How are we going to pay for all this shit?

Anyone recall how low Nixon's approval rating was when he resigned the Presidency in 1974? Originally Posted by lustylad

Around 24%, according to a few published reports at the time.

I suspect that if Kamala, as seems likely, ascends to the presidency at some time during the next three years, she'll give ol' Tricky Dick a serious run for his money!

The low 20s seems about the deepest descent possible, as explained by a history prof from an unspecified university on Quora a few years ago: Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

Thanks! The analysis you cut and pasted, purportedly written by a Prof. William Murphy, was a very good read and contained a lot of truth. (E.g. "...people don’t like to admit when they are wrong. From a cognitive standpoint, it is a difficult thing to confront the idea that you made a bad choice...")

I knew Truman was deeply unpopular back in 1952, but I didn't realize his approval rating at the time (22%) fell below Nixon's nadir!

Huh? You mean A didn't solely, entirely and exclusively cause 100% of B to happen? You're saying C, D, and E also contributed to B? And some of those variables influenced B in opposite ways? So now I have to figure out what the impact of A on B would have been, but for C and D's offsetting effects? Awww... go away with that complicated shit! It muddies up my narrative! Originally Posted by lustylad

Most of us here, including me, are guilty of what LustyLad's describing. A few observations from the past,

Venezuelan YoY GDP growth from 2004 through 2007 ranged from 7.7% to 36%. Actually Hugo Chavez and others in the Venezuelan government must have looked like economic geniuses up until Chavez's death in March, 2013 -- GDP growth in 2012 was 5.5%.

What happened after that? Venezuela is now a complete basket case. It has the worst economy in the Western Hemisphere except possibly for Haiti and Cuba.

President Clinton was president during a huge run up in tech stocks. The NASDAQ index peaked at over 5000 in March, 2000. By the time Clinton left office, the index had roughly halved.

George W. Bush was president when the S&P 500 hit a record, around 1560, in October, 2007. By the time he left office the index had fallen to around half that level.

Now, it is fair to blame Chavez and his fellow party members for the state of the Venezuelan economy. They've been in charge since 1998. And the nationalization of businesses and discouragement of capitalism obviously led to the country's demise. It's fair to make that observation after 24 years of history.

Looking back, would it have been fair in 2013 at Hugo's funeral to laud and credit him for world beating GDP growth during his time in power? Of course not. Maybe steadily rising oil prices, but not Hugo.

Can you give Clinton or Bush the credit for the run ups or fall offs in market indices? I don't think so. They were just there when it happened.

How about Obama and Trump and GDP growth? I'd come down on LustyLad's side on this, that two years of Republican rule in 2017/2018 had a more favorable effect on GDP than Democratic rule from 2009/2010. Those were years when one party controlled the presidency, the House and the Senate. But other variables collectively influenced GDP growth more than who was in power. And WTF has a good point, both parties have run up our debt to what may be unsustainable levels.

And that's what most of us do agree on, is that we don't like huge budget deficits and debt levels. The argument I guess is do you try to fix that by lowering the rate of growth of government expenditures or increasing the rate of growth of government revenues.

Instead of looking at U.S. GDP growth over periods of time, a better approach is to look at GDP per capita, adjusted for purchasing power, by country. As I've said countless times here, when you kick out the petrostates like Norway and the tiny places like Monaco, the countries with the highest GDP per capita are Singapore, the USA, Ireland, Switzerland, and Hong Kong. And these same countries have the lowest government expenditures and government revenues as a % of GDP of medium and large developed countries. You can spend some time with Wikipedia tables and verify that, although you may have to use something like the Wayback Machine (internet archive) as COVID has obscured the numbers, especially government expenditures for the USA which were abnormally high in 2020 and 2021. I'll put some links at the bottom.

Anyway, this leads me to believe the better way to fix the budget deficits and debt is through lower growth in spending. And more efficiency in spending and programs would help a whole bunch, which is something that I'm not sure our federal government is capable of. The municipalities and states are much better at that.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...PP)_per_capita

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...centage_of_GDP

And "Big B" gets a 38% approval rating!!

