There are significant and troubling issues in the European economy that are freaking out investors and causing negative volatility on Wall Street. Everyone is worried that Greece will default on its debt and cause a banking crisis reminiscent of 2008. Today, a top official at the European Central Bank resigned and people got even more nervous. But it’s also true that the mere existence of Republicans is hurting investor confidence.
“Even yesterday’s speech raises questions of whether there will be support for fiscal policy,” [former Federal Reserve economist Paul Ballew] said about the president’s jobs address.
Mr. Obama’s plan focused on generating jobs and included a number of tax cuts and spending proposals, like an extension and expansion of the cut in payroll taxes and a tax holiday for small businesses for hiring new employees.
Mr. Ballew said that questions persisted about how much of the proposal would pass…
…Clark Yingst, the chief market analyst at Joseph Gunnar, said that the fall of the euro against the dollar on Friday, resulting in a six-month low, suggested that the S.& P. 500 had not yet completed its recent correction.
“The market just doesn’t believe that it is going to be passed by that Republican house,” Mr. Yingst said of Mr. Obama’s speech.
In other words, we’re all losing money in our retirement portfolios because the big investors think the GOP will block the president’s jobs plan.
This is what they were hired to do. Their base is deluded enough to think the carnage will only hit people they don’t like.
Boo:
All this makes me wonder who controls the GOP any more. And what will the Big Money Boyz do to get them back under control?
They won’t. The Genie is out of the bottle. Without Perry, Bachmann would have been the nominee. Of course Perry isn’t a true believer, he’s just a stupid as fuck George Bush. But they might be swindled by his shoot from the hip “it takes balls to kill innocent people” college failure cowboy governor…again.
there are only a few ppl, I wouldn’t know the number but they’re in the Koch brothers bracket, who are not affected and in fact some of them are sponsoring the teacrazies – they are the superrich. But the “ordinary” rich and their supporters (read: Wall Street, i.e. those who handle their $ many of whom belong to that group) are already scared by the GOP crazies. I would guess that Obama is trying to make the lines (already drawn) clear, giving the “rich” the option of joining the democrats vs. the crazies who don’t mind destroying the usa (and world?) economy. I’d say no one controls the GOP as its coalition across interest groups seems on the verge of splintering
The policy of “one dollar, one vote” might be the petard that hoists the owners of most of those dollars. Superrich true believers like the Koch brothers are ruining all of us.
The GOP will blame Obama for everything they do, and they will be joined by the firebaggers. So they have a winning strategy, it seems.
Greece isn’t all that big a country and their debt really isn’t all that large. I can’t quote figures but from what I’ve read, it all sounds like something that can be absorbed if they default. And they should default and re-introduce their own currency for their own sake. (IMHO)
What seems to be the big scare right now in Europe is that all of the giant banks are having trouble meeting their capital reserve requirements and one of the really big ones (maybe Deutschebank, not sure) may fail and go bankrupt any day now. Another Lehman Brothers, but MUCH bigger. And they owe ALOT of money to US banks and the Federal Reserve. Meanwhile, the European Central Bank doesn’t have a clue about what to do and the two really rich countries (Germany and France) have their heads buried in the sand about the fact that they are going to have to do an enormous bailout if they want to preserve the Euro. The ECB will have to sell Euorbonds and buy all of the debt from all of these free-wheeling gamblers known as banks and the losses will be passed on to the people, but they have no system in place to do this.
They’re fucked. The Euro was a good idea at the time it was introduced but, for example, the UK would not participate in it because it was only a half-baked system.
If a major European bank goes down, the whole world will suffer, as they did when we let one go down.
But I don’t think the drops in the markets have much to do with US politics right now. It’s about Europe.
What Congress doesn’t grasp in its guts and what most progressives miss (indeed most Americans) is that it’s a global economy in which countries are now economically interdependent.
The best thing that the US could do for the political stability of Europe is to put the pedal to the metal on the US economy. The best thing that Europe could do for America is stop their austerity nonsense, markets be damned.
Yes, the euro fell against the dollar, but in Nouriel Roubini’s opinion it hasn’t fallen enough to wake up the central bankers to the fact that their policies are making things worse globally.
For most Americans, retirement portfolios don’t exist. Even for most middle class Americans, there is probably less than $5000 in their 401(k)’s–the primary retirement portfolio (unless you include the equity in a house).
Right now the stock markets are declining because of the prospects for the US economy over the next 6 months. Best case with the American Jobs Act is that something will start to happen in about 6 months. That would be mid-March. There is going to be a double dip recession before then unless consumers dig in their sofas and make the Christmas retail season big.
If the GOP response to the American Jobs Act gets framed properly, 2012 could be a watershed election that changes the map. The debt ceiling fiasco potentially shook loose a lot of traditional Republicans.
And according to a religious right talk show that was fretting about dominionism (see digby), Rick Perry’s prayer rally exposed the fact that the religious right sees itself as losing the argument on gay rights and on abortion. They are feeling marginalized politically once again. Well, they at least can read the polling. Which is why they’ve surfaced the dominionists and are praying.
