Adults Justify Nice-Teen Crime
I saw this story a couple of days ago, and it's been kind of bugging me ever since. Seems some Miss Something, Miss Connecticut Outstanding Teen (volunteer for Mothers Against Drunk Driving BTW, of course), had a party when her parents were out of the house and some teenagers got drunk at it. Here's how the AP story starts:
This might be a "Dog Bites Man" story, a headline that says "Teens Drink Beer." Oh-oh, it reminds me of a joke. A farmer is driving down the road and he passes the hardware store, which has a sign out front that says, "Cast Iron Sinks." The farmer says, "Why, everybody knows that." Okay, sorry. But there you go, JimK knows a clean joke. Of course, watch the farmers start writing nasty things in the blog comments.. Hey, how about this: A gay guy is driving down the road ... oh, never mind... When I heard it, it was a farmer.
Anyway, some things are kind of obvious. Somewhere some teenager's parents are going to go somewhere and a party will ensue, with beer. Even some beribboned glamourpuss teen princess can find herself hostessing a party she didn't really envision ahead of time, with sinfulness ensuing, such as beer pong.
That in itself is not really a story, it seems to me. The story is down in the story.
Here's the cop who busted them:
Somehow it just strikes me as interesting that these particular criminals are just "kids being kids." Hey, you know, they busted into the drug store and took a couple of boxes of Oxycontin, just kids being kids, y'know... How does somebody draw the line there?
I'm not sure who got this quote, but the Denver News Channel Seven has this related comment from her parents:
That's about enough of that. I find it completely intriguing that when this "nice girl" does something bad, the grown-ups -- even the sheriff -- make excuses for her, play it down, aw it's just kids blowing off a little steam, that's all. We can just imagine if the cops had found beer and rum at a hip-hop party, or a gay dance.
There is a fundamental question here, see what you think: Is it possible for good people to do bad things?
That question is at the heart of the "out of character" statement, the "bad judgment" comment. Her behavior was that she held a wild party with underage kids playing beer pong, whatever that is, but her "character" is not really like that, this was just bad judgment. Apparently people with good characters can do anything without blame.
Of course, the opposite question raises itself, too: Can evil people do good things? Imagine someone with a hateful heart, self-centered and cruel, whose self-serving plan is to conceal his evil nature by treating people with the appearance of respect, helping people in need, always making sure he's on the good side when something happens. Pays his bills on time, sends the money back when the IRS overpays him, is polite to people ... but with the evil intention of creating the appearance that he's a good person.
It seems to me that this "good kid made a bad judgment" idea assumes a view that people have an essence that differs from their outward behavior. What do you think? Does Miss Teen Blah Blah deserve a break that some ghetto kid or trailer-park kid would never get, because of her "character?"
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — The reigning Miss Connecticut Outstanding Teen held a party that mushroomed out of control and resulted in two dozen people being charged with underage drinking, police said Wednesday.
Rachael Ramonas, 17, lists among her accomplishments a benefit she organized for families of victims of a fatal car crash in which the teen behind the wheel had a history of drunken driving.
It's not clear whether Ramonas, who competed in the Miss America Outstanding Teen pageant in August in Florida, was among those charged. Police are not releasing the teens' names because they are juveniles.
Officers responding to an anonymous call about underage drinking Saturday night found beer and rum. They also found items commonly used for the drinking game called beer pong, which involves tossing a ping pong ball into cups of beer.
Ramonas' parents were out of the state when police arrived, said Wolcott police Capt. Domenic Angiolillo. They returned the next day, he said. Cops bust bash hosted by Conn. teen pageant winner
This might be a "Dog Bites Man" story, a headline that says "Teens Drink Beer." Oh-oh, it reminds me of a joke. A farmer is driving down the road and he passes the hardware store, which has a sign out front that says, "Cast Iron Sinks." The farmer says, "Why, everybody knows that." Okay, sorry. But there you go, JimK knows a clean joke. Of course, watch the farmers start writing nasty things in the blog comments.. Hey, how about this: A gay guy is driving down the road ... oh, never mind... When I heard it, it was a farmer.
Anyway, some things are kind of obvious. Somewhere some teenager's parents are going to go somewhere and a party will ensue, with beer. Even some beribboned glamourpuss teen princess can find herself hostessing a party she didn't really envision ahead of time, with sinfulness ensuing, such as beer pong.
That in itself is not really a story, it seems to me. The story is down in the story.
Here's the cop who busted them:
"It's not the end of the world. It's not the crime of the century," Angiolillo said. "It was kids being kids. She made a bad judgment call. It's just a shame, that's all. You have to take responsibility for your actions."
Somehow it just strikes me as interesting that these particular criminals are just "kids being kids." Hey, you know, they busted into the drug store and took a couple of boxes of Oxycontin, just kids being kids, y'know... How does somebody draw the line there?
I'm not sure who got this quote, but the Denver News Channel Seven has this related comment from her parents:
"It's just a judgment call, a poor judgment call," Ramonas' mother, Denise Ramonas, said. "This is what happens."
Denise Ramonas said the party is out of character for her daughter, who has done a lot of work promoting awareness of eating disorders and helped raise money for relatives of a fatal crash involving three teens in town a little more than a year ago.
