... and someone who's better versed in monetary policy can correct me if I'm wrong.

One of the effects of the neoliberal obsession with discouraging governments from running debt was effectively to free up money at lower costs for the private sector. In other words, if the private sector doesn't have to compete with government for the money available to be loaned, the private sector can get it for cheaper.

Implicit in this (well, frankly, it's explicit in the neoliberal worldview) is that the private sector will do more useful things with that money than the government will. If that means more profit for private borrowers because their debt service charges are lower, so much the better.

In any case, it was always based on a flawed and dishonest premise to begin with, which is that money spent by the government vanishes forever, while money spent by the private sector is recycled and circulated and trickles down. Give a dollar to a hedge fund manager or a corporate lawyer, and it magically turns into ten dollars via the cab driver, the barista at Starbucks etc.; but give a dollar to a schoolteacher or a civil servant and it disappears without a trace and without any effect on the economy.

In reality, the private sector has pissed away tomorrow's wealth and left nothing to show for it, far more effectively and completely than government ever did.

"The Party of No Clue."

was perfectly legitimate and not at all "angry" as some have indicated.

Maybe it was a bit more heated than baseline Obama but good grief...

I kind of like the idea that the President will shoot down people who ask stupid questions. Maybe if he embarrasses them enough, they'll start coming up with intelligent questions and start doing their jobs.

and just try it on for a moment...

Obama knows what he has to do is nationalize the banks, at least temporarily. But he can't do that until he has really obviously tried the Wall Street-friendly way and it has really obviously not worked and everybody is FURIOUS.

He is building the political capital it will take to accomplish the necessary nationalization, and preemptively fending off the smear campaign that Wall Street will unleash when he does.

Barack Obama is a smart guy.

Let's all give Obama at least one-tenth the trust extended to George W. Bush.

Georgie boy got everything he wanted, no one was allowed to criticize anything he did lest they give care and comfort to, you know, terrorists and stuff. You all allowed him to be judged by a very low standard and when he exceeded those rock-bottom expectations he got a shiny gold star.

Obama is not a moron and that is more than we can say for the last guy. Frankly, I think Americans deserve whatever happens to them after letting Bush run rampant for eight years. I have been watching and you did this to yourselves, you stupid fucks. If you come out of this with two pennies to rub together it will be thanks to Obama and you will all be luckier than you deserve.

You don't get to be part of the party that sedulously ensured that banks would get too big to fail, and then say let them fail. You can take one stance or the other but not both.

Americans can see what's right in front of their faces: that the current system doesn't work, and calling other countries' systems names based on a half-baked understanding of how they provide health care (rather than sedulously failing to provide it) isn't a good starting point.

You may be shocked--shocked!--to find in the coming years that other crazy, kooky, nutty Un-American ideas (like not letting everyone carry handguns around, and having public schools be funded by state or federal governments rather than local taxation districts, or taxing fossil fuels to encourage people to become less reliant on same) are actually *good ideas*, not fast-tracks to totalitarianism, and would keep your lives from being the miserable, desperate scrambling for money that you have left yourselves as the only choice.

Congratulations! The bottom of the class has finally graduated kindergarten. Jesus Christ...

It took 25 years for the Dow to get back to its 1929 peak.

That's because the 1929 peak was driven by asset inflation and speculation. It took until 1954 for the actual wealth to catch up to what it had been perceived to be in 1929.

The Dow is not going to "recover" to its 14,000-point high anytime soon, no matter what Obama does. That 14,000 didn't represent real wealth. Now everyone knows it didn't represent real wealth. Get over it.