Tuesday, February 24, 2009
You'll have to watch the President on my behalf
I'm stuck at the office, so you will have to watch the President's speech without me. Post reax here, but follow one simple rule: Unlike the Associated Press, wait until you have heard Obama say the words before you write your comments. For bonus points, predict the reaction of the Dow Jones Industrial Average in the first hour of trading tomorrow morning.
MORE: Professor Althouse is live-blogging.
CWCID: Commenter "bad."
15 Comments:
By 
Georg Felis, at
Tue Feb 24, 08:21:00 PM:
Prediction: MSM says this is the greatest speech since Man invented Language. Dow plunges a hundred points, closes down 150 for the day (it would be lower, except all the "juice" is squeezed out of this lemon)
By 
, at
Tue Feb 24, 10:52:00 PM:
Empty words for the most part.How can you claim to be so 'fiscaly responsible' after you just took 787 billion from the tax payers?
Oh-Joe Biden is gonna oversee it so I do feel so much better now
By Heather, at
Tue Feb 24, 11:26:00 PM:
I'm going to say down 300. It will give up the gains today then another 50 or so.
By , at
Tue Feb 24, 11:56:00 PM:
It's good to be among right-thinking people who know how much damage this president does to the Dow, and how little all the abysmal economic indicators matter in such things.
By Heather, at
Wed Feb 25, 12:04:00 AM:
The numbers are abysmal, but looking at what Obama wants to do does not inspire any long or short term confidence.
Obama is planning on making energy more expensive. While increasing other taxes.
Not conducive to expanding the economy
By , at
Wed Feb 25, 12:28:00 AM:
"More expensive" than $40/bbl didn't kill our economy before, and in fact current prices +$100 didn't either, so such simplistic analysis has gaping holes in it. Also, as for making electric energy more expensive, see any of TH's posts on the smart grid, or search "electrical congestion costs" in Google. The alluded to miles of transmission lines have to go somewhere and do something, as long as they are not drawn in a circle connected to no electrical elements. Further, that type of public expenditure is in the general interest without being within the reach and interest of any specific actor, making it a prime candidate for action under most schools of governmental theory. Additionally, I will bet you $500 that Obama supported domestic drilling as part of a larger energy package while on the campaign trail, so offsetting programs are not impossible.
As for tax increases, "taxes" are not dictated by some magical number that is raised or lowered wholesale by a forklift. One might very well say that the multiplier for consumer spending is higher for people of a certain middle income, because they tend to spend the money on domestically produced/consumed goods and services rather than foreign such. Therefore a pairing of middle-income tax cuts with lapsing upper-income tax cuts would provide stronger economic growth than tax cuts wholesale while being revenue neutral. I haven't bothered to accumulate the data for this hypothesis because at the end of the day, Laffer curve economics has a fatal flaw: if you can't define the revenue distribution, you can't identify its local maxima and minima, and therefore can't tell what will happen with a given taxation change. Given the panoply of factors that govern such a distribution, including underlying and forecasted economic conditions, have fun defining such a function.
Here's a thought for managing federal expenditures and thereby lessening required revenues, enabling tax cuts: move to a one-front war-readiness paradigm and set the corporate tax at a flat 20% without deductions. Hey, that's a tax cut, what could be deceptive about that?
By JPMcT, at
Wed Feb 25, 01:02:00 AM:
The vast majority of the speech was a feel-good, moronic, Keyesian economic collection of blather and bull-shit.
I was particularly disappointed by Jindal's Republican response. It was stilted and formulaic.
Mr. Obama reiterated the amusing lie that the stimulus legislation was "completely free" of earmarks, which is such an astoundingly obviously lie that it reinforces the concept that Democrats have issues with reality testing.
Pelosi continued to appear clinically insane with her wide-eyed glaring sardonic grinning calls for applause for the endless list of liberal wet dreams espoused by Obama.
On the whole, it was an address devoid of logic...a campaign speech designed to continue the theme of "hope and change", whilst espousing the reality of confiscatory taxation and government domination of our daily lives.
It was an appeal to the distressingly dominant faction of American politics...the un-educated, juvenile, teat-suckling collection of losers that put this fool in office.
I forsee a revolution...
By , at
Wed Feb 25, 01:49:00 AM:
More from the never-ending campaign.
