Obama's Presidency

[Gerry Clinchy]

Geez, the NY Times was just one article after another about how O's policies are beset with frustration:

At the G20 meeting, Britain, Germany, and China are not happy with US fiscal policies, though for slightly different reasons.

The fair trade pact with So Korea didn't get done.

Congress is not happy with the results forthcoming from the Deficit Commission ... Ds and Rs alike.

David Stockton is saying that ALL the Bush tax cuts should be allowed to expire.

Relations with No Korea haven't been improving much. The new position is to offer them aid in return for turning in their nukes.

About the only positive thing over the past couple of days has been that people in India think that Michelle is a good dancer.

It will be interesting to see how all of this evolves leading up to the election of 2012.

[subroc]

It is former President George W. Bushs' fault that we just don't understand obama.

[YardleyLabs]

Welcome to a world where ten years of unforgivable deficits have destroyed our economy and are now threatening the other nations of the world. Not that the rest of the world is without schizophrenia. For the most part, other countries would like us to keep buying their goods and maintain our military bases where the local economies depend on them. However, they would like us to do that while balancing our budgets and not incurring trade deficits.

Fundamentally, the other countries of the world have been acting as our bankers since about 2002 (we were not significantly dependent on foreign borrowing prior to then). Not only did we proceed to borrow several trillion from other countries since then, we have devalued their debt holdings repeatedly by devaluing our currency. Before the next election, I suspect that we will be cut off from foreign credit altogether unless we come up with a plan that satisfies our bankers. The Deficit Commission recommendations have only scratched the surface of what will need to be done.

Unfortunately, they focused more on preserving a social security surplus at the expense of those currently paying in, rather than on reducing operating deficits at the level needed. While there will be social security deficits in the future, until now the social security system has generated surpluses every year that have been used to underwrite operating deficits. The cuts in the system should be geared at preserving the funding for those benefits, not towards generating additional surpluses to finance operating deficits.

Through the IMF and the World Bank, we have consistently pressured other countries to balance their budgets while remaining open to free trade regardless of domestic economic and poitical impact. We have made that a condition of credit. I suspect we will now be on the receiving end of similar conditions for assistance.

[Gerry Clinchy]

Welcome to a world where ten years of unforgivable deficits have destroyed our economy and are now threatening the other nations of the world.

And, note, that both friend and foe feel the same way about the US fiscal policy. The article indicated that Germany did not use a "stimulus", and that they are making the strongest recovery.

Unfortunately, they focused more on preserving a social security surplus at the expense of those currently paying in, rather than on reducing operating deficits at the level needed. While there will be social security deficits in the future, until now the social security system has generated surpluses every year that have been used to underwrite operating deficits. The cuts in the system should be geared at preserving the funding for those benefits, not towards generating additional surpluses to finance operating deficits.

Doesn't this really tick everybody off? Both parties saying they have to "rescue" SS or cut SS benefits and COLAs ... in truth THEY are the ones who stole from the funding to put the system in jeopardy.

Perhaps that would be the one good reason to get SS out of the hands of Congress! into some type of privatization.

Gerry