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Message: [QUOTE="Crusty, post: 792806, member: 2265"] That is a lot of ground to cover. Since you used quotes it appears that this comes from some partisan publication. (I notice you did not reference the author – will you share it?) As you now, these types of rants (on both sides) are full of random facts laced with hyperbole. Nevertheless, let’s examine it. First, let’s get the context correct. The recession is clearly on Bush/Greenspan, not Obama. If we can’t agree on that then it is hardly worth wasting each other’s breath. Most will concede this fact but they ignore the magnitude. It becomes. “Oh yeah, but the recovery is weak.” [B]This recession was far worse than any other in the last 100 years save the Great Depression. It destroyed enormous amounts of household wealth and devastated the housing industry, one of the largest employers in the country. Let’s move on/[/B] 1. “Since Barack Obama took his first oath of office on January 20, 2009, our national debt has gone up 58%. The U.S. dollar has depreciated 6%.” [B]Yes, debt has gone up –so what? That is what happens in recessions and this one was far worse than all others except one. Under Bush the national debt outstanding rose 105%. Under Reagan it increased 128%. Surprising the author did not mention that.[/B] [B]The dollar is essentially unchanged. On December 31, 2008 it was at .7331 Euros and yesterday 7.273.[/B] 2. “With such a large slice of the population out of work and broke, 47 million Americans are now living on food stamps. That's 1/7th of our country!” [B]1/7th of the country equals 14%. The actual poverty rate is closer to 15%. The poverty rate was over 20% in the 1950’s and has dropped to the 11% to 15% range from then until today. During Reagan’s recession the poverty rate was almost exactly the same as today. This is the kind of disingenuous argument that is clearly meant to create controversy with absolutely no informational value and adding nothing to the national debate. It is pure nonsense.[/B] 3. “Meanwhile, the U.S. government lost its triple-A credit rating for the first time in history.” [B]Again, so what? Did the market care? No. There has been no effect on prices of US Treasuries due to the S&P downgrade. Why? Because it was a political judgment not an economic one. [/B] 4. “We're turning into a welfare state at exactly the time the government is going broke.” [B]We are not broke and the nature of our welfare programs has not changed since Bush’s drug prescription program.[/B] 5. “49% of American households get government handouts—even more than the 47% Mitt Romney so infamously cited. Never before in history have so many people depended on Uncle Sam for housing, food and health care. Many of these millions are truly needy and deserving. But half the country pays no federal taxes—that's a problem!” [B]I have no way of knowing how this calculation was made. What is a government handout? With respect to federal taxes the statement is, of course, grossly inaccurate – actually completely false. The author counts Medicare and SS on the one hand (spending) and then totally ignores payroll taxes on the other (taxes). How can anyone listen to this stuff?[/B] 6. “Obama has run up more debt than all other presidents combined, from George Washington to George W. Bush. The U.S. has now accumulated the biggest debt in world history and it is growing by $45,000 per second." [B]This one is a doozy. First of all, the same statements can be said for Bush and Reagan and many other presidents. These are just silly numbers. They do not take into account inflation and or the growth in population, war and peace, recessions etc. This is just ignorant.[/B] 7. “As he [Obama] took the oath of office, he inherited a recession that was already over a year old. In every other recession since the Great Depression, things have looked dramatically better within a year and a half. [B]All recessions are not created equal. This one was far worse – in fact, more double the average of all post war recessions. Every previous recovery has had a healthy recovery of the housing market with big employment gains. This recession had had none of that. In addition, 2 million government jobs were lost due to austerity measures. That has never happened in any previous recession. Is it any wonder the unemployment rate remains stubbornly high? [B]8. [/B]“A month after he got into office, Obama signed his trillion-dollar stimulus plan—a group of infrastructure projects designed to save the economy. Obama's experiment didn't work because borrowing a trillion dollars out of the economy and putting it back into the same economy has a zero net effect.” [B]This is such an ignorant statement it is hard to know where to begin. Milton Friedman must be rolling over in his grave. I will just say that every study has shown that the stimulus was successful and screaming that it wasn’t does not make it so. It is reasonable to debate the degree to which the stimulus helped but not whether or not it did. Reagan increased the national debt by 128%, arguably borrowing and spending his way to prosperity. Why is it that it is OK for Reagan but not Obama?[/B] 9. “How far into debt can a country go before it collapses? That's an interesting question because total United States debt has just hit 105% of GDP. We're fast approaching the debt-to-GDP ratio that pushed Greece into bankruptcy.” [B]While I don’t want to do a Dick Cheney and say deficits don’t matter, degree, direction, trends and causes do matter greatly. Perhaps, the most important number to watch is the direction of the deficit-to-GDP ratio, which is falling sharply. This simply means the problem is starting to get under control. [/B] [B]We are not Greece. By the way, Japan has 2 ½ times the debt to GDP ratio as the US and has had for some time. No one is worrying about a Japanese default.[/B] My question is what would the author have done? Apparently, he would have repeated the policy mistakes of the Great Depression. I will say that one thing I never hear is, "What would Bush do?"[/B] [/QUOTE]

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