem of terrorism worse.

The Cold War is long over, and the concomitant rationale (dubious even then) for using an interventionist U.S. foreign policy to attempt to run the world is now obsolete and even dangerous in an era of blowback terrorism. Many empires throughout history have collapsed or withered away because their aspirations were too big for their wallets; the U.S. is in that perilous position now. Therefore, the United States should dramatically retract its defense perimeter, thus cutting the U.S. security budget by half and saving more than $500 billion a year. Of course, doing this will not cut even half the annual $1.3 trillion deficit. But it is a start on throwing dirt back in the cavernous budget hole.

[Snuffysmith]

False Profits: We Will Be Suffering from Greenspan and Bernanke's Ineptitude for a Long Time
An $8 trillion housing bubble fostered by the Federal Reserve has burst, and with it much of the wealth of America's middle class.
http://www.alternet.org/economy/145248/fal...for_a_long_time

[Snuffysmith]

The Baseline Scenario

What happened to the global economy and what we can do about it
Whose Fault?

To believe politicians in Washington and pundits in the media, the national debt has become the most important political issue of the day. (Whether it should be–as opposed to, say, jobs–is another question.) The Republican argument is, basically: “Big deficits! Democratic president! His fault!” The Obama administration argument, by contrast, is “No way! George W. Bush’s fault!”

I generally side with Obama on this one, mainly because of the two Bush tax cuts and the unfunded Medicare prescription drug benefit. Keith Hennessey, Bush’s last director of the National Economic Council, has a counterargument. Some of his points are good. OK, well, one point–the fourth one down. Hennessey is right that what initially transformed the Clinton surplus into the Bush deficit was the 2001 recession, which was beyond Bush’s control–just like what transformed the large Bush deficits of 2007-2008 into the enormous Obama deficits of today was the 2007-2009 recession.

The other points are good debating, but I don’t buy them. This could take a while.

1. Obama: Unfunded Medicare prescription drug benefit? Hennessey: Why don’t you repeal it instead of complaining about it? You could even use reconciliation.

OK, if Obama were king. Hennessey admits that his administration created a mess and says Obama should clean it up. But cleaning up the mess means either reducing entitlements or increasing taxes, would be incredibly unpopular, and would obviously be filibustered by the Republicans, the new Defenders of Medicare. There’s no way Obama could get 51 Democrats with him on this, and if he could, it would mean an end to Democratic majorities in Congress and to Obama’s hopes for re-election. I believe there are times when you should take a political hit to do the right thing (because the point of a majority is to govern, not to extend your majority), but asking the Democrats to commit political suicide to repair a Bush-era mistake is a bit rich.

2. Obama: Unfunded wars in Iraq and Afghanistan! Hennessey: Get out, then.

In this case, the Bush administration began a war in Iraq on false (or at least wrong) pretenses and made that country much more dangerous, while neglecting the war in Afghanistan. Obama opposed the Iraq War–that’s a major reason why he’s president today instead of Hillary Clinton. But he can’t simply say that the last six years never happened and pull out immediately. Colin Powell was right (even if he was wrong about Pottery Barn’s policy): “You break it, you own it.” And if he did pull out, the Republicans would crucify him politically. National security issues, like entitlements, only go one way politically–it’s much easier to be a hawk than a dove when it comes to fighting wars in the Middle East.

3. Obama: Tax cuts! Hennessey: Let them lapse, then.

See 1 and 2 above. Republicans are already positioning letting tax cuts lapse on the super-rich as “tax increases.” It’s a lot easier as a politician to give away candy than to take it back. The Republicans have cleverly played the game of enacting policies when in power that are politically difficult to repeal. (Note: The Democrats are trying the same thing with health care reform.) The goal is to force the government to shrink via spending cuts.

Hennessey also says that bracket creep will cause taxes as a percentage of GDP to climb above the long-term average. But it’s natural and good for taxes to climb upward as a society becomes wealthier, because the government does more. Entitlements go up as people’s conception of what an adequate minimum living standard is. Regulatory costs go up as businesses and products become more complex. Defense costs go up as the amount we are willing to invest in minimizing the risk of death to soldiers goes up. That’s a good thing.

Hennessey also says that the long-term problem is Medicare and Social Security. He’s right (about Medicare, at least). But then he says that therefore the tax cuts don’t matter. This is clever misdirection, since the political issue is why the deficits are so big today–and they are big today, in large part, because of the Bush tax cuts.