"Rachael, she's a great kid," Denise Ramonas said. "She's smart, intelligent and she's beautiful. She's done a lot of community services, she's great, she's just a great kid."
Police said they found beer and rum at the party. Police: Teen Beauty Queen Hosted Drinking Bash
That's about enough of that. I find it completely intriguing that when this "nice girl" does something bad, the grown-ups -- even the sheriff -- make excuses for her, play it down, aw it's just kids blowing off a little steam, that's all. We can just imagine if the cops had found beer and rum at a hip-hop party, or a gay dance.
There is a fundamental question here, see what you think: Is it possible for good people to do bad things?
That question is at the heart of the "out of character" statement, the "bad judgment" comment. Her behavior was that she held a wild party with underage kids playing beer pong, whatever that is, but her "character" is not really like that, this was just bad judgment. Apparently people with good characters can do anything without blame.
Of course, the opposite question raises itself, too: Can evil people do good things? Imagine someone with a hateful heart, self-centered and cruel, whose self-serving plan is to conceal his evil nature by treating people with the appearance of respect, helping people in need, always making sure he's on the good side when something happens. Pays his bills on time, sends the money back when the IRS overpays him, is polite to people ... but with the evil intention of creating the appearance that he's a good person.
It seems to me that this "good kid made a bad judgment" idea assumes a view that people have an essence that differs from their outward behavior. What do you think? Does Miss Teen Blah Blah deserve a break that some ghetto kid or trailer-park kid would never get, because of her "character?"
posted by JimK at 10:11 AM
30 Comments:
I believe that there is no "good" person or "bad" person. We are all capable of both. Jails are full of people who did, maybe, one bad thing.
Obama is stealing our kids' futures. Is he good or bad?
"As 2009 opened, three weeks before Barack Obama took office, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 9034 on January 2, its highest level since the autumn panic. Yesterday the Dow fell another 4.24% to 6763, for an overall decline of 25% in two months and to its lowest level since 1997.
The dismaying message here is that President Obama's policies have become part of the economy's problem.
Americans have welcomed the Obama era in the same spirit of hope the President campaigned on.
But after five weeks in office, it's become clear that Mr. Obama's policies are slowing, if not stopping, what would otherwise be the normal process of economic recovery.
From punishing business to squandering scarce national public resources, Team Obama is creating more uncertainty and less confidence -- and thus a longer period of recession or subpar growth.
The Democrats who now run Washington don't want to hear this, because they benefit from blaming all bad economic news on President Bush.
And Mr. Obama has inherited an unusual recession deepened by credit problems, both of which will take time to climb out of.
But it's also true that the economy has fallen far enough, and long enough, that much of the excess that led to recession is being worked off.
Already 15 months old, the current recession will soon match the average length -- and average job loss -- of the last three postwar downturns.
What goes down will come up -- unless destructive policies interfere with the sources of potential recovery.
And those sources have been forming for some time.
The price of oil and other commodities have fallen by two-thirds since their 2008 summer peak, which has the effect of a major tax cut.
The world is awash in liquidity, thanks to monetary ease by the Federal Reserve and other central banks.
Monetary policy operates with a lag, but last year's easing will eventually stir economic activity.
Housing prices have fallen 27% from their Case-Shiller peak, or some two-thirds of the way back to their historical trend.
While still high, credit spreads are far from their peaks during the panic, and corporate borrowers are again able to tap the credit markets.
As equities were signaling with their late 2008 rally and January top, growth should under normal circumstances begin to appear in the second half of this year.
So what has happened in the last two months?
The economy has received no great new outside shock.
Exchange rates and other prices have been stable, and there are no security crises of note.
The reality of a sharp recession has been known and built into stock prices since last year's fourth quarter.
What is new is the unveiling of Mr. Obama's agenda and his approach to governance.
Every new President has a finite stock of capital -- financial and political -- to deploy, and amid recession Mr. Obama has more than most.
But one negative revelation has been the way he has chosen to spend his scarce resources on income transfers rather than growth promotion.
Most of his "stimulus" spending was devoted to social programs, rather than public works, and nearly all of the tax cuts were devoted to income maintenance rather than to improving incentives to work or invest.
His Treasury has been making a similar mistake with its financial bailout plans.
The banking system needs to work through its losses, and one necessary use of public capital is to assist in burning down those bad assets as fast as possible.
Yet most of Team Obama's ministrations so far have gone toward triage and life support, rather than repair and recovery.
AIG yesterday received its fourth "rescue," including $70 billion in Troubled Asset Relief Program cash, without any clear business direction.
Citigroup's restructuring last week added not a dollar of new capital, and also no clear direction.
Perhaps the imminent Treasury "stress tests" will clear the decks, but until they do the banks are all living in fear of becoming the next AIG.
All of this squanders public money that could better go toward burning down bank debt.
The market has notably plunged since Mr. Obama introduced his budget last week, and that should be no surprise.
The document was a declaration of hostility toward capitalists across the economy.
Health-care stocks have dived on fears of new government mandates and price controls.
Private lenders to students have been told they're no longer wanted.
