Geez, these voters have the patience of a 17 year old boy on a junior prom date.

We are only now beginning to see deployment and disbursement.

And anyone - anyone - who knows knows that unemployment is a trailing indicator.

After eight years of Bush-led, carefully designed failure, we are seeing deceleration in the rate of fall. Maybe even a bottom. Ramping back up will not be easy or fast.

And does no one else find it interesting in the least that those who spent all eight years of the disastrous Bush administration blaming everything from Bush and Cheney's intelligence failures that allowed the 9/11 attacks to their underwear being too tight on the Clinton administration now seem to think that the very presence of President Obama means anything that goes wrong is his fault?

...that Eric Cantor's face has that slightly skewed look of inbreeding? The more I think about it, in fact, the more that look seems to permeate the entire neocon/fundie movement.

Ok, maybe I'm being a little biologically reductive here-but, seriously, was anybody surprised when John Geoghan and Paul Shanley turned out being pedophiles? Wouldn't it be weird if extreme religiosity was actually a form of genetic defect.

While I agree that the Bush administration's tax cuts were clearly a disaster, placing all the blame on this failure (among many others) is too simplistic. Bush exacerbated our country's economic problems, but the problem did not *begin* there. The repeal of Glass-Steagal happened during Clinton and ultimately received by-partisan support. This created conditions just as destructive as the Bush tax cuts. Both parties have benefited from overlooking gross deficiencies in the economic sector because doing so guarantees larger campaign donations.

But the problem is much larger than any of these examples, and certainly involves us, the citizens, so laying blame at the feet of one party or the other detracts from the real discussion we need have which is: how do we move forward in the face of this disaster? Part of moving forward and constructing effective solutions does involve recognizing the origins of the problems, but solely placing blame only perpetuates useless bickering and inaction.

This attempt to rewrite history by the right wing won't fly. In 2001-2002 we entered a recession (don't get me started on why, but it was another "thanks, Greenspan" moment). The Bush administration's response? Tax cuts to the wealthy.

Didn't work, of course, and the economy had to be "rescued" by the Fed, which dropped rates to historic lows, and kept them there. The resultant "false recovery" caused a consequent hyper-inflation which was "hidden" from the public by the weakening of the dollar(which didn't count as "inflation" - hah!). And that in turn spiked the price of goods (like homes) in non-dollar terms, which in turn drove home prices higher, which then brought in the speculators, which then brought in the mortgage bundlers, which - well, you know the rest of it.

Many other sins were committed, including the abandoning of regulation (and come ON, Repubs! Are you seriously saying you weren't all for massive deregulation?), and yes, some Dems were involved, but lest we forget the Repubs were in charge of Congress, thanks to the "Gingrich Revolution", so they get the lion's share of the blame.

And as concerns recovery from the present REPUBLICAN-CAUSED recession, well, it's pretty much on track, a blip here or there notwithstanding. Kind of like a few months back, when the stock market was tumbling, and the Repubs were blaming it on the Obama admin - until the stock market STOPPED falling.

You dudes are SO predictable....

Since the expressed purpose of the stimulus is to get things back to "normal", it is doomed.

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Looking Back on the Greatest Depression

Normal, prior to “The Greatest Depression,” meant unchecked over consumption and over development made possible by the availability of cheap money and easy credit.

On the consumer end, “normal” was a death wish, “shop ‘til you drop” – an obsessive compulsion by the profligate many to spend money they didn’t have but had to borrow. The spending spree extended to buying expensive new cars rather than affordable used ones. It had people building extensions and making home improvements when neither were necessary. It meant buying a McMansion when a Cape Cod would do. Splurging on expensive vacations, elaborate weddings and extravagant bar-mitzvahs to impress family and friends.

Borrowed money financed a major lifestyle upgrade that otherwise could not have ever been imagined, but that corresponded to what most people considered the “American Dream.” Borrow to the limit now, and pay sooner or later was “normal.”

http://tinyurl.com/ozfojs

The Coming Siege of Austerity

The idea that we're about to resume the insane behavior that induced the current epochal malaise of economy is so absurd it will only be heard in the faculty dining halls of the Ivy League. And if America is not picking up where it left off eighteen months ago -- the orgy of spending future claims on wealth unlikely to accrue -- then what is our destiny? Based on what's out there in the organs of public thinking, it seems that we don't want to think about it.

http://www.kunstler.com/mags_diary25.html

P.S.

In U.S., 32% Say Spending Less Is Their “New Normal”

Six in 10 say they enjoy saving more than spending

A new Gallup Poll finds that about a third of Americans, 32%, say they have been spending less in recent months, and that they intend to solidify this behavior as their "new, normal" pattern in the years ahead. Twenty-seven percent say they are saving more now and intend to make this their new, normal pattern in the years ahead.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/118003/Say-Spending-Less-New-Normal.aspx

re: Bush exacerbated our country's economic problems, but the problem did not *begin* there

Indeed.

As Carroll Quigley wrote in Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time (1966)

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The powers of financial capitalism had (a) far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank...sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world... For the first time in its history, Western Civilization is in danger of being destroyed internally by a corrupt, criminal ruling cabal which is centered around the Rockefeller interests, which include elements from the Morgan, Brown, Rothschild, Du Pont, Harriman, Kuhn-Loeb, and other groupings as well. This junta took control of the political, financial, and cultural life of America in the first two decades of the twentieth century.

http://tinyurl.com/n492j8