5. (Remember, I agreed with 4.) Obama: I inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit! Hennessey: Yes, but that was due to the recession. And then you passed an expensive stimulus package.

Hennessey’s first point is unobjectionable. But insofar as the argument is over why we have big deficits today, it’s also irrelevant. The trilion-dollar deficits we have today are the result of pre-Obama policies, just like the initial descent into deficit under Bush was due to pre-Bush policies.

His second point is just silly. In the face of a collapsing economy, the right thing is a stimulus package. The insistence in budgetary balance at the beginning of the 1930s is one of the most cited causes of the Great Depression (along with tight monetary policy and the gold standard).

6. Obama: When I took office, there were already $8 trillion in projected deficits. Hennessey: You changed the rules–it was only $3 trillion. “The President’s first budget played games by redefining the baseline to make the starting point look as bad as possible so that Team Obama could claim their policies would reduce the deficit.”

Well, we might never agree here, but I would say that Team Obama reversed out the games that the Bush administration (and previous administrations) had been playing all along. According to The New York Times, the “gaming” that Hennessey accuses Obama of is this:

* Ending the Bush practice of keeping Iraq and Afghanistan out of the budget and using supplemental appropriations instead.
* Assuming that AMT will be patched by Congress each year (as it is), rather than pretending that it will be allowed to encompass the middle class.
* Ending the Bush practice of budgeting artificially low Medicare payments and then allowing higher payments during the year.
* Adding a budgetary line for disaster relief; historically the government paid for disaster relief, but never budgeted for it.

Secondly, Hennessey’s charge doesn’t make logical sense. Changing the rules would only help Obama claim to reduce the deficit in the future if he were planning to change the rules back in the future. Unless Hennessey thinks Obama had a secret plan to stop assuming AMT fixes at some point in the future (or something similar), his argument not only isn’t true, it can’t possibly be true.

Hennessey’s major point is to say that Obama should stop playing the “blame game” (defined, in Washington, as someone else pointing out something you did wrong):

“I suspect that many Americans are tired of the blame game, especially more than one year into a new Administration. Whatever your view of President Bush, his policies, and their results, America needs to look forward. We have big challenges ahead of us, and we need to propose, debate, vote on, and then implement solutions.”

I agree that blaming everything on George W. Bush is neither good policy nor good politics. But there are some issues on which it is not only relevant, it is necessary to point out why we are in the mess we are in. One is tax cuts. The Republican attack line is “Tax increases bad. Hurt economy.” Now, the empirical evidence for that is weak. But more important, pointing out that you just want to repeal the Bush tax cuts means that we are going back to the marginal tax rates of the Clinton years, when the economy was booming. This is different from raising taxes to a level that the economy has not seen before–that might be risky. Simply undoing a policy is politically and substantively different from putting in place a new one.

Similarly, when people attack you for increasing government spending, it makes perfect sense to point out that they voted for the unfunded Medicare prescription drug benefit, because it is relevant whether they are deficit hawks or deficit peacocks. Deficit peacocks should simply be ignored, and that is relevant to public debate. Hennessey himself may be a hawk and not a peacock. But this whole “America wants to move forward” line, by obscuring the reasons why we face the problems we face, only makes it more likely that we will end up with the wrong solutions–or, more likely, no solutions at all.

By James Kwak
http://baselinescenario.com/2010/02/08/who...ault/#more-6330

[Snuffysmith]

U.S. Losing AAA Is Way to Rein in Pelosi, Reid: David Reilly

Commentary by David Reilly

Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) -- When it comes to America’s AAA debt rating, we have to ask whether we would be better off without it.

That notion is pure heresy, and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was quick this weekend to try and dispel any thought that the U.S. would ever be in for a downgrade.

“That will never happen to this country,” Geithner said during an interview with ABC News. The remark came after Moody’s Investors Service last week said the pristine U.S. rating will come under pressure unless something is done about mounting deficits.

Geithner shouldn’t have fought Moody’s report. He should have embraced it. What better way to impress upon Congress that the U.S. is very much in crisis and needs to face up to its problems.

That reality has yet to set in on Capitol Hill. Two weeks ago, for example, the Senate shot down a proposal to create a deficit-reduction commission. The measure failed because the Left worries such a committee will cut spending, while the Right is afraid it will call for tax hikes.

So no spending cuts or tax hikes, which is what we need -- just deficits as far as the eye can see. Let’s break out the fiddles already and watch Rome burn.

