Once again: Obama and the jobs crisis

[Hannah Bell]

The Obama administration has flatly rejected appeals for the federal government to take any direct action to create jobs and alleviate the mounting toll of unemployment in the United States. Obama reiterated this position in his Saturday radio/Internet address, and it was echoed by top aides in media interviews over the weekend.

The Journal article published Monday began: “The White House is lukewarm about proposals by congressional Democrats to introduce broad legislation to create jobs, instead favoring targeted measures that would be less likely to inflate the deficit, administration officials said.” Besides Emanuel, the newspaper cited opposition by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to a tax on financial transactions that would finance a jobs program, as proposed by some House Democrats.

“In order to keep growing, we need to spend less, save more, and get our federal deficit under control,” Obama said. “It is important that we do not make any ill-considered decisions—even with the best of intentions—particularly at a time when our resources are so limited,” he concluded.

“Limited resources” were not a consideration when it came to bailing out Wall Street...

Obama voiced his hard line against new spending to create jobs in an interview during his China trip with the right-wing Fox News. “There may be some tax provisions that can encourage businesses to hire sooner rather than sitting on the sidelines. So we’re taking a look at those,” he said. “I think it is important, though, to recognize if we keep on adding to the debt, even in the midst of this recovery, that at some point, people could lose confidence in the US economy in a way that could actually lead to a double-dip recession.”

It is no accident that Obama took time from his China trip to reiterate his opposition to any major increase in social spending. This was in large part intended to reassure the Chinese, who hold some $800 billion in Treasury notes and are the biggest creditor of the United States...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/nov2009/pers-n24.shtml



The US government owes 2 TRILLION to US workers, but they're going to steal it in the name of "fiscal responsibility".

800 billion - oh boo hoo hoo, they can pay that off in less than four years by rescinding Bush's fucking tax cuts to the top 1%.

"China" = foreign investment by US, Japanese & European corps.

2006*

Share of exports by firm ownership in China's total exports:

Wholly Foreign Owned: 39.3%

Joint Venture Firms: 18.6

State Owned Firms: 19.8

Collectively Owned Firms: 4.3%

Private Firms: 18%

http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/1524.


The China card is a scam to crack the whip on workers & make super-profits for capital.

[Fumesucker]

1. Obama, Geithner and Emanuel: Crisis, what crisis? We have jobs..

Go out and get one yourself..

Just pick yourself up by your bootstraps and you will be just fine.

[democracy1st]

2. Goldman Sachs is destroying this admin

[Selatius]

3. Deficit spending to create jobs should be encouraged. Cut the defense budget and crack down on fraud

Obviously, the Chinese don't want the US gov't to dilute the value of treasury bonds by saturating the market with more treasury bonds or even short-term T-bills or both. However, the best way to push deficit spending down to the last resort on the list is to restructure the tax code to hit the highest income earners and to yank tax breaks to the wealthiest interests.

Logically, they are in the best position to shoulder the higher tax load, not the working poor and the middle class, but to center-rightists, they go ape shit at the mention of raising taxes on the rich, and the far rightists will continually scream "socialist!" until the sun sets.

FDR did this, and it worked, and it worked even better when World War 2 erupted. The national debt topped 140% of GDP by the time the war ended, but up until Reagan, every successive president since FDR did their duty to pay down the national debt, and they did a hell of a job until Reagan undid all their labor by exploding the national debt once again. Even worse when George W. Bush came into office.

[unhappycamper]

4. At the moment we are pissing away $164 billion dollars a year keeping the occupations going.

And Obama wants to throw another $34 billion into the post.