Anyone who uses carbon energy has been warned to expect a huge tax increase from cap and trade.
And every risk-taker and investor now knows that another tax increase will slam the economy in 2011, unless Mr. Obama lets Speaker Nancy Pelosi impose one even earlier.
Meanwhile, Congress demands more bank lending even as it assails lenders and threatens to let judges rewrite mortgage contracts.
The powers in Congress -- unrebuked by Mr. Obama -- are ridiculing and punishing the very capitalists who are essential to a sustainable recovery.
The result has been a capital strike, and the return of the fear from last year that we could face a far deeper downturn.
This is no way to nurture a wounded economy back to health.
Listening to Mr. Obama and his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, on the weekend, we couldn't help but wonder if they appreciate any of this.
They seem preoccupied with going to the barricades against Republicans who wield little power, or picking a fight with Rush Limbaugh, as if this is the kind of economic leadership Americans want.
Perhaps they're reading the polls and figure they have two or three years before voters stop blaming Republicans and Mr. Bush for the economy.
Even if that's right in the long run, in the meantime their assault on business and investors is delaying a recovery and ensuring that the expansion will be weaker than it should be when it finally does arrive."
oh yes, the fabulous, tumbling presidency of a certain Mr. B.O.
The economy is still in freefall from the Bush/Cheney economic policy of forget PAYGO, spend borrowed money willy nilly instead. We all remember Cheney's advice to Paul O'Neill, "Deficits don't matter."
That's an interesting, if misguided WSJ editorial you quoted barryo, claiming Obama's policies "punish businesses." When businesses paid taxes at the Clinton tax rate levels, the economy was booming, and businesses were far from "punished," they were profitable and growing.
And of course the editorial complained about polls the very day before it's own Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll came out, reporting:
WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama enjoys widespread backing from a frightened American public for his ambitious, front-loaded agenda, a new poll indicates.
He is more popular than ever, Americans are hopeful about his leadership, and opposition Republicans are getting drubbed in public opinion, the new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll suggests.
...The poll had bad news for the Republican opposition. By a margin of more than 2-1, Americans trust the Democratic Party over the Republicans to get the country out of the recession. Views of the GOP are near an all-time low. And more than half of all adults say that Republicans in Congress have
opposed Mr. Obama's proposals more to gain political advantage, compared with 30% who say Republicans have done so because they are standing up for their principles.
By a huge margin, people say there is no more bipartisanship in Washington now than in the past. For that, they are most likely to blame President George W. Bush's administration and congressional Republicans. They put almost none of the blame on congressional Democrats or Mr. Obama.
I think Salon's Joan Walsh (click "Enter Salon") got it right the other day when she said, "The GOP's reputation is circling the drain" as GOP troops like Tom Delay hail Rush Limbaugh's "I hope Obama fails" stance. She pointed out that Representative Phil Gingrey and recently elected RNC Chairman Michael Steele both apologized to Rush after calling for him to stop hoping for Obama to fail. Only 51 minutes elapsed between the time Steele complained "Rush Limbaugh — his whole thing is entertainment. He has this incendiary — yes, it's ugly.", and Steele apologized for complaining! Fifty one minutes! No wonder the public doesn't trust the GOP. Flipflops that fast by the RNC Chairman demonstrate quite clearly the GOP is indeed "circling the drain."
David Frum reports:
President Obama and Rush Limbaugh do not agree on much, but they share at least one thing: Both wish to see Rush anointed as the leader of the Republican party. Here’s Rahm Emanuel on Face the Nation yesterday: “the voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican party.”
What a great endorsement for Rush! (And we know Rush is fond of compliments – listen to his loving account in his CPAC speech of the birthday lunch given him by President Bush just before Inauguration Day.)
But what about the rest of the party? Here’s the duel that Obama and Limbaugh are jointly arranging:
On the one side, the president of the United States: soft-spoken and conciliatory, never angry, always invoking the recession and its victims. This president invokes the language of “responsibility,” and in his own life seems to epitomize that ideal: He is physically honed and disciplined, his worst vice an occasional cigarette. He is at the same time an apparently devoted husband and father. Unsurprisingly, women voters trust and admire him.
And for the leader of the Republicans? A man who is aggressive and bombastic, cutting and sarcastic, who dismisses the concerned citizens in network news focus groups as “losers.” With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence – exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix to our philosophy and our party. And we’re cooperating! Those images of crowds of CPACers cheering Rush’s every rancorous word – we’ll be seeing them rebroadcast for a long time...
I think he's talking to you and yours, barryo.
Aunt Bea,
I think it's an excellent liberal strategy to talk about the differences in drug use backgrounds between Obama (president of the US) and Rush (private citizen and radio announcer).
I wouldn't mind an open debate about Obama's past cocaine and marijuana use. Bring it on!I wonder who Obama's drug dealers were? Where are they now? What did they think of Obama? How much cocaine did he really use? How did he get the money to support his habit? Who did he party with?
Interesting stuff, really.
Go for it barryo! I mean what else have you got to talk about?
Tell us, have President Barack Obama's records been purged like Bush the fratboy's were?
"The economy is still in freefall from the Bush/Cheney economic policy of forget PAYGO, spend borrowed money willy nilly instead."
