Day: April 16, 2009

Others See A “Lost Decade” Approaching

Recently I wrote a post on the website, Eyes on Obama, (go to blogroll and click on site, it is an excellent site) where I said that there was the possibility that the US could have a Japanese style “lost decade” with the way we are handling our banks and the problems they are having.  And I am not alone, which makes me feel pretty good in an egotistical sort of way.

The U.S. economy is in for a “lasting slowdown” and could face a Japan-style period of relatively low growth coupled with high inflation, billionaire investor George Soros said on Monday.

Soros, speaking to Reuters Financial Television, also warned that rescuing U.S. banks could turn them into “zombies” that draw the lifeblood of the economy, prolonging the economic slowdown.

The healing of the banking system and housing markets is crucial to recovery. “The banking system, as a whole, is basically insolvent,” Soros said.

What’s more, the Treasury’s Public-Private Investment Fund is going to work but it won’t be enough to recapitalize the banks in a way that they are able to or willing to provide credit.

“What we have created now is a situation where the banks who will be able to earn their way out of a hole, but by doing that, they are going to weigh on the economy,” he said. “Instead of stimulating the economy, they will draw the lifeblood, so to speak, of profits away from the real economy in order to keep themselves alive. This is the zombie bank situation.”

Pay Your Taxes, Then Protest!

Today is the day we have all dreaded all year…..Tax Day, your taxes are due or at least your extensions are due.  And then there is people like me…..Tea Party Time……(yawn!)

There are many opinions on what the day is about.  First this from Marc Cooper in the LA Times:

Go to a hobby store. Buy a scale model of a U.N. One-World-Government Black Helicopter and a tube of glue. Toss the model kit. Sniff the entire tube of glue. You’re all set for the party.

And then there is the WSJ:

It’s possible that people who demonstrate today will find that experience cathartic enough — or exhausting enough — that that will be it. But it’s more likely that the tea-party movement will have an impact on the 2010 and 2012 elections, and perhaps beyond.

Now it seems that everyone involved with this organized spontaneity is saying that it is not at all about political parties or political ideology, but rather just the average person who is sick of governmental intervention into our lives.

But yet the two most vocal cheerleaders of the “protests” are Republican heavyweights, Armey and Gingrich.  Which puts a halt to the  premise that it is not ideological.  Conservative media does not like to mention the names of the leaders of this “movement” to use the cover organizations.

An organizer for the Knoxville tea party who said that no “professional politicians” were going to be allowed to speak, and he made a big point of saying that the protest wasn’t an anti-Obama protest, it was an anti-establishment protest. I’ve heard similar things from tea-party organizers in other cities, too. Though critics will probably try to write the tea parties off as partisan publicity stunts, they’re really a post-partisan expression of outrage.

Just a few facts that I say  will not come up in the protests.  The size and scope of new tax breaks for working families implemented as part of President Obama’s economic stimulus package are historic. According to data released by the White House today, 95 percent of working families will see a reduction in their tax by $400 for individuals and $800 for households beginning this year.

A typical family with three children and an annual income of $30,000 would keep as much as $2,172 as part of the president’s tax cut plan. In addition to keeping the $800 for the working families tax cut, known as the Making Work Pay Credit, this family could benefit from new credits for child care expense and a rise in the Earned Income Tax Credit.

A married couple earning a combined $90,000 with one child in college, would save about $1,500 in 2009 through the Making Work Pay Credit and new credits for college tuition expense, according to White House budget office estimates.

Another family of four preparing to purchase their first home would earn the new $8,000 homebuyer’s credit that was included in the president’s economic stimulus package. Along with the Making Work Pay Credit, this family could save $8,800 in 2009. So far, the White House says, $3 billion have been returned to first-time homebuyers through this tax credit.

An estimated 70 percent of these new tax credits and cuts will go to 60 percent of middle-income Americans like the typical families cited here. The Obama administration’s tax policies sharply contrast with the Bush administration’s, which primarily benefited the very richest Americans.

Let us be truly honest….this is nothing but a feel good day for those people that did not get their way in the last election.  They are thoroughly pissed that the American people have rejected the conservative ideology and they are pouting.

So I stand by my assessment that the conservatives and the GOP are just a pathetic bunch of losers.

Class dismissed.