What President Obama should do next for the economy, with Barry Ritholtz, FusionIQ.
Wed. Sept. 1 2010 | :42:0 10 ET
I need a hair cut!
Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data, ability to repeat discredited memes, and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Also, be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor even implied. Any irrelevancies you can mention will also be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.
"Overall household indebtedness is up from $7 trillion to almost $10 trillion since 2000. On this sum, we estimate, the American consumer has an annual interest bill of more than $500 billion; a sum, by the way, that vastly exceeds his current income growth." —Kurt Richebacher
Knowing that the vote over the weekend in Greece was really a referendum on Euro membership, a majority of the Greek Parliament said yes to staying. European Finance Ministers meet again on Wednesday to solidify the 2nd bailout package for Greece at the same time hopefully a deal is consummated between Greece and its creditors this week. The Greek 14.5b euro bond that matures on March 20th is up by 2 pts. The optimism that all will be completed and contained AGAIN to Greece has yields lower in Portugal, Spain and Italy. The iTraxx Financial Index is also narrower by...
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September 1st, 2010 at 9:51 pm
You’re the only one that made any sense. I can’t believe that one guy believes that the deficit spending tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 were the reason for economic ‘growth’ up to 2007. Why are these folks still given a platform to emit this garbage ?
September 1st, 2010 at 10:31 pm
Nice job BR, I second Ruff and the cut (freak’n hippie).
It was like Sanity meets hannity.
September 1st, 2010 at 10:44 pm
Barry, my wife says, “Great Job!’
It’s about time someone went toe-to-toe with these idiots who think economic policy begins and ends with tax cuts!
One other point to make – Wall Street might be “up”, but Main Street is still saying, “WHAT recovery?”!
September 1st, 2010 at 11:10 pm
When are they going to give you your own show? Seems like a no brainer.
September 2nd, 2010 at 12:00 am
“you need to have lunch with larry kudlow” … i’d rather starve to death thanks
good response
September 2nd, 2010 at 12:16 am
I think the only things likely from D.C. are policy mistakes. And that goes for both sides of the aisle because no one seems to be able to do anything somewhat moderately. We are truly in a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation. All one has to do is wait and see which comes to fruition first…
September 2nd, 2010 at 12:34 am
Great job, Barry. A Manhattan Project for alternative power development would be just the thing. Also a push for nanotechnology would make our presence in space more practical and fruitful.
I can’t believe Mr. Tax Cuts tried to put that 2003 light-up-the-S&P nonsense past you.
September 2nd, 2010 at 2:10 am
The problem is our government has burned so much cash over the last few years on ridiculous spending that there has to be a line drawn somewhere. I personally feel taxes are the opium that feeds the habit for politicians to do what they do. A system where you can spend someone else money to line your own pocket and your friends pockets is a bad system.
I believe taxes should be reduced primarily because I can find better ways to spend my money. I also think it just forces government to figure out what is truly important to focus on. Increasing spending via increased taxes creates as much or more corruption as the alternative.
September 2nd, 2010 at 7:53 am
Impressive delivery, BR. I don’t know how you keep your cool like that…
September 2nd, 2010 at 8:05 am
Barry, you missed your chance – instead of saying we need a “Manhattan Project for Energy” you should have said “We need another WPA”. The choir would have been apoplectic!
Right now the burning short term need is jobs, energy is the medium & long term need, it could be happy marriage but it would be paralyzed by filibuster in the Senate, right? Actually since it wouldn’t have any effect before mid-term elections it might not have much support in either house.
PS, Did Melissa Lee have a sex change?
September 2nd, 2010 at 8:21 am
Time to pull out my grumpy statistician hat.
The guy charts the 2002-2003 bottom and points out that when the Bush tax cuts started, equities went on to a huge rally and economic growth. Clearly that caused it, right?
Have the tax cuts expired? Did I miss something? Because if I’m not mistaken, the tax cuts are still on, and we made a round trip back to those 2003 levels. Yet he neglects to put that part of history on his chart.
Selection bias, confirmation bias, datamining bias.
Politics is the art of ignoring contradictions.
September 2nd, 2010 at 8:44 am
Barry,
You nailed it today. I think the big academic + public + private sector projects are the key to our future, not Larry Kudlow tax cuts. I think you handled this great. I think the politics always sneak in when people mention tax cuts, and you ignored that crap and stuck to the facts of the matter. Great to see you bring some pragmatic points. I get skeptical when a bunch of rich traders all start clamoring for tax cuts…
September 2nd, 2010 at 8:45 am
Excellent job, BR, as usual. Of course, when the appeal to authority by one’s adversary is Larry Kudlow and your piece of evidence is a “little country…called China”, it’s time for the other guy to throw in the towel. Q.E.D.
Speaking of tax cuts and job creation, check out this great exchange between Mark Haines of CNBC and a talking head who claims there is a necessary causal relationship between tax cuts and job creation. The exchange comes about 1/3 of the way in and is quite entertaining.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ec-6MT0iPWU
September 2nd, 2010 at 9:12 am
Wow!
The problem with Manhattan Projects and Apollo moon landing projects – the 40′s, 50′s and the 60′s were very different times from today. There was unencumbered optimism about America’s role in the world, and now we’re very inward focused and seemingly in a perpetual psychological downward spiral (witness the rise of the Tea Party and the political swings). How, what and who to lead us back to the glory days? Obama had the charisma and the mandate, but seems to have lost the momentum. Boehner or Sarah? Rand or Angel?
September 2nd, 2010 at 9:23 am
The Panama Canal, the Marshall Plan, Lock systems on the Mississippi and Great Lakes, TVA, Highways…..all hugely productive projects, additive to GDP for decades.
September 2nd, 2010 at 9:24 am
Oh, and great job Barry. I saw the show.
September 2nd, 2010 at 9:40 am
I must’ve drunk the Kool-Aid because BR seems very right to me.
September 2nd, 2010 at 9:50 am
Just like the MSM. When someone makes sense, interrupt them! I thought the British were supposed to be polite. Great job Barry in spite the annoying British guy!
September 2nd, 2010 at 10:35 am
Yep China use Keynesian and have a GDP growth of 10%, if don’t want to be left behind in the dust with our 1% growth we should do as them. If they can use dumb a$$ Foxification of complicated issues, we can do the same.
September 2nd, 2010 at 2:51 pm
Great job Barry
I wish someone would have put a graph up, when “tax cut boy” was showing what the Dow did after ’03 ,and show the private sector job creation of our “Bush recovery”. It would have shown the worst private sector job creation of ANY two term president in history (since these have been measured).
Did this fool not realize what kind of stock market rally we’ve had the last year or so?? Is this evidence of a great economy??
This love affair with the Dow is what killed our jobs since the Reagan revolution. Like usual these idiots get it backwards. Have a lot of employed people buying stuff and you’ll have a lot of valuable companies. Trying to make your company valuable by cutting labor costs is a downward spiral that ends in……………….. well, ends in
…………… NOW!!
September 2nd, 2010 at 3:36 pm
Every time we have a major failure of our crumbling infrastructure (bridge collapse, blackout, etc.), I hear on the news that this will cost the economy $XXX million/billion dollars in lost productivity. That alone is a reason for the government to invest a lot more in maintaining/replacing it.
September 6th, 2010 at 10:14 am
[...] might have a shred of intellect. And some do. But see if you can spot the Mr. Shredless here. I’ll avoid going gung ho in to how it’s impossible to correlate whether the [...]
September 6th, 2010 at 10:16 am
Nice call: