# Current Financial Situation



## partdeux (Aug 3, 2011)

Excellent series of graphs showing the conundrum of issues
CHARTS: Here's What The Wall Street Protesters Are So Angry About...


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## Immolatus (Feb 20, 2011)

*"The problem in a nutshell is this: Inequality in this country has hit a level that has been seen only once in the nation's history, and unemployment has reached a level that has been seen only once since the Great Depression. And, at the same time, corporate profits are at a record high."*

Exactly. The masses will not stand for this.


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## Ezmerelda (Oct 17, 2010)

But employment numbers will not improve unless the Federal Government backs off and loosens restrictions on businesses of all sizes.

The Federal Government has gotten too big for its britches and needs to do some serious cutting back. 

It won't be easy or pleasant, but it's got to be done.


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## TheAnt (Jun 7, 2011)

Ezmerelda said:


> But employment numbers will not improve unless the Federal Government backs off and loosens restrictions on businesses of all sizes.
> 
> The Federal Government has gotten too big for its britches and needs to do some serious cutting back.
> 
> It won't be easy or pleasant, but it's got to be done.


Truer words have ne'er been spoken!

The reason that there is such inequity is *because *of governement... government wont have any part in changing that except if they get out of the way.

Perhaps this thread should be moved to the "Politics" category -- not sure??


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## partdeux (Aug 3, 2011)

TheAnt said:


> Perhaps this thread should be moved to the "Politics" category -- not sure??


I struggled when posting this, the article is strictly about financial... but with all things related to govt money, it drifts into politics.


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## TheAnt (Jun 7, 2011)

partdeux said:


> I struggled when posting this, the article is strictly about financial... but with all things related to govt money, it drifts into politics.


BINGO! :congrat:

But can the article be fully discussed without mention of things of a political nature? Sorry, now I am getting off topic. Im so bad...


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## The_Blob (Dec 24, 2008)

Hey! I found out where THE RICH are!

Top Income in U.S. Is...Gasp!...Wash. D.C. Area - Bloomberg



> Total compensation for federal workers, including health care and other benefits, last year averaged $126,369, compared with $122,697 in 2009, according to Bloomberg News calculations of Commerce Department data. There were 170,467 federal employees in the District of Columbia as of June.





> The federal government stepped in to take efforts to dampen the recession. It was focused to some extent in the D.C. area as well, given the presence of federal workers there and contractors. That insulated it from more of a downturn.


wow... the government is corrupt and protects "it's own"... who knew?


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## BillS (May 30, 2011)

Those people don't get it. Obama's liberal policies caused it and that's what those people would support. In fact, I think most of them are more liberal than Obama.


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## The_Blob (Dec 24, 2008)

BillS said:


> Those people don't get it. Obama's liberal policies caused it and that's what those people would support. In fact, I think most of them are more liberal than Obama.


I'm not really in the 'blame Obama' camp, I look at him more as a symptom of a festering rot than its cause... :dunno:

In the beginning this movement included _some_ legitimate beefs, but was still mainly just a vague attack on 'corporations'. Of course these are the _same_ corporations that *employ more than 100 million Americans* and make many(?) of the products we all use every day, I don't think these broad brush-strokes resonate with most people.


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## partdeux (Aug 3, 2011)

BillS said:


> Those people don't get it. Obama's liberal policies caused it and that's what those people would support. In fact, I think most of them are more liberal than Obama.


Do you really believe this started on bambam's watch? I would strongly suggest looking just beyond the political rhetoric


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## Ezmerelda (Oct 17, 2010)

The_Blob said:


> I'm not really in the 'blame Obama' camp, I look at him more as a symptom of a festering rot than its cause... :dunno:


EXACTLY! :ranton:No one person can take the blame for this mess, no matter what a terrible president he is, he couldn't and didn't singlehandedly cause this...the problem started the first time the Federal Government expanded its scope in defiance of the Constitution, and the disease has been progressing ever since.:rantoff:

The patient will soon be on life support...


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## UncleJoe (Jan 11, 2009)

Exactly!! :congrat:

Go back to 1913 and the chartering of *The Federal Reserve* and you'll find the start of a lot of the problems.