I don't really care to participate in Bea's spat with another anon about BO's drug use but the above statement makes no sense.
No one, on any side of the political spectrum, has suggested that the deficit caused the recession. The deficit was not large as a percentage of the GDP although Obama seems determined to make it so over the next four years.
As the WSJ editorial pointed out, there are several factors that should have resulted in the recession ending fairly soon but won't because Obama's economic plans have no confidence among the major players in the economy.
I don't really care to participate in Bea's spat with another anon
If that statement was true, you'd distinguish yourself from other Anonymouses by picking a name and sticking to it. Judging from how you present yourself here, you seem to prefer deniability to making yourself even anonymously identifiable.
"The economy is still in freefall from the Bush/Cheney economic policy of forget PAYGO, spend borrowed money willy nilly instead."
No one, on any side of the political spectrum, has suggested that the deficit caused the recession.
Maybe people don't think *only* the deficit caused the recession, but it was one of many contributing factors and it certainly limited our options to respond. What people from both sides of the aisle do agree on is that Obama inherited the economic mess we're in from Bush/Cheney. This week's WSJ/NBC poll reports 84% of respondents selected "inherited" when responding to the question "When you think about the current economic conditions, do you feel that this is a situation that Barack Obama has inherited or is this a situation his policies are mostly responsible for?"
Bush/Cheney left office with too much of our economic data plotted on a graph like the one showing a nearly vertical tailspinning drop in jobs, which is very different than when Clinton left office. Clinton left us with a budget surplus tucked away in case we needed to bail something out. But then came Bush/Cheney who blew the entire surplus and then some on a tax cuts, a needless war, more tax cuts, and more tax cuts after that. Did they save a dime for an emergency that might come up like say a sharp, wide-ranging economic downturn? Uh nope.
"Maybe people don't think *only* the deficit caused the recession, but it was one of many contributing factors"
No it wasn't and no one thinks so.
"and it certainly limited our options to respond."
Oh, brother.
What limit was there on our response? There seems to be no limits on Obama, who hatches a new plan with 11 or 12 zeros seemingly every day. What do you suggest? Spending another couple of trillion more?
"What people from both sides of the aisle do agree on is that Obama inherited the economic mess we're in from Bush/Cheney. This week's WSJ/NBC poll reports 84%"
That may be the general perception but there are people who study economics. The public will catch up with them soon. The poll question is very general, as is the understanding of those who answered.
"Bush/Cheney left office with too much of our economic data plotted on a graph like the one showing a nearly vertical tailspinning drop in jobs, which is very different than when Clinton left office."
There were periodic downturns during the Reagan era. They generally ended soon. Obama's philosophy has forestalled that possibility.
"Clinton left us with a budget surplus tucked away in case we needed to bail something out."
Actually, there wasn't a lockbox after all.
"But then came Bush/Cheney who blew the entire surplus"
Actually, surpluses depress economic activity by taking more money out of circulation than the government will spend. That's why Obama's not planning any.
"and then some on a tax cuts, a needless war, more tax cuts, and more tax cuts after that."
The war was necessary, the tax cuts cut short the recession the country was in when Clinton left and buffered us against an extraordinary number of catastrophes that were beyond anyone's control. Obama recently signed one of the biggest tax cuts in history.
"Did they save a dime for an emergency that might come up like say a sharp, wide-ranging economic downturn? Uh nope."
Has Bea ever passed an economics class?
From the evidence of this comment:
Uh, nope.
This one's for you, Bea. A word on causes and solutions to the economic crisis:
"few Presidents undertake the kind of brazen deception at the heart of Obama's radically transformative economic plan, a rhetorical sleight of hand so smoothly offered that few noticed.
The logic of Obama's address to Congress went like this:
"Our economy did not fall into decline overnight," he averred. Indeed, it all began before the housing crisis. What did we do wrong? We are paying for past sins in three principal areas: energy, health care and education -- importing too much oil and not finding new sources of energy (as in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Outer Continental Shelf?), not reforming health care, and tolerating too many bad schools.
The "day of reckoning" has arrived. And because "it is only by understanding how we arrived at this moment that we'll be able to lift ourselves out of this predicament," Obama has come to redeem us with his far-seeing program of universal, heavily nationalized health care; a cap-and-trade tax on energy; and a major federalization of education with universal access to college as the goal.
Amazing. As an explanation of our current economic difficulties, this is total fantasy. As a cure for rapidly growing joblessness, a massive destruction of wealth, a deepening worldwide recession, this is perhaps the greatest non sequitur ever foisted upon the American people.
At the very center of our economic near-depression is a credit bubble, a housing collapse and a systemic failure of the banking industry. One can come up with a host of causes: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pushed by Washington (and greed) into improvident loans, corrupted bond-ratings agencies, insufficient regulation of new and exotic debt instruments, the easy money policy of Alan Greenspan's Fed, irresponsible bankers pushing (and then unloading in packaged loan instruments) highly dubious mortgages, greedy house-flippers, deceitful home buyers.
