Dean Baker: President Obama Discovers How Serious the Recession Is

[EFerrari]

President Obama Discovers How Serious the Recession Is

Dean Baker
The Guardian Unlimited, August 29, 2011

That’s what he told an audience in Chicago last week. To be fair, he was referring to revised data from the Commerce Department showing that the falloff in GDP was larger than originally reported. However, ridicule is appropriate. He and we knew all along how many people were out of work. The employment numbers told us the size of the hole and the desperate need for government action.

This sort of ridiculous comment, and President Obama’s weak response to the recession over the first two and a half years of his presidency, explains the tidal wave of skepticism facing President Obama’s widely hyped upcoming speech on jobs. The list of remedies leaked ahead of time does little to inspire hope.

At the top of the list of job-creating measures is extending the 2 percentage point reduction in the Social Security payroll tax. This provides no boost to the economy, since it just keeps in place a tax cut that was already there, but if the cut is allowed to end at the start of 2012 it will be a drag on growth.

As it stands, the Social Security program is being fully reimbursed for the lost tax revenue, but there is always the possibility that Republicans will use this as a basis for attacking the program. Given President Obama’s willingness to support cuts to Social Security it is understandable that this part of his jobs agenda doesn’t generate much enthusiasm.

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/op-eds-&-columns/op-eds-&-columns/president-obama-discovers-how-serious-the-recession-is?utm_source=CEPR+feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+cepr+%28CEPR%29

[OHdem10]

1. Very good assessment of how things are.

[Enrique]

2. here's the comment he's referring to

In Chicago, Obama went even further: “I have to admit, I didn’t know how steep the climb was going to be. Because we didn’t realize — we just found out a week ago that the economy that last few months in 2008 was even worse than we had realized.”

[RaleighNCDUer]

7. IOW -

"At the time we were not listening to the many people who were saying it was worse than it appeared. We were listening to the people who crashed the system."

[EFerrari]

8. Bingo.

[Melissa G]

10. Not only do we listen to them, we continue to ask the crazy people

who crashed the system to run it, but were some how expecting different results! Definition of insanity, anyone? :shrug:

[woo me with science]

13. +1

[Autumn]

20. No only listening but putting them in charge of

fixing it.

[chill_wind]

15. Good god.

Where to even start. :-( Baker is right. Ridiculous.

[girl gone mad]

16. Now who's the "Debbe Downer"?

[midnight]

3. K&R

[amborin]

4. K&R

[jannyk]

5. K&R!

[Overseas]

6. I keep hoping we'll reach the magic Revenue from the Top phase.

When our legislators will finally get behind the majority of voters who want the mega-rich to pay more.

[Demeter]

9. He Got a Pink Slip?

[xchrom]

11. recommend

[Pale Blue Dot]

12. K&R nt

[woo me with science]

14. K&R

[StarsInHerHair]

17. Restart the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC)that FDR did in June 1933.

"The HOLC — which was a federal entity — provided immediate relief to families facing foreclosure by buying out their existing mortgage and replacing it with a new one based not on the typical short-term mortgage agreement of the time (usually a non-amortized loan of seven to ten years terminating with a balloon payment), but rather on the far more affordable amortized mortgage of between 25 and 30 years. Over the course of its three-year history, the HOLC refinanced over one million homes or roughly 20 percent of all the urban mortgages in the country."...

Works Progress Administration (WPA) and Civilian Conservations Corps (CCC), or the lesser-known Public Works Administration (PWA) & resurrect these

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Works_Administration

http://www.newdeal20.org/2010/06/10/civilian-conservation-corps-11771/

http://www.newdeal20.org/2011/07/01/works-progress-administration-48242/

[progressoid]

18. +1000

[progressoid]

19. This is just depressing.

[kenny blankenship]

21. Whocouldanode???

Some mistakes were made.

[bvar22]

22. He STILL has no fucking idea "how bad" things really are,

or he doesn't care and is just paying Lip Service because it is once again Campaign Season.
Show me The Product, not The Promise.


You will know them by their WORKS,
not by their excuses.

Solidarity!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[bemildred]

23. I am disturbed by the idea that he was ever so misinformed as to think otherwise. nt