Democrats better have 435 good House candidates ready. Next year could be a big year and you would hate to see folks like Virginia Foxx and Louis Goehmert win only because they were unopposed.
Eric Cantor is now running scared and the House Republicans are trying to figure out how to separate out just enough to pass as a compromise. It’s time for a unified Democratic caucus to back up the President in saying “pass the whole bill now.” The worse case for Dems in the general is for the Republicans to rapidly get this bill through with large majorities in both Houses. Then the GOP could crow about having helped the economy. But I don’t think they are smart enough in that direction.
A fifty state strategy? What would Rahm Emanuel say?
Retirement portfolio? What kind of exotic luxury is that? I’ve got 14 years to figure out how to get my kid through college and I still have no idea how to go about it.
Let your kid find his own way through college. That sounds harsh, but it’s good advice. He can work, join the military, or lower his sights to something reasonable like a two year school.
Don’t misunderstand me. I support public finance for college. But today’s reality is that you need to look out for yourself and hard as it seems, your kid needs to learn to stand on his own two feet. SS won’t be there for you. Hell, I’m 66 and it doesn’t seem like SS will be there for me, through my whole lifespan that is. Most likely, when I’m about 80 and unable to work at all, it will be cut off., either by a means test by Democrats or a Republican ending the entire program. The only supporter of SS that I see in Washington is Bernie Sanders, and he has no power.
Your kid will be fine. Look out for yourself. No one else will.
Those who say SocSec won’t be there for us are only half right. The paycheck deductions will always be with us, but they’ll be funneled to a privately held insurance company who will refuse monthly payments whenever possible.
Anybody who has stocks in a retirement portfolio is an idiot. The stock market is simply a giant casino, and everybody knows the house–not the players–always wins. My wife and I got out of stocks in our investment portfolios about four years before we retired, and managed to save our capital and even make a bit, unlike a lot of our friends who took a serious bath in 2008 and 2009.
OT: A fascinating animated map of the recession thus far.
The Geography of Jobs
amazing, thanks for posting. Interesting to compare 2009 and 2010
Is there anyone who thinks the RepubliKKKans won’t block the President’s job plan ?
The bet is it want matter. If they do block it, it is a huge campaign issue. If they don’t block and cave, they disappoint their philosophical base.
It all depends on the public reaction to Republican obstruction of what is essentially a traditional Republican plan.
won’t
They’ll block the spending and twist their reasons to the voters. Most voters still think we invaded Iraq because Saddam Hussein was behind 911. Republicans are REALLY GOOD at lying and the media amplifies their lies.
But you fail to acknowledge that the reason we have a “Republican House” is Obama’s failure to be aggressive on the jobs front. He didn’t step up on this until he’d been in office more than two and a half years. The 2010 election debacle occurred because the Tea Party nuts came out to vote while independents and Democrats stayed home because Obama’s inaction and vacillation made them apathetic.
Yes, we have a bunch of nuts who have the power to drag down the whole world’s economy. What you need to examine is how they got that power.
We don’t need to examine how they got that power any more. We’ve exhausted that analysis.
We need to figure out a way to take that power away from them.
And let’s not mention that George W. Bush destroyed our economy. Ancient history.
Let’s look forward not back.
Let’s look forward to taking power back so that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney can be held accountable before they die.
Let’s look forward to taking power back so the we can start implementing our vision of the future instead of defending against the right-wing’s vision of the future.
Let’s take power back means putting people in Congress and state legislatures who will fix the process and start making government work again.
We can mention that George W. Bush destroyed our economy all we want. By professional restraint, the best that any President can say is “we inherited an economy in deep crisis, the most severe crisis since the Great Depression.” The wingnuts are clear what he’s saying and howl like banshees. Any Democrat other than the President can fully well name names about who is responsible for the economic mess — and they have named names. But even on the far progressive said some folks give W a pass and say that it was Clinton’s fault because he laid the institutional groundwork by, among other things, signing the repeal of Glass-Steagall.
Do you want polemics, analysis, or strategy? If you want strategy, you are unavoidably in the realm of looking forward, not backward.
apparently went over your head. It’s what Obama said when the Democrats HAD the power to hold the Bush crew accountable and decided not to.
This morning, in the NY Times, from the Progressive Policy Institute.
Mr. Perry is a man of the hard right.
He deeply loathes everything America stands for – brotherhood and solidarity, enlightened and competent government, democracy, and secular, scientific, and pluralist civilization.
In particular, he despises our dual kinship both with the modern, social-democratic nations of the West and with the other multicultural, multiracial societies of the New World.
His stated goal is to create a globe militarily dominated by a stupid, chauvinist America ruled by the ancient and savage religious law of the Old Testament as construed and imposed by the most ignorant and bigoted of fundamentalist Christian clergy.
He exhibits a form of madness, a self-loathing, reminiscent of the late pop singer Amy Winehouse.
Mr. Perry keeps injecting the heroin of class warfare and capitalism into our national bloodstream.
And he can continue to play on the biggest stage and boast a huge audience.
In the end, however, it leads to the same result: insanity and death.
OK, I was kidding.
That would have given the Village both kinds of vapors, the smelling salts kind and the fart lighting kind.