By , at
Wed Feb 25, 05:31:00 AM:
Fnord at 12:04:
Oil priced at over $100 per barrel certainly did not help the economy.
One of the first moves by Mr. Obama was to re-instate the ban on offshore drilling and cancel on shore leases sold in 2008.
The “Smart Grid” does not provide any additional electricity, it provides an averaging effect. It does that by allowing the power company to turn off electrical consuming items in your house. I don’t think that the long distance electric power distribution grid received much “stimulus” in the package.
By SR, at
Wed Feb 25, 09:42:00 AM:
Fnord,
I guess you don't believe that $100/bbl oil had any effect on the ability of marginal mortgagees to make their monthly payments thus choosing to default?
How about marginal businesses and their ability to keep marginal employees?
Middle class consumers shop at Wal Mart, a major distributor of foreign goods.
Please re-think.
By , at
Wed Feb 25, 11:01:00 AM:
I had bettter things to do then go watching the fuerer on the boob tube had better things to watch SCREW OBAMA
By , at
Wed Feb 25, 11:32:00 PM:
Sh*thead or Manchurian Candidate?
Growing up -- in our local slang -- "sh*thead" had a specific meaning ... reserved for people who thought they were smart but really weren't.
Obama doesn't want to deal with the realities of math, science and economics. He got away with this on the campaign trail, especially because MSM let him. Expect to see this exposed when details in his budget are revealed.
I expect that his energy plan will look especially stupid, because it comes down to cents per kwh. "Renewables" today aren't 2.5% of our electricity ... so a call to triple them won't change much. If you believe in global warming, this isn't an answer. "Nuclear" is, but Obama won't speak that word. Instead, Obama looks to propose an elaborate cap and trade tax to burden our use of coal ... are the folks in Pennsylvania listening?
So is Obama just a sh*thead ... or does he want to destroy the USA from within. It's one or the other.
Link
By , at
Thu Feb 26, 12:09:00 AM:
@ Stan: Oil at $100 made some people money, though perhaps not people you like. Playing the conservier-than-thou card, the free market had oil at $140ish for a reason. As for leases, never give away something valuable when you can make someone pay for it instead. Also, the smart grid does way better than providing power or an averaging effect: it mitigates incremental megawatts setting the price high for all the other megawatts, mitigating congestion that costs about $2B or more a year. How much support is much?
@SR: $100-$140/bbl did or should have cut into starbucks, cigarettes, booze, and private vs public transit. I question how many of those marginal mortgagees or businesses would have made it through other endogenous or exogenous shocks, meaning that oil was the marginal (but not only) exclusionary factor. Middle class consumers may also spend a larger fraction of their income on locally provided services, (laundry, maid, babysitter, etc) while affluent Americans may spend more money on luxury imports or vacations. At the end of the day, though, I still don't care because I think the point in contention was "taxes are more complicated than they are being given credit for," and no one here can get traction without a wealth of data.
@JP: Consumer confidence matters, one of many reasons why the WSJ reports it. human beings also happen to be profoundly devoid of logic, ex decision theory, so that's just the way it goes. You seem to have also missed the "responsibility" riffs; not that you're a partisan hack or anything. Perhaps the batteries in your hearing aid died.
@Link: I will bet you your salary that he does dare speak that word, "nukes". Oh wait, I won when he accepted the nomination. Go read the speech, or control-f if you're lazy.
By , at
Thu Feb 26, 07:54:00 AM:
Fnord: You're right ... Obama said "nuclear" in his inaugural speech ... in the context of Iran having a bomb! Not at all in his recent State of the Union speech where he specifically mentioned wind and solar. Obama fudged "nuclear" late in his campaign. You have to conclude he won't support it.
Fnord, your credibility is pretty low.
On energy, we should either commit to nukes or do nothing. What Obama's about to detail is worse than Carter's projects to nowhere on energy.
Jon Stewart on the Daily Show ridiculed Obama last night, so did Lou Dobbs this morning. At this rate, look for a cover on Time or Newseeek questioning whehter Obama is another Carter. My over/under is six weeks?
Link
By JPMcT, at
Fri Feb 27, 08:38:00 PM:
@Fnord:
I'd love to have a dialogue with you, as soon as I figure out what in the name of God you are talking about!!!