The list is long. But the list of causes of the collapse of the financial system does not include the absence of universal health care, let alone of computerized medical records. Nor the absence of an industry-killing cap-and-trade carbon levy. Nor the lack of college graduates. Indeed, one could perversely make the case that, if anything, the proliferation of overeducated, Gucci-wearing, smart-ass MBAs inventing ever more sophisticated and opaque mathematical models and debt instruments helped get us into this credit catastrophe.
And yet with our financial house on fire, Obama makes clear both in his speech and his budget that the essence of his presidency will be the transformation of health care, education and energy. Four months after winning the election, six weeks after his swearing-in, Obama has yet to unveil a plan to deal with the banking crisis.
What's going on? "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," said chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. "This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before."
Things. Now we know what they are. The markets' recent precipitous decline is a reaction not just to the absence of any plausible bank rescue plan, but also to the suspicion that Obama sees the continuing financial crisis as usefully creating the psychological conditions -- the sense of crisis bordering on fear-itself panic -- for enacting his "Big Bang" agenda to federalize and/or socialize health care, education and energy, the commanding heights of post-industrial society.
Clever politics, but intellectually dishonest to the core. Health, education and energy -- worthy and weighty as they may be -- are not the cause of our financial collapse. And they are not the cure. The fraudulent claim that they are both cause and cure is the rhetorical device by which an ambitious president intends to enact the most radical agenda of social transformation seen in our lifetime."
You'll notice neither Obama nor this writer mention deficits causing our economic troubles. That would only happen if we couldn't manage the interest on the debt.
Four years from now that may happen as Obama is planning to add at least 7 trillion to the debt in order to promote social intervention by government and the GDP will be significantly lower after shrinking as a result of socialist economic policies.
That's great, Charles Krauthammer is circling the drain with the rest of 'em.
There were periodic downturns during the Reagan era. They generally ended soon
The downturns Reagan faced were very different from what's happening today. Bush’s policies have left us with the largest deficit relative to the size of the economy since World War II. In the eighties when Reagan was President, we still had firm banking regulations in place that had kept our economy growing since the depression. That quarter century of GOP rule you like to yammmer about that decimated post-Depression rules and deregulated banking, hadn't occurred yet. Another difference between Reagan and Bush/Cheney is Reagan signed tax increases six of the eight years he was in office, including 1984's Deficit Reduction Act.
Obama's philosophy has forestalled that possibility.
Do you think you can predict the future, barryo? Do you think Charles Krauthammer can? Did you and Charles predict Bush would leave us free falling like that graph of jobs disappearing Jim posted last month?
Most economist agree the economy will continue to worsen this year and with large enough amounts of targeted stimulus spending and tax cuts, maybe start to flatten out or even turn around a little in 2010, while barryo and Charles -- of the party of "no" -- don't.
Actually, there wasn't a lockbox after all.
Who said lockbox? Clinton and Congress had built up a nice nest egg. It was there to be spent, when needed, not on pork like bridges to nowhere or needless wars in Iraq.
Actually, surpluses depress economic activity by taking more money out of circulation than the government will spend. That's why Obama's not planning any.
Don't worry. Obama isn't planning any surpluses any time soon because of the spiraling-ever-deeper hole Bush/Cheney left for him to stem and fill. Their cronies have received huge amounts of tax-payer money and now Obama's got to pay his predecessors' record-shattering debt and get the economy moving again by recapitalizing and reregulating the banking industry. Most economists agree we are not done yet and even more money will be needed.
Bush/Cheney left us falling into an abyss. There will not be even two nickels for building any surplus nest-eggs for a long time to come, thanks to the GOPs decades of starving the budget with deficit spending while deregulating banking rules put in place to ensure we would never fall into another Depression.
The war was necessary, the tax cuts cut short the recession the country was in when Clinton left and buffered us against an extraordinary number of catastrophes that were beyond anyone's control. Obama recently signed one of the biggest tax cuts in history.
Obama's targeted and publicly accountable tax cuts and stimulus spending will work in time, unlike the Bush/Cheney TARP funds that were misused in a number of ways like CEO bonuses and extravagant conferences.
Andrea- not anon
Much as I love saying President Barack Hussein Obama-I'm pretty sure this blog was about how society treats certain people differently. I bet little Miss Princess has been drinking before and I do see(right here in River City- the DC metro area) different takes on drinking and driving, drug use, car accidents depending on whether the kid lives in Anacostia or lives in Potomac and goes to Madeira(I'm just using Madeira- it could be Churchill or Georgetown Prep).
"The downturns Reagan faced were very different from what's happening today."
There weren't any downturns after the first few months of Reagan's presidency. He inherited a much worse economy from Jimmy Carter with double digit inflation, unemployment and interest rates.
"Bush’s policies have left us with the largest deficit relative to the size of the economy since World War II."
Bea, the deficits are currently no problem. People worldwide want to lend us money so badly that, not too long ago, interest on short-term T-bills was negative. With interest this low, it's a good time to be in debt.
"In the eighties when Reagan was President, we still had firm banking regulations in place that had kept our economy growing since the depression."
There you go again. Banks are regulated today. There were some regulations eliminated during Clinton's presidency but it's hard to see what you're talking about that kept our economy growing.
"(March 6) -- Papers across the pond have buzzed this week that the Obamas are failing in their duties as first hosts to their first major international guests, the British prime minister and his wife.
