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Yesterday our three major local news stations covered President-Elect Obama's speech on the economy. There are two interesting points to make on this.

1) Never before have we (US citizens) had an incoming President make such an address while we still have a sitting President.

2) He really, really meant it when it said he wants to redistribute the wealth.

Kindle;1105978 wrote: Yesterday our three major local news stations covered President-Elect Obama's speech on the economy. There are two interesting points to make on this.

1) Never before have we (US citizens) had an incoming President make such an address while we still have a sitting President.

2) He really, really meant it when it said he wants to redistribute the wealth.


My wallet is open & so is my bank account.:sneaky:

I was quite impressed!

Odie;1106010 wrote: I was quite impressed!


So was I! He is shoving Bush right out the door which is really nice. GW doesn't even have to make any speeches now..which is great as I never listen to him anyway:wah:

Odie;1106010 wrote: I was quite impressed!


What points did you think were good?

I thought the bit where he basically said if someone in authority doesn't do something very radical, very quickly, that America, and basically everyone else is going down the economic toilet was good, because that's the truth and someone needs to make that very clear to people, right now.

If you actually look at the figures for the 4th quarter of 2008 in the developed economies of The USA, the European Union, and Asia, its clear that we are very quickly heading into a what is going to be a deflationary depression, a collapse in asset values, currency system failures, demand for goods falling off a cliff, and manufacturing output declining in levels unseen since the 1930s.

As many suspected this is not turning out to be a relatively "short sharp recession" at all. It seems to me like the global system of investment, production, and consumption based on the lynchpin of the American economy and everyone else's economic relationship with it is breaking down. Seriously, the numbers are frightening, and I am not being alarmist, go look at them.

The fact that the U.S. Government and every other advanced country allowed a clearly unsustainable global financial system to develop to the point where the world's economic system could (and has) ultimately collapsed like a pack of cards is what's still making my head spin.

To my mind the only hope we have of avoiding that now, is that the G8, and the other nations comprising the G20 need to get their act together and work out a way somehow of putting a floor under what is happening, and come up with a new set of radically different rules of how we are going to run the world's financial system in a more balanced and sustainable way.

By the way, we don't have a huge amount of time to start doing something radical, because if we have another six months of this we are going to be seriously in a economic catastrophe that will take years to get out of.

Like Obama said if congress does not act quickly. we will be moving from recession to depression. Which as he said we may never recover. Relatives that i spoke to who were children during the depression. Are very fearful that this can or will happen again. My Aunt told me of soup kitchens. Standing in line for food. Could this happen again?? Or will this?? I hope Obama can turn us around. Before it is too late.

Jester;1106131 wrote: Then give every family of four $12,000- that would be cheaper and more effective than the bailout he proposes AND if he cut the tax to small business owners by the same amount he'd do more than stimulate the economy.

What is our 'full capacity' and how is that measured? What's he mean by that? This is smoke, lets see when the mirror comes out¦

Poor liberal based academia filled with electives and feel good programs that socially parent kids away from personal responsibility and accountability has nearly destroyed the 'potential and promise' of our future generations, even if he manages to fix the money problem he's not gonna touch the issues that created the apathy in the first place he agrees with the process that created the academic destruction for our kids and at the same time sends his kids to private school now there's a message to ya.

He will make this dramatically worse by his myopic big government fix- but the US sitting on it's hands is not the answer either. I think we are the point of "desperate times, takes desperate measures".

Kindle;1106021 wrote: What points did you think were good?


he was positive, frank and direct to the point!

don't think Bush or any other president has actually really meant it they or even cared!

Jester;1106142 wrote: This is my favortie part of his speech. :rolleyes:



And here it is the "only government can help you now" rhetoric, MY GOD it's the GOVERNMENT that created this mess!


There are many (including yourself, perhaps me) that disagree with his proposals as mentioned in his speech, but I have not yet heard any alternative ideas. Perhaps I have just not read any as yet. Any thoughts on this or a referral to alternative ideas?

You could do it your way, Jester, but you'd have a whiole lot of Americans starved to death in the process unless you can think of a way for them to feed without their having an income or savings. Call it twenty million destitute on the streets, tell me how you think they'll stay alive without intervention.

I see entirely what you're saying Jester, but none of that gets a penny into the hands of the destitute. Call it fewer if you want to, I don't mind that. Call it five million. Not one of them's had a meal from what you wrote.

I don't think a lot of people get what is happening here, this isn't a recession like the 1980s or the 1970s, its a far more profound problem than either of those ones. They were walks in the park compared to this.

The world's financial system, (and all the things that depend on it) are essentially broken beyond repair at the present, and its been run by people full of so much arrogance, vanity, irresponsibility, b*llshit, and pure lies that no one across the world has any confidence that its going to work properly in its present form anymore, especially with the present people who run it still being in charge.