This is why concerns over the so-called PIGS -- Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain -- or those on the geographic and economic periphery of the European Union are really a sideshow. The real danger to markets lies with the DOLTS, or Dangerously Over-Leveraged Triple-A Superpowers.

That club currently consists of the U.S.

Let’s Pretend

So far, membership has allowed the U.S. and its elected representatives to pretend urgent action isn’t needed. After all, DOLTS have the world’s reserve currency and nukes.

This supposedly means we can spend our way out of debt because creditors like China will forever lend us money. Failing that, we can just print more dollars.

Yet even these benefits can’t change the fact that the U.S. is on an unsustainable course with deficits rising, the national debt soaring, and Social Security and Medicare preparing to go bust. At 10 percent of gross domestic product, the $1.6 trillion budget deficit for 2010 forecast by the Obama administration ranks as the highest such ratio since World War II.

The administration predicts that this ratio will fall to about 4 percent by 2015. For that to happen, though, the economic recovery mustn’t sputter.

U.S. Weakening

Debt, meanwhile, is set to climb to 77 percent of gross domestic product by 2019, according to Moody’s, while “debt affordability would be weakened by higher interest costs in the next several years.” That compares with government expectations at the end of 2008 of a future debt-to-GDP ratio of about 40 percent by the end of this decade.

No wonder investors like Marc Faber, who publishes the Gloom, Boom and Doom report, say the U.S. would carry a below- investment grade, or junk, rating if the country were a company.

And starting in 2020, things will get even worse. “It is worth noting that after 2019 is when the most serious pressures resulting from Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid will develop, so that failure to rein in the deficits would make it even more difficult to deal with such pressures,” Moody’s said in a credit opinion last week.

State and local governments are also in crisis, and, like their federal counterparts, are unwilling to face the harsh reality confronting them.

California Dwarfs Greece

The mire facing California, for example, makes Greece’s woes look somewhat manageable. California, staring at a $20 billion budget gap over the next 17 months, accounts for about 13 percent of the U.S. economy. Greece accounts for just 3 percent of the economy of countries that use the euro.

Things are so bad in Nevada, meanwhile, that the state could lay off every worker paid from its general fund and it would still be $300 million in the red, according to state Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley.

Given all this, Geithner should be using Moody’s AAA talk as a cudgel to beat some reality into congressional heads. So far, though, President Barack Obama has preferred to kowtow to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, rather than lead them.

From the earliest days of his administration, Obama has tried to appease both, or stood by as they hijacked and then wrecked his initiatives. This started with Obama’s acquiescence to a pork-laden stimulus bill and continued as the president gave Congress control over initiatives like the health-care overhaul and financial reform.

Getting Worse

The result is that the government has accomplished little in the face of the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression. And things may easily get worse.

An emboldened and divided Congress, meanwhile, shows no sense of recognizing the true extent of the meltdown. Unless there is a sense of immediate danger, there’s little chance it will do anything differently.

So while the threat of a downgrade might be unsettling, allowing the country to continue along its present course is far worse.

(David Reilly is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...id=aGL2Yx0AiblI

[billfmsd]

I just put it in my iTouch. I will comment later.

I listened to the Q&A last night.

That was some of the best strait talk I've ever heard from a sitting president about the game in Washington. But then again, I haven't been listening as long or as much as most of you seniors.

Too bad Bush couldn't rebuke his own party in public like that while rebuking the opposition at the same time. But then again, he wasn't really in either party. Did he ever do a Q&A with the DNC? Did the DNC ever request it?

Obama played B-ball and schooled 'em. But it was only on a half court. Now if he could just do that on a full court in both home and away games, we would get somewhere as a nation.



This post has been edited by billfmsd: Feb 9 2010, 09:18 AM

[brossignol]

You're right you are a "master-debater". But IMO you don't have a clue about "meaning". You started this thread with your take on the Republicans showing everybody what they are for the umpteenth time. And gave your opinion on anyone who disagreed with your absurd view that a bunch of diamond studded liars had anything meaningful to say about anything.

Obama kicked their butts just by letting them ask their BS questions made up of lies about him and issues in general. And for the umpteenth time he asked them to stand by their own oft repeated words and their own stated policies. But eventually a man of sense and honor has to recognize just what he's dealing with.

I saw what they were long ago.

And further, that you don't see it and continue to pretend there is something even approaching equivalency between hateful loons and bought out liars with zero credibility, and people who at least try to do what's right makes your assessment of me, my life, and anything else you see as "meaningful" of similar worth to me.