U.K. columnists say the Obamas' gifts to their foreign counterparts fell well short of the mark.
The Times calls the giving the first family's first gaffe.
President Barack Obama gave Prime Minister Gordon Brown a set of 25 DVDs of American movies, while Brown, according to the Daily Mail, gave the president several gifts, "including an ornamental desk pen-holder made from the oak timbers of the Victorian anti-slaver HMS Gannet, once named HMS President."
Sarah Brown gifted the Obama girls with dresses and necklaces from the trendy Top Shop store, plus books penned by British authors.
In return, her boys received models of the Marine One helicopter the president flies in.
Similar models sell on Amazon.com for $15, the Evening Standard reported.
"While Sarah Brown had spent time choosing gifts for the Obama girls, Michelle had clearly sent an aide to the White House gift shop at the last moment," speculated the Telegraph."
barryo said There were periodic downturns during the Reagan era.
and
There weren't any downturns after the first few months of Reagan's presidency.
So I guess those "periodic downturns during the Reagan era" were all during "the first few months of Reagan's presidency."
And look who suddenly cares what "Old Europe" thinks.
Spinning round and round on the way down the drain.
Bea, you idiot, the Reagan era lasted for twenty-seven years.
The only thing going down the drain is the next eight years of our economic life.
BHO is clearly out of his league.
hey, guess what?
unemployment is now higher than it has been since early in the Reagan era
coincidence?
next stop: the Carter era
Mr BO is completely lost
The U.S. unemployment rate last month leapt half a percentage point, to 8.1 percent, the highest level since 1983, according to data released yesterday. The stunning pace of job losses raises the possibility that, perhaps as early as this summer, one in 10 Americans will be out of a job even though they are actively looking for work. It also means that the government faces even more pressure to take further action to stabilize the economy and the financial system.
President Obama, speaking in Columbus, Ohio, to police cadets whose jobs were saved with money from the $787 billion stimulus package, called the new unemployment figures "astounding."
"We have a responsibility to act," he said, "and that's what I intend to do.""
Thought you already did that, Mr BO. Remember how you said last month your stimulus package would create 4 million jobs?
Say, you don't know what you're doing, do you?
"Analysts increasingly view the administration's actions so far as insufficient given the scope of the problem. The stimulus package was designed to "save or create" 3.5 million jobs, according to the administration. But the nation has already lost 4.4 million jobs since the start of the recession. Many banks and other financial institutions, whose health is critical to the economy, are teetering, and the Treasury Department has yet to finalize the details of its plans to remove from their balance sheets the toxic assets dragging them down."
"It's premature to say we need another stimulus, but the economy is performing much worse than when [the law] was signed, and the odds are increasing that we'll need a bigger policy response," said Mark Zandi of Moody's Economy.com, who has advised Democratic lawmakers. "What we've learned is policy has been a step behind this whole downturn. It's important to get a step ahead."
The International Monetary Fund yesterday urged governments worldwide to consider additional fiscal stimulus, noting that the public sector must help prevent a collapse of confidence.
Consumer confidence in the U.S. economy has already been driven dangerously low by layoffs across nearly every sector. Last month alone, employers slashed 651,000 jobs from their payrolls, and job losses in December and January were far worse than originally reported, according to revised data released yesterday. Since December, employers have cut jobs at the sharpest pace since 1975."
Thought you already did that, Mr BO. Remember how you said last month your stimulus package would create 4 million jobs?
Did you listen to what he said? He did NOT say 4 million jobs would appear in a month. And he has been saying all along that additional measures will be needed, more money will need to be spent to fill the hole Bush/Cheney dug.
The GOP is pulling the EXACT same thing they did during the Depression. "Do nothing," they said, "and the economy will correct itself." The next election showed them what the jobless, homeless, starving populace thought of their "do nothing" plan.
By the way, barryo, what IS that alternative GOP plan? Is it really "do nothing" or "cut taxes like we've been doing for the past 8 years and expect a different outcome?" Let's have the details -- how many jobs will be created next month if we implement this imaginary GOP alternative plan?
And oh hey barryo, between your searches for the GOP alternative stimulus plan, maybe you could tell us if you even read the second half of that Washington Post editorial you posted part of at 8:25 AM, without attribution, as usual. It continued:
But even the current job-loss figures mask the degree of pain among American workers. A broader measure, which includes people who want a job and have given up looking and those working part time but who want full-time work, rose nearly one percentage point, to 14.8 percent. [They gave up looking for work because there were so few created by the ineffective Bush/Cheney-tax-cuts-for-our-rich-cronies-job-creation-plan.]
"I think what it shows is neither the government nor many economists have a grasp yet of how bad the economy really is right now," said Bernard Baumohl, chief global economist at the Economic Outlook Group. "We can't get our arms around what's going on."
There is little reason to think conditions for workers will get better in the coming months and many reasons to think the steep decline will continue; employment tends to lag behind overall growth in the economy by several months, and the nation, by all accounts, remains in recession. There have been some signs lately that consumer spending is stabilizing at low levels, but even if that trend holds up, it would probably take until summer for job losses to slow.