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## oldvet (Jun 29, 2010)

Ezmerelda said:


> EXACTLY! :ranton:No one person can take the blame for this mess, no matter what a terrible president he is, he couldn't and didn't singlehandedly cause this...the problem started the first time the Federal Government expanded its scope in defiance of the Constitution, and the disease has been progressing ever since.:rantoff:
> 
> The patient will soon be on life support...


I do believe that is a fact. Very well said.


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## The_Blob (Dec 24, 2008)

ok, WHAT are they mad about again? :scratch


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## Immolatus (Feb 20, 2011)

I believe the debt tripled under Reagan...


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## The_Blob (Dec 24, 2008)

:scratch partially correct...

:ranton:
Do you remember when President Clinton was running for reelection in 1996? He was saying he was responsible for a 50+ month economic boom. It was pointed out, by Rush Limbaugh, that a 50 month boom must have started during the Bush administration, since President Clinton had been in office about 43 months at the time. President Clinton changed it to a 43 month boom.
What is my point? It is perception and spin. You need to explain how it got that way and who was responsible? You imply President Reagan. When looking at *baseline budgeting* that appears to be incorrect.
President Carter was elected President based on his use of the misery index. That is a number made by adding unemployment plus inflation. Why do that? To make a bigger number. We like both numbers low, so add them together and it sounds much worse.
When President Ford took office, he tried to improve the economy. He had a Democratic Congress against him. The misery index when he took office was 16.36. At the election of 1976, it had fallen to 12.68. So he was making progress. But Carter said that number was much too high.
What did Carter do? Well at the time of the 1980 election, it was 21.15. The voters showed him the door, rightly so.
Why were these numbers going up? Because Carter could not get a handle on inflation. It was a whopping 12.61% when he was voted out. What did Reagan do? Started bringing the inflation rate down. When that happened, people began spending more for durable goods and unemployment started dropping. But it didn't happen over night. By December 1983, the inflation rate had plummeted to 3.83% and unemployment had fallen to just under 8%. You can't fix unemployment without first fixing inflation. President Reagan knew that. So unemployment rose while he brought inflation under control.
What was the misery index when Reagan left office? 9.72, down from OVER 21! Inflation was 4.67% (anything under 5% is considered healthy) and unemployment 5.05%. That was better than he inherited from Carter, which was inflation of 12.61 and unemployment of 8.54 at the time of the 1980 election.
Let's look at the deficit. I will give you two simple tasks to research for yourself. You will see the Reagan tax cuts DOUBLED revenue before he left office. So why did the deficit go up? Because the House, which controls spending, saw more money coming in and figured out new ways to spend it. Look at baseline budgeting.
Oh by the way, the House that spent all the new revenue AND MORE, was controlled by the Democrats. This is already too long, so I will not add to it much more. 
The economic expansion of the 90′s began during the Bush administration. Clinton admitted it (for a while). How did the decline in the early 90′s begin? When Bush reneged on his "read my lips, no new taxes" campaign promise. The new taxes sent the economy down, but realizing the mistake the recovery began during Bush's term. And don't forget, it was CLINTON who first admitted the economic expansion started during the Bush years. Rush just caught him on it and he then tried to revise history. You can read Clinton's campaign stump speeches from that time online.
It stayed robust until early in 2000. The downturn started WHILE CLINTON WAS STILL PRESIDENT. Why did it stay strong during the 90′s? Because the Republicans in Congress (led by Newt Gingrich) wouldn't let Hillary take over the medical industry and managed to keep spending in check. Keeping spending in check is something Congress has forgotten how to do for quite some time (both Republican and Democrat led). Nor did the Democratic House in the 80′s. Again, look up baseline budgeting. As to a related issue of the time (oil prices and inflation), that began during the Nixon administration. Inflation was bad when Ford took over, he was beginning to bring inflation down in the midst of the oil crisis. When Carter took over, his economic policies hurt business, caused inflation to increase, and negated everything Ford accomplished.
Unemployment was 7.8% in May of 1992. By the time Clinton was sworn in, the rate had dropped a half point. Those 6 months of economic job growth Clinton was touting as his great expansion until he realized those were attained under Bush budgets.
:rantoff:


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## TheAnt (Jun 7, 2011)

UncleJoe said:


> Exactly!! :congrat:
> 
> Go back to 1913 and the chartering of *The Federal Reserve* and you'll find the start of a lot of the problems.


