Obama disses Jeep Wrangler, callls jobless rate bump in road.mov

[TheLeadPontoon]

What does this video clip have to do with ANYTHING? It's a snippet from his trip to a Toledo Jeep plant which maybe you should check out if you're not a fucking idiot.

[GPNMUDGIRL]

If you are trying to promote Job groth how about positivly promoting a Made in the U.S.A product. Obummer!

[BestPoliticalVideos]

@bigfurhat

This IMPOSTOR has been found out! The real BigFurHat can be found at iOwnTheWorld

[elmagohypnotisador]

Is he stupid talking bad about JEEP in their own house.

[olumorador]

"bmp in the road"? more like the "grand canyon" of economic disaster, obama!

[whoo689]

Obama's stimulus and shit certainly haven't made the economy grow much faster, but I highly doubt the Republicans today can do much better. I mean, let's not forget about the 'jobless' recovery under Bush, even with things like tax cuts and corporatism. And the whole "Reagan's pro-business policies got us out of recession" is still debatable. For starters, Reagan got Volcker to finally lower the interest rate, which was at record levels, which helped a lot.

[whoo689]

The effects of things like "tax cuts" and incentives seems to be much exaggerated from what I can tell. I mean, from what I've heard (from folks like business relocation consultants), subsidies and taxes are fairly low on their list of concerns. Unless the tax is super-high, which applies to few taxes in this country (corporate tax probably being the best example, although the effective rate for companies varies because of all kinds of tax loopholes, deductions, etc.).

[whoo689]

I think the fact of the matter is, we may well be in what Richard C. Koo calls a "balance-sheet recession" where companies are quietly paying down debt, esp. debt acquired by financial assets and investments losing all their value with a bubble bursting, rather than hiring because they need time to get their financial house in order rather than take on ADDITIONAL costs such as labor. But they don't TELL all the shareholders that because that's very risky.

[whoo689]

Koo spotted this phenomenon in his home country of Japan during the so-called "Lost Decade." While he admits to not being a full-blown Keynesian, even HE recommends gov't do a minimum of stimulus spending (although Obama's stimulus, which was badly-structured btw and 1/3rd of which was tax cuts, was just shitty) to keep things afloat and prevent things from getting worse. If companies aren't hiring, and people are losing jobs and money, which reduces business demand, the money's gotta come

[whoo689]

from somewhere. Someone's gotta inflate that demand temporarily until business can get back on its feet. It may not sound ideal to conservatives, but that's the sad truth if we're in a balance-sheet recession. You certainly can't wait on businesses if they're paying down debt and won't hire many more people cuz getting that debt down could take YEARS.

[whoo689]

Now, right-wingers oftentimes call the 90s in Japan the "lost decade" because, supposedly, the stimulus spending "failed", and if you take "failure" to mean that the economy didn't go back to boom, then yes, it "failed." But if you consider the likelihood that the economy would've gotten worse or stayed at a shitty level WITHOUT the stimulus, then it's not such a failure. It kept the Japanese economy afloat rather than sinking, like a life jacket.

[whoo689]

And the times austerity WAS tried at the gov't level (1997 and 2001), the economy tanked again. I find it very odd that conservatives oftentimes seem to think that massive gov't spending either hinders economic growth or has a neutral effect. RARELY do they think it actually boosts it, except for a few areas like defense (which, ironically, is more an example of Bastiat's broken windows fallacy). But why?? Why must it be that gov't spending conflicts with growth? Why can't it complement it?

[espada9]

@whoo689: How do you expect businesses to “get back on their feet” when the government increases regulation, taxes, the price of fuel, goods etc?

[whoo689]

Job forecasts notwithstanding, the Boehner idea that "cutting spending" will MAGICALLY fix our economy and give businesses the tools they need to GROW and create more jobs is ludicrous and baseless! WHERE do they read their economics?? The bogus von Mises school? I mean, come on.

Then again, if we DID cut things like SS and Medicare, seniors would have to get the income elsewhere, and employers could hire them to bust their asses just for a little extra cash, thus "creating jobs."

[whoo689]

In the Great Depression, FDR cut spending dramatically in 1937, but the economy just went back into recession. Now, correlation is certainly not causation, but the fact that his cutting DIDN'T work then to "boost the economy" should give Boehner and others pause, esp. since the economic situation still is not quite comparable to the Depression, esp. since, evne if you accept the so-called "actual" unemployment rate versus the U6 or U3 or whatever it is (the official rate).

[whoo689]

The "actual" rate now is still almost 10 points lower than the highest of the Depression. So I don't think "cutting spending" drastically as Boehner plans would do much anyway since it's not doing much to begin with in terms of "crowding out" and shit ("crowd out" being the most bogus of economic abstractions ever simply put forth as a propaganda tool for conservatives to justify anti-spending rhetoric).

[MidNightRider2001]

Obama is a fucking asshole. 

[LizzyxDarcy]

@MidNightRider2001 well said