Economists are now calling into question whether the intricate suite of policies crafted by Congress, the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve are bold enough to deal with the scope of the economic damage.
"Up until the third quarter, we thought we were on track for a relatively moderate recession, but then in the fourth quarter, everything fell apart," said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor's.
The Obama administration's budget, released in late February, assumes that the jobless rate will average 8.1 percent this year. That now appears unlikely, which in turn could make officials rethink their approach to the crisis.
Regulators, for instance, are conducting "stress tests" of major banks so that the Treasury Department can better determine what kind of financial support they might need. Those tests assume that, in a particularly bleak scenario, the unemployment rate will average 8.9 percent this year and 10.3 percent next year. But if the government projections on unemployment turn out to be too rosy, officials could underestimate the trouble banks are in. A higher unemployment rate means greater losses for banks because more people default on their loans.
The worsening employment picture, meanwhile, could also create a hole too big for the stimulus package to fill.
As a result, government needs to step up and do more, said Heather Boushey, senior economist with the liberal Center for American Progress.
"It's not going to be enough, folks. I hate to break it to you," she said.
Analysts generally expect stimulus spending to have a noticeable impact on the economy during the second half of this year. The money will continue to spur large-scale economic activity through the end of next year, with lesser impact in 2011 and beyond. But for many Americans, the need is urgent now.
That's particularly true for homeowners, more and more of whom are facing the threat of foreclosure. Rising unemployment will exacerbate their problems and could undermine the effectiveness of the Obama administration's plan to make mortgages more affordable.
"Last year, the role of unemployment was a factor in foreclosures, but it is undoubtedly more important now," said Paul Willen, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. "If you have no income, it's hard to pay any mortgage at all."
Andrew Tilton, a senior economist at Goldman Sachs, offered some reasons for optimism. The stimulus money has already started to flow, after all, and a joint Treasury-Fed program to prop up lending launched this week. "For the first time in a while, at least, it's possible to at least see how things could turn out better," Tilton said.
It looks like the only person who expected there to be 4 million new jobs this month is you.
unemployment is now higher than it has been since early in the Reagan era
coincidence?
No, it simply means Bush/Cheney screwed things up worse than Carter/Mondale did. Now there's a legacy you Bush/Cheney fans can be proud of...not!
it wasn't an editorial, Bea, it was a news story
it's clear from the story that Obama's policies are insufficient and failing
he's got a new plan every day
look at today's Post for a great editorial cartoon
broker is standing on a ledge
Obama yells "wait, I've got a plan: I'll give AIG 50 billion more"
the broker jumps
maybe if orders something for us all from Amazon.com
limit: $15
it wasn't an editorial, Bea, it was a news story
Well thanks for providing half the news and ignoring the other half.
Bob Herbert over at the NYTimes Editorial Page has some advice for you and the other dittoheads who expected four million new jobs to be created this month:
...What I know is that the renegade clowns who ruined this economy, the Republican right in alliance with big business and a fair number of feckless Democrats — all working in opposition to the interests of working families — have no credible basis for waging war against serious efforts to get us out of their mess.
Maybe the markets are down because demand has dried up, because many of the nation’s biggest firms have imploded and because Americans are losing their jobs and their homes by the millions. Maybe a dose of reality is in order, as opposed to the childish desire for yet another stock market bubble.
Maybe the nuns in grammar school were right when they counseled that patience is a virtue. The man has been president for six weeks.
no one expected 4 million jobs to be created this month
Obama promised he'd create that many
patience is a virtue alright
so is a plan
Obama doesn't have one
that fact has become clear to everyone and explains the deepening problems
...a plan
Obama doesn't have one
that fact has become clear to everyone
If that "fact" has become clear to everyone, then why did the latest FOX NEWS POLL report 63% of registered voters say they approve of the job Barack Obama is doing as President? Why did 64% say he's either meeting or exceeding their expectations? Why did 58% say he is keeping his campaign promises, one of which was to repair the economy no matter what it takes? It's quite clear President Obama does have a plan, and this FOX NEWS POLL quite clearly shows "everyone" does not think like you do. These FOX NEWS POLL results make it clear what you call a "fact" is false.
Your understanding of the views of your fellow Americans appears to be clouded with what I can only describe as your contempt for people who are not exactly the same as yourself. The fact is President Barack Obama has an economic recovery plan and he's putting his plan and his team to oversee it in place. President Obama has told us he will revise this plan as needed as we all watch its costs and effects documented at Recovery.gov. In time, we will successfully overcome the damages to our economy caused by the economic plans of the past that brought us to this point.
what economic plans of the past have brought us to this point?
(this is always good for a couple of days of laughs)
what economic plans of the past have brought us to this point?
(this is always good for a couple of days of laughs)
Not everyone finds discussions of this economic quagmire we are sinking into amusing.
Why don't we go back to the beginning of what barryo has called "the quarter century of virtually uninterrupted expansion." Here are some excerpts from President Reagan's Remarks on Signing the Garn-St Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982:
October 15, 1982
Thank you all very much, and thank you for joining us to sign this historic reform. This bill is the most important legislation for financial institutions in the last 50 years. It provides a long-term solution for troubled thrift institutions...