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...ll/6320098001/


But hey, let's try to put a positive spin on it... at least Big B is still ahead of his Veep Kum-a-lot, whose approval Originally Posted by lustylad

You're taking that out of context. I was responding to WacoKid who for four years constantly touted his 401k and Trumps stockmarket.

And one has to admit...the market has done very good.

Tiny...of course the economy was better between 2016-17 than 2009-10!

The fairest was to compare GDP between Trump and Obama from 2014-2019. I'm too lazy to do so and lustylad won't because it will not confirm his lies.

I would argue that all Presidents really do is ride the economic wake of the President they follow. And would argue even more that election are won and lost at the gas pump..

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Obama bailed out the banks? Holy smokes! Thanks for pointing that out to us. You see, most people seem to think the legislation that created "TARP" and the "bank bailouts" was passed in October of 2008.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerge...on_Act_of_2008

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubl...Relief_Program

So, that sneaky Barack engineered all this before he even entered the Oval Office? Damn, he must be even more hypercompetent than I thought!

. Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

It's true that TARP was established in fourth quarter 2008. The rules as to how much money would go out were established in 2009 when Obama was president. Some loans started to go out in 2008, but most of the money was given out by team Obama. You misspoke Captain on the mechanics of the program. Your statement about the banks being profitable before Team Obama could find the restrooms was entirely false. Over 900 troubled assets were given assistance. In 2012 over 300 banks stilled owed money. From your second link.

In a January 2012, review, it was reported that AIG still owed around $50 billion, GM about $25 billion and Ally about $12 billion. Break even on the first two companies would be at $28.73 a share versus then-current share price of $25.31 and $53.98 versus then-current share price of $24.92, respectively. Ally was not publicly traded. The 371 banks that still owed money include Regions ($3.5 billion), Zions Bancorporation ($1.4 billion), Synovus Financial Corp. ($967.9 million), Popular, Inc. ($935 million), First BanCorp of San Juan, Puerto Rico ($400 million) and M&T Bank Corp. ($381.5 million).[62]

Plus if you look at the chart you can plainly see that Morgan Stanley and PNC bank did not pay back their loans until 2009 & 2010 respectively.

You may be good at monetary policy but with this you got several points completely wrong.

The banks were not the only "troubled assets" GM, Chysler and AIG they got their money from Obama. Bush and Dick Cheney were long gone. Next time read the fine print before you post.

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It's true that TARP was established in forth quarter 2008. The rules as to how much money would go out were established in 2009 when Obama was president. Some loans started to go out in 2008, but most of the money was given out by team Obama. You misspoke Captain on the mechanics of the program. Your statement about the banks being profitable before Team Obama could find the restrooms was entirely false. Over 900 troubled assets were given assistance. In 2012 over 300 banks stilled owed money. From your second link.

In a January 2012, review, it was reported that AIG still owed around $50 billion, GM about $25 billion and Ally about $12 billion. Break even on the first two companies would be at $28.73 a share versus then-current share price of $25.31 and $53.98 versus then-current share price of $24.92, respectively. Ally was not publicly traded. The 371 banks that still owed money include Regions ($3.5 billion), Zions Bancorporation ($1.4 billion), Synovus Financial Corp. ($967.9 million), Popular, Inc. ($935 million), First BanCorp of San Juan, Puerto Rico ($400 million) and M&T Bank Corp. ($381.5 million).[62]

Plus if you look at the chart you can plainly see that Morgan Stanley and PNC bank did not pay back their loans until 2009 & 2010 respectively. (Go take a look at the record and you will find that most banks of any substantial size were profitable again in short order after the earliest days of TARP implementation.)

You may be good at monetary policy but with this you got several points completely wrong.

The banks were not the only "troubled assets" GM, Chysler and AIG they got their money from Obama. Bush and Dick Cheney were long gone. Next time read the fine print before you post. Originally Posted by adav8s28

Thank you for your kind advice, but I "read the fine print" some years ago, and believe that I understand this issue quite well enough.