And everything in the real world that depends on the global financial system is consequently suffering from a catastrophic collapse in demand and general confidence, simultaneously, across the entire globe.

Which is why your seeing asset values collapse, (because no one trusts the system we use to value things, which is because it was based on BS mostly); a growing new bubble in government bonds, (because no one believes that anything not directly guarenteed with tax payers money and savings is safe enough to invest in); and why the next thing your going to see are currency collapses and governments going into default; as it finally becomes apparent that you can't keep inventing and spending paper wealth based on the ability of as-yet-unborn taxpayers to cover all these loans you're making to yourself and your creditors.

Thats why this crisis is getting worse and not better.

To be honest I don't have a clue what they can do to stop what is happening, or what Obama will or won't do; or whether it will be any good, or make it worse. But at least in the States there seems to be some recognition of the scale of what's happening by people in high office.

As for my own country, because this isn't just happening in America.

In Ireland with our politicians its, "ah, sure it'll be grand, we'll just give our mates in the banks a couple of billion so they can keep propping up our other mates who are property developers for a few more months until the yanks think up of some way of working it out". "Oink oink oink, pass the Moet and Chandon darling".

Meanwhile, after all this so-called boom and pointless luxury, vanity, consumerism, self-worship, decadence, and nonsense I stlll live in a country where thousands of uneducated and ill-cared for children go hungry and cold to bed every night. Where old people freeze to death homeless in doorways, and where de-humanized children murder each other over a couple of thousand Euro's worth of drugs. Progress eh?

Seriously, I would love if we had someone with at least the intellect and seriousness of an Obama over here right now, as opposed to these unethical, compromised, fecking gombeen eejits we have who I'm informed are allegedly running the place. I'm not completely sure anymore why we fought for several hundred years to have our own country, but I really don't think it was for this crap.

I appreciate that not everyone over there in America really thinks he has the right answers, but in general I just like the man, and I tend to like the general thrust of what he is saying, whether its possible to actually achieve these things in detail is a totally different question of course.

Yet again, Galbally has expressed my thoughts with more eloquence than I could have expressed them. Thank you, sir.

I agree with Cal Thomas of the Tribune who says that the Democrats are fostering a dependency on government so that people will be less self-reliant and more dependent on politicians for their current and future welfare.

I thought the last two paragraphs in his column from last Thursday summed things up very nicely.

Cal Thomas wrote:

"This is a formula for socialism and for whatever political system follows to enforce it, though socialism advances even in our supposed constitutional republic. Anyone who relies less on themselves and more on government will see their freedoms erode. It has always been this way.

If this growing dependence on ever more costly and overreaching government continues, we may have to change the familiar letter abbreviation for this country us USA to ATM."

I am for smaller national government involvement in my life.

Everything that our government gets involved in seems to cost more to create and sustain and doesn't fix the problem. Perhaps we should hold up our politicians to the scrutiny that the big 3 auto CEO's were publicly held to..........

You're right enough about it being broken past repair, Galbally, I'll grant you that. The new model which eventually emerges will undoubtedly have a regulated marketplace to bubble efficiency to the top, which is good. It will have as small a Civil Service as can possibly be managed because I have never once seen any Civil Service even approximate efficiency, but the old way of sticking with one supplier because it's easier is no better. What has to emerge is a universal detestation of egregious wealth. You wrote about that a week or so back and I was heartily glad to see it said.

The only way to socialize the concept of ownership is to break this filthy backward link between money and work. The tax system should start everyone, working or not working, with a base provision on which it's possible to survive. Those who want to stick at that can stick, those who want the fun of a paying job on top can take a paying job on top. The first obvious aspect of this arrangement is that the fouler the job the higher the pay it carries to persuade someone to take it. A lot of the lunacies introduced with Capitalism just evaporate under a full-fledged Socialist financial system.

Jester;1106363 wrote: Spot I'd take up arms to stop that form of insanity.


1. I'm sure it would be entirely inappropriate for the USA. I'm not recommending it for the USA. The USA is a sovereign country with the right to its own self-determination. Do as you please within the USA. Elect democratic leaders or have a two-party dictatorship, it's no skin off my nose.

2. Leave other countries to get on with building civilization as they see it. Stop invading them. Stop killing foreigners.

Jester;1106367 wrote: Your assumption of the magnatude of the problem is flawed, arguing numbers is moot.


You already refuse to accept that there's around two million people living hand-to-mouth without a roof over their head today in the USA, it's scarcely likely you'll accept that the numbers are about to grow significantly. I think my estimate of five million by this time next year is reasonable.