...Now, this bill also represents the first step in our administration's comprehensive program of financial deregulation. I particularly want to commend the leadership of the chairman, Senator Garn, and Chairman St Germain, along with Secretary Regan and his fine team at Treasury. They did a remarkable job forging a consensus within the Congress and among affected industries in favor of the bill's deregulatory provisions. I'd like to also thank Congressmen Stanton, Wylie, and LaFalce for their assistance.
What this legislation does is expand the powers of thrift institutions by permitting the industry to make commercial loans and increase their consumer lending. It reduces their exposure to changes in the housing market and in interest rate levels. This in turn will make the thrift industry a stronger, more effective force in financing housing for millions of Americans in the years to come.
Unfortunately, this legislation does not deal with the important question of delivery of other financial services, including securities activities by banks and other depository institutions. But I'm advised that many in the Congress want to put this question at the top of the banking deregulatory agenda next year, and I would strongly endorse such an initiative and hope that at the same time, the Congress will consider other proposals for more comprehensive deregulation which the administration advanced during the 97th Congress.
Thank you all again. I'm very pleased to sign this Garn-St Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982.
In 1982 Reagan signed the Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act, which he called "the most important legislation for financial institutions in the last 50 years." What this legislation did for the first time is to allow adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs), which were followed by subprime mortgages, which as they went bad were repackaged and sold as derivatives and credit swaps, all of which is destroying our banking industry, which all our other industries depend on. This is what Bush/Cheney left President Barack Obama to clean up: the greedy end results of the "comprehensive financial deregulation" Reagan started. Huge unsustainable bubbles built up and burst and now all hell has broken loose as exemplified by this headline on today's Washington Post's front page: U.S. Downturn Dragging World Into Recession: Report Says Global Economy Will Shrink for First Time Since 1940s.
We overwhelmingly elected Barack Obama as our President to change things so that once we climb back out of this hole, greedy bankers and CEOs and their lavishly funded political hacks can't put us all back in such dire straights ever again.
adjustable rate mortgages and subprime mortgages ain't the same, Bea, and few would be nutty enough to trade the last 25 years of American success for that of the Eurorean socialist democracies Obama wants to emulate
keep trying
maybe, in a few days, if you think real hard, you can take another stab at diverting focus from your lack of general economic understanding
"adjustable rate mortgages and subprime mortgages ain't the same, Bea"
Who said they were the same? I didn't. I said What this legislation did for the first time is to allow adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs), which were followed by subprime mortgages, which as they went bad were repackaged and sold as derivatives and credit swaps, all of which is destroying our banking industry, which all our other industries depend on. This is what Bush/Cheney left President Barack Obama to clean up.
Apparently I'm not the only one who thinks "comprehensive financial deregulation" has led to our problems and needs to be fixed.
AOL News reports: Bernanke says regulatory overhaul needed
WASHINGTON -The nation's financial regulatory system must be overhauled to strengthen oversight of banks, mutual funds and large financial institutions whose collapse would put the entire economy in peril, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Tuesday.
"We must have a strategy that regulates the financial system as a whole, in a holistic way, not just its individual components," Bernanke said in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations.
The Fed chief's remarks come as the Obama administration and Congress are starting to crafting their overhaul strategies. For the administration, critical work on that front will be carried out among global finance officials this weekend in London. That will help set the stage for a meeting of leaders from the world's 20 major economic powers in April.
Revamping the U.S. financial rule book — a patchwork that dates to the Civil War — is a complex task. Congress, the administration and the Fed are involved because they want to strengthen the system to prevent a repeat of the financial crisis — the worst since the 1930s— that has plunged the U.S. and many other countries' economies into recession.
Bernanke said the U.S. recession could end this year only if the government is successful in getting financial markets to operate more normally again. The recession, now in its second year and already the longest in a quarter-century, has turned out to be more severe than the Fed had anticipated, he acknowledged in fielding questions after his speech...
Have you seen this one yet, barryo?
Apparently the cause of the economic meltdown is all those greedy homeowners accepting all that money banks were offering them.
Yesterday the Senate passed $410 billion omnibus spending bill with a bipartisan vote of 62-35 and the
Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 360 points, a 5.51% increase.
Isn't that great news, barryo? Last October you were worried you said, because "The U.S. economy began an expansion with the enactment of the Reagan tax policies that lowered marginal rates and that expansion has persisted and absorbed tremendous shocks without abating. [Actually, he started the downward spiral away from post-Depression reforms with his "comprehensive financial deregulation."]
A testament to our success is that since that time every country in the world including Communist giants Russia and China have tried to find a way to unleash the same market forces in their countries. [China is now our banker.]
We have a mess now but it won't last forever. The stock market collapse actually doesn't make sense except that investors are afraid a socialist is about to elected President of the greatest country on Earth. [Or maybe it was all those mountains of worthless derivatives of bad debt people like Santelli sold that made it collapse.] Wall Street is driven by psychology. Right now, they're voting against Obama."
Now that the Obama has been elected President and gotten his budget passed, it looks like the capitalists over at the US stock market are happy again. I don't think Santelli will be selling any more derivatives anytime soon. What do you think, barryo?
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