This could be taken really political but I would say that you could go back to 'The War for Southern Independance' as the point where gov't really started to make precidence for overstepping bounds and causing the trouble we are in now. Then again I suppose one could say its been one long downhill ride from the beginning -- the natural laziness of man combined with the evil of man has decimated what our founding fathers gave us.


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## BillS (May 30, 2011)

partdeux said:


> Do you really believe this started on bambam's watch? I would strongly suggest looking just beyond the political rhetoric


The national debt has grown more under Obama than under all the previous presidents combined. All Obama wants to do is raise taxes and spend more money.

Unemployment keeps getting worse. There's been an average of 400,000 people a week getting laid off since April. That's an additional 10 million people without jobs when there's been less than a million new jobs. Any normal recession is short-lived unless the government interferes with the economy. There are a lot of new regulations. Obamacare has created a lot of uncertainty. Companies are afraid to hire. People are afraid to spend. Frankly, our economy is in a free-fall with no sign of where the bottom is.


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## BillS (May 30, 2011)

TheAnt said:


> This could be taken really political but I would say that you could go back to 'The War for Southern Independance' as the point where gov't really started to make precidence for overstepping bounds and causing the trouble we are in now. Then again I suppose one could say its been one long downhill ride from the beginning -- the natural laziness of man combined with the evil of man has decimated what our founding fathers gave us.


I think it changed permanently under FDR. Before that, nobody thought the government had to take of people. After that the politicians who promised the people the most were the ones that got elected.


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## BlueShoe (Aug 7, 2010)

Presidents don't determine economic policy. They are given a list of economic appointees by advisers from which to choose and those people set the agenda. Presidents know crap about how the economy works. Reagan wasn't the conservative he's made out to be and regardless of which party is in power, the minority party can introduce legislation that gets approved and they know the major party will take the blame 10 yrs later.
For instance, under Clinton with a Democrat majority, 3 Republicans penned the repeal of Glass-Steagall (which was supposed to prevent banks from becoming too big to fail again), but they repealed it. It became law and was instrumental in collapsing the economy in 2008, precisely the same way it did when we experienced the Great Depression. Another example is Reagan holdovers creating NAFTA during GHW Bush, who signed it in ceremony and fast tracked as a lame duck by submitting it to the Senate where Clinton ultimately signed Bush's treaty. Who gets blamed 10 out of 10 times?



BillS said:


> The national debt has grown more under Obama than under all the previous presidents combined.
> Unemployment keeps getting worse. Frankly, our economy is in a free-fall with no sign of where the bottom is.


Where do you get these impressions from? The National debt was 5.5 trillion when Clinton left and was 10.6 trillion when Bush left. It's now 14.8 trillion. You can't even say the rate of increase is going up since it was zero rate of increase under Clinton, and went supernova under Bush. Obama hasn't yet equaled the last President in debt increase, although he's only had part of one term.
The economy isn't in free fall. It's just treading water. Unemployment is just holding steady too.

Your problem is a man and it isn't a party. It's the government.


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## PopPop (Sep 14, 2010)

partdeux said:


> Do you really believe this started on bambam's watch? I would strongly suggest looking just beyond the political rhetoric


This did not start wiyh the currentraitor, but has surely embraced the policies that brought us to this point.


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## partdeux (Aug 3, 2011)

PopPop said:


> This did not start wiyh the currentraitor, but has surely embraced the policies that brought us to this point.


I am one of the last people you would associate with being a bambam supporter, but if you look strictly at the numbers, bambam is only slightly worse than the RINO before him. Now, he has set things up for some pretty large financial issues in the future, today's problem is only slightly higher growth then from before.

I'll say it again, look beyond the political rhetoric and STUDY the data.


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