I found Dana Milbanks plaint in his recent column amusing in a sad sort of way:
Obama ad man Mark Putnam has a dexterous sense of loyalty.
He is proud of his work on the president’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns. His Web site boasts that he wrote and produced Obama’s 30-minute infomercial in 2008, “the most-watched and highest-profile political ad in American history.†The site further notes that he “continued his work on the Obama Media Team†in 2012, “creating many nationally aired television ads.†There’s also a blurb from David Plouffe, former Obama campaign manager, calling Putnam “one of the best producers in our party.â€
And now Putnam is repaying President Obama for the faith he placed in him, by working to defeat the signature foreign-policy achievement — and one of the top overall priorities — of Obama’s presidency.
Riddle me this. When you hire someone to do a job for you what that employee or consultant owe you? Is he
- Your slave
- Your acolyte
- Someone who owes you loyalty and the best work he can provide during the term of his employment and nothing otherwise.
I’d say “c”. If you’re going to rely on hired guns, it’s prudent to keep them on the payroll. They’ve got you not the other way around.
Speaking of hirelings, Zero Hedge noticed something funny about the new labor report: People in their prime working years got clobbered in July.
They also note that they’ve been getting clobbered throughout the current economic golden age of Barack Obama. I had already seen that. And before steve says “It’s demographics”, no it isn’t, as I’ve pointed out in the past. Jobs, especially full time jobs, for people aged 25-54 are down far more than demographic changes would allow. The touting of such an economy as a good thing simply tells me that this is what the people in charge want to happen. Fuck them all, and fuck their sycophantic fluffers like Reynolds and steve. May you all reap what you’ve sown.
The old people aren’t retiring for multiple reasons. First, most took a bath in 2008/2009. They lost wealth. Next, we have had the retirement age for SS moved up. Now people need to work longer. And for the younger group, cyclical UE has become structural. As many said, long term UE often becomes permanent. One of the reasons to push for a larger stimulus was to prevent that.
Steve
If it was a balance sheet recession, the trick, long term, wasn’t short term stimulus, it was long term fixing of balance sheets. Obama chose short-term stimulus and long-term addition of debt, and pushed more debt for citizens, especially student loan debt. In other words, he pushed for the structural problems to become worse, and you’ve cheered him every step of the way.
Last I looked, you can’t force people to take out student loans. He did take them away from the banks, making it cheaper to take out those loans.
As I said, we needed at least short term stimulus to keep more people in the work force. Would longer term stimulus have been nice? Maybe, but not politically possible. It would also add even more long term debt, which seems important to you. There were just too many balance sheets to fix. Personal debt was at record levels. People needed to fix their own finances. We also had massive bank debt. They needed to repair as they were undercapitalized, and many actually insolvent. Every time we have an international banking crisis it takes years to recover. It may be that we know how to make this go faster, but just won’t do it for political reasons. However, I think it more likely that we don’t know how and that there may not be a quick fix once things get too botched up. OTOH, maybe you can tell us what we can do to get faster returns to normal on balance sheets. I think we just need to stay out of such messes.
Steve
Well, Steve, encouraging people to take on more debt probably isn’t the way to go. Making student loans cheaper & encouraging people to take on more loans probably isn’t a good idea, especially since such loans can’t be discharged.
Pumping trillions into the financial system to cover up past misdeeds is also not such a great idea. Especially since almost nothing was done to punish bad actors that helped screw everything up to begin with.
the government adding trillions to its own debt doesn’t look likely to help either. Funny how you kvetched endlessly about Bush’s deficits and have only complained that Obama’s weren’t much, much larger. Exactly how big do you want Obama’s deficits to be? Three trillion annually? (No doubt most of which should be directed to the medical profession.)
Finally, I’m not in charge. It isn’t really my place to run the country, so I don’t see why I should be criticized for not presenting a plan every single time I comment somewhere. Your party is in charge, your president is in charge, they’ve spent billions attaining office, and have been in office a long time now. Perhaps instead of figuratively licking the shit out of Obama’s ass at every opportunity and declaring it ambrosia, you should inquire as to what the Fuck his plan is, other than lining the pockets of his cronies and himself. But hey, it’s not like he has the power of some anonymous internet commenter, so maybe you are correct in calling me out instead.
As it stands, the President’s plan seems to consist of making billionaires richer, lying about how much he Cates, and calling everyone who doesn’t offer to toss his salad on a daily the equivalent of a terrorist. I don’t this that’s much of a plan, myself, but then he’s not lining my pockets like he’s lining yours, so there’s that.
“Funny how you kvetched endlessly about Bush’s deficits and have only complained that Obama’s weren’t much, much larger.”
Dave doesn’t bring up our debt as a topic. If he does, I will point out that health care is the primary contributor to future debt. If that is your concern, we can look at the actions of the two parties when they hold power. The GOP passed the unfunded Medicare bill, the largest unfunded spending bill in our history. The ACA was not only paid for, it actually has a number of provisions which may slow costs, including cutting reimbursements to hospitals, which means cuts for specialists.
Steve
@Icepick
If you want to dig into how things work and you have a lot of free time, Zero Hedge has reposts from Jeffrey P. Snider. He is a researcher at Alhambra Investment Partners, and he posts columns there and at http://www.realclearmarkets.com. Here are a few at Zero Hedge you can look for if you search for his last name:
Disorderly Collapse – The Endgame Of The Fed’s Artificial Suppression Of Defaults
Looking For The Next One: “All The Pieces Are Already In Position, Missing Now Only A Spark”
Looking For The Next Big One: Part 1, Orderly Or Not?
There is a link above the first paragraph to the original post at http://www.alhambrapartners.com, but the part 2 link is broken. However, the next post is part two.
(Too many links will get me flagged as a spammer.)
All of his posts are filled with links to his previous posts, and it can become time consuming trying to finish one of his posts and all the links in it plus all the links in the linked posts. It can get out of hand quick, but for me, he is confirming what I had already thought. He has the insider knowledge to be able to articulate the concepts I had formulated over the years.
With a few exceptions, the people who run the monetary system do not have a clue how it works. To get an understanding of the size, here is a Zero Hedge post: “You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat” – Does Size Matter When It Comes To The Debt Markets
The experts on the left and right are also clueless, and this is why their acolytes sound like babbling idiots when they try to explain away the obvious. They have no understanding of the nonsense they are spouting, but the expert sounded authentic and was on their side. So, no matter how little sense it makes, they must be right.