Comments on: A Thumbs-Down on Obama’s Economic Team

By: blinda

blinda — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 03:56:33 +0000

you are clueless … your alternatives suggest you reason with emotion not facts

By: quasar

quasar — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 13:15:23 +0000

#5 Broadsword…..rightonrighton!
Sadly, the word “oversight” doesn’t appear to be in the authors vocab. This is all too similar to B.Frank (s)pinning everything on dewegulation. Regs. and deregs. both need oversight.

By: Delia

Delia — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 08:48:53 +0000

What’s the big deal?

Your soul is just a broken metaphor for your i.d. and eventually we all sell out.

Of course, under the Obama rule of law you won’t have the choice to sell your i.d. on ebay or amazon.com…now your soul is rendered his (I’m sure he’s gonna enact a new law just for that) by proxy whether you voted for him or not.

As with all “Dear Leaders”…the start out innocuous enough…and then…

666

By: the scholar

the scholar — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 23:44:15 +0000

“The Greening of Social Security”
If the Republicans are to stay politically relevant over the course of the next two or four years and want to avoid the same trap democrats fell into after Bush was elected, they must do more than simply act as obstructionists to the Liberal agenda. They must provide substantive, innovative and principled alternatives, which are rooted in free market and individualistic principles – like this one (”The Greening of Social Security” – http://thescholarsforum.org/)

By: Cybergeezer

Cybergeezer — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 14:25:42 +0000

25. myth buster:
That’s exactly what happened; So the fault lies directly on the hands of the Democrat Party. They’ve been kneecapping Bush and the Republicans for three years. It’s time to return the favor.

By: myth buster

myth buster — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 03:15:06 +0000

Ann, Reagan slashed taxes resulting in a massive economic growth, a doubling of Federal Revenues, and a nine point drop in the inflation rate. George W. Bush did a mediocre job handling fiscal policy. The economy grew at a sustainable pace until being hit broadside by problems that Bush foresaw, but Congress would not let him fix.

By: Roger Godby

Roger Godby — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 02:45:29 +0000

Paul Krugman? Run “paul krugman truth squad” through any web search engine to nix him. He did do good, if brief, work for Enron, though.

Roubini or Volcker, who tamed double-digit inflation under Reagan’s protection, not bad.

The other day I read that the FDR-era separation between banks and investment houses does not exist in Europe. If true, it apparently hasn’t caused great trouble there, so I doubt it will here.

We need less regulation, less government and politicized meddling, not more. Let the producers produce and innovators innovate. Kill the public-private disasters like Fannie and Freddie, which evolve into taxpayers’ problems, that have hurt us for decades to come.

By: thegre8_1

thegre8_1 — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 01:34:43 +0000

Two fingers up for the new economic crooks I mean geniuses and you all guess which two fingers.

By: avoidswork

avoidswork — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 00:29:37 +0000

While I am not as pleased with the economic team as I could be, I will wait and reserve judgement. I do think, as Political Observer @10 noted, that there are many, many, many reasons for the problem and Republican, Democrat, Independent, etc. are to blame.

But let us be clear about “government” as the problem. The term “government” is too blanket – but what is applicable is that government never really bothered to conduct oversight. We have been witnessing it, again, in the face of this recent Wall Street bailout, no one bothering to account for the money, the AIG parties, the bonuses, all paid for AFTER receiving money from the Treasury. Regulation, deregulation — both are irrelevant if no one is conducting oversight.

My only hope is that before another dollar is given to anyone, there is a stringent oversight where every penny is accounted for. I wish that if your firm/bank/whatever was found to have had a “lavish” party post-bailout AND is posting losses, you are kicked to the curb.

Naturally, I’m pro-Obama. But I’m not blind and I’m not really pro-Congress.

I hope that the new people Obama is bringing in, faults and all, will ameliorate this problem, hold firms accountable and wait to hand out money until this has been thought through from every angle.

We’ve already seen terrible management over the initial bailout(s). Let us all hope those days will be over and strict accountability must be enforced. If the Big 3 Car Mftrs have to tap dance, and carpool to get some money ($15 billion or 4.29% of $350 billion); I want to see a full on pageant for Wall Street.

I also hope we are doing all that we can to support our local, small businesses in this time of crisis.

By: Jay

Jay — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 22:18:41 +0000

Derivatives and the Black-Scholes false model for pricing options played an important role that has been missed by the business press since they use probability theory and a bit of statistics. Economists and finance professors claimed that they were a great advance to financial markets and that they would improve the valuation of risk and free up capital. The proponents in academia blocked papers that showed that B-S and their extensions could be falsified by proper data analysis.
The SEC was taken in and the Wall Street bosses were pleased by the profits that rolled in until the models failed and the leveraging collapsed.
The Wall Street gang spend a lot of money on Obama’s campaign. Obama has some real leftie economists in the background but he knows that he has to deal with the crisis and so he brought in the wise men who have been hailed by the business press as great minds.