It isn't about me or my baggage or how angry I am. It's about what the truth is and how that truth affects millions of lives. To win a debate using percentages of GDP deficits in the 40's, and ignore the massive documented facts I posted about the deliberate attempt over the decades since, to destroy the American way of life by running up huge debt, and then cutting life-giving services to people, tells me what is and isn't important to you. Those "un-pertinent" facts tell me a lot more about what is important and meaningful than winning some debate on some bullshit technicality that means nothing.

And hopefully someday what that does mean to me about the Republican Party, and their actions, will also mean something to the vast majority of the American people.

But until that day enjoy your technical victory and whatever so-called "meaning" you get out of it.

Just my opinion.

You should really try reading my original post again without such a chip on your shoulder. What I said was that for the most part I saw a good interaction. I even gave credit to "your guy", my President for his part. But you looked right past that.

edited.

[brossignol]

Too bad Bush couldn't rebuke his own party in public like that while rebuking the opposition at the same time.

For the portions that Obama was critical of Congress in general, I would say you hit the nail right on the head. For the most part I thought it was a good Q&A and I liked to hear Obama take responsibility and I liked to hear him talk about leading more bi-partisan efforts.

That is what a leader does afterall. One does not wait for either side to be bi-partisan; one leads the effort.

[Snuffysmith]

I just put it in my iTouch. I will comment later.

I listened to the Q&A last night.

That was some of the best strait talk I've ever heard from a sitting president about the game in Washington. But then again, I haven't been listening as long or as much as most of you seniors.

Too bad Bush couldn't rebuke his own party in public like that while rebuking the opposition at the same time. But then again, he wasn't really in either party. Did he ever do a Q&A with the DNC? Did the DNC ever request it?

Obama played B-ball and schooled 'em. But it was only on a half court. Now if he could just do that on a full court in both home and away games, we would get somewhere as a nation.

Basketball strategy should guide President Obama's governance

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...0012204123.html
By Paul Gorrell
Saturday, January 23, 2010

There has been a great deal of reflection this week on President Obama's challenges during his first year in office. My sense is that critiques of Obama's leadership style should factor in the symbolic shift that occurred when he went from candidate to president: We elected a basketball player who has become a golfer.

All those readers who are golf devotees, please bear with me. Obama the golfer is simply not a good image for the president in these times. Perceptions are critical to a leader's ability to gain trust, build momentum -- or produce dissatisfaction. These days, the basketball player we met during the campaign would be a more welcome and effective leader. Consider:

-- Basketball is a game of the people. Whether it's played in an urban park, schoolyard or community center, people of all ages can walk up and join. Fans can fill an arena. Golf, in contrast, is a sport of the privileged, who gather in private clubs that tend to charge exorbitant fees. At a time when so many face economic uncertainty, the visuals of golf do not help the president demonstrate empathy and compassion.

-- Basketball is a highly physical but strategic sport; it has complicated team defenses and individual plays. It also requires toughness -- the willingness to force one's way past a competitor, often banging into him in the process. This is clearly not the case with golf, which requires discipline, finesse and patience -- all in a pastoral setting. Obama was admired for being tough in a long, difficult campaign. Now, though, he comes across as distant and disengaged, unwilling to throw an elbow.

-- In basketball, the high score wins. In golf, the low score wins. Simply put, Americans like high scores. To be fair, Obama has clocked many successes in the past year. But the president set high expectations by enumerating several challenging goals for his administration. The dominant image in recent days is of a leader who has not yet achieved his signature issue and is too cautious in trying to avoid error.

-- Basketball requires intensity at every moment. Players go from being on offense to defense in a nanosecond. In golf, some moments require intense focus, but those times are few and far between. We all know that good executives delegate, knowing when to end discussions or allow others to take over. But the executive should also know when to be fully engaged, when to take on issues that only he can drive home. Obama needs to get in the game with more obvious intensity.

-- In golf, the individual stands on his own every step of the way. In basketball, team play is the way to victory. A great executive brings together individuals to empower the group and then creates the team effectiveness required to achieve success. The president has a history of bringing folks together, but he seems to have lost his capacity for creating high-performing teams that demonstrate synergy and drive results.

The job of the presidency is not going to get easier anytime soon. Mr. President, please do us all a favor and put away the golf clubs. We need the basketball player we elected.

Paul J. Gorrell, ethicist and co-author of "The Coaching Connection," works as a principal at Partners International, a consulting firm that provides leadership and career development.