The key factor here is that the funds were legislated months before Obama assumed office, so he didn't "bail out" anything. Quite obviously, then, institutions and companies did not "get their money" from Obama.

In fact, his team bungled the process in many ways. For starters, take a look at this:

https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publ...he-rule-of-law

Please read that and then tell us whether you're still going to claim that the Obama team handled the whole bailout issue competently.

Okay, we get it. You're an extreme partisan. Didn't you actually state on several occasions that Obama's wonderful $800+ billion "stimulus package" (ARRA) saved the economy from "Great Depression 2.0?" (Why, yes! I do believe that you did!)

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(Go take a look at the record and you will find that most banks of any substantial size were profitable again in short order after the earliest days of TARP implementation.) Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

It would be too much to expect adav8 to actually look this stuff up, so here is a graph showing that the US banking industry as a whole returned to profitability in Q1 2009 after reporting an aggregate loss in Q4 2008.

Of course, this doesn't mean ALL banks that accepted TARP money showed a loss in Q4 2008 and a profit in Q1 2009. But let's not confuse adav8 with nuance. Extreme partisans like him don't do nuance well.

Here's something that will confuse him even more... a bank can be insolvent but still report a profit. Or solvent and report a loss. Just because a few banks waited until 2012 to repay their TARP money doesn't mean they weren't earning profits for the entire time they held the TARP funds on their balance sheets.

Bush AND Obama can take credit or blame for the bailout just as Trump and Biden can take credit or blame for the Afganistan withdrawal.

Originally Posted by lustylad

What is your point lad?

What is your point lad? Originally Posted by WTF

My point is that you don't know how to shut up and wait until I'm done posting my point!

Ha!

My point is that you don't know how to shut up and wait until I'm done posting my point! Originally Posted by lustylad

Ha! Originally Posted by Austin Ellen

Just goes to show how most of wtf's posts are driven by impulse rather than deep contemplation.

My point is that you don't know how to shut up and wait until I'm done posting my point! Originally Posted by lustylad

You post a pointless post and then cry about another poster asking you wtf your point is...or will be?

You think we're all mind readers?

You post a pointless post and then cry about another poster asking you wtf your point is...or will be?

You think we're all mind readers? Originally Posted by WTF

Wtf Posting Tip: From now on, just relax and play with your doodle until the 60-minute edit window is up before responding to any of my posts, ok?

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Thank you for your kind advice, but I "read the fine print" some years ago, and believe that I understand this issue quite well enough.

The key factor here is that the funds were legislated months before Obama assumed office, so he didn't "bail out" anything. Quite obviously, then, institutions and companies did not "get their money" from Obama.

. Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

It's true that in Fourth quarter 2008 Tarp was authorized to give
give "troubled assets" 700 billion. This was reduced to 475 billion when the Dodd /Frank bill became law in 2010. Aprox the first 200 billion was loaned out under Bush43. Clearly the rest was given out by team Obama. You just got caught with another mispeak. Your link also explains where Tim Geitner had the plan to distribute the last 300 billion that was authorized by Dodd/Frank.

You forgot this from your second link:

The TARP originally authorized expenditures of $700 billion. The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 created the TARP. The Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, signed into law in 2010, reduced the amount authorized to $475 billion. By October 11, 2012, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) stated that total disbursements would be $431 billion, and estimated the total cost, including grants for mortgage programs that have not yet been made, would be $24 billion.[1]

Would you like to explain how 300 plus banks were profitable (before team Obama could find the bathrooms) when they still owed the Federal Gov Billions of dollars in Tarp loans in 2012?

General Motors did not get their money until the following conditions were met.
1. The current CEO had to resign
2. The car divisions that made and sold Hummers and Saturns were
Closed. This was all team Obama. Bush43 had nothing to do with
this. So your statement that Obama did not bail out anything
simply does not fly, Captain.

I suggest you go back and read your own link. You did say it was a couple of years ago since you read it.