Coldheartedtruth

Nah... I think it was just communication difficulties with the use of fake sound problems to cover it up.

The "great communicator" strikes again! I wonder if this speech was heard in all 57 states?

New claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose last week, government data showed on Thursday, underscoring a weak labor market and the fragile economic recovery

Look folks... who ever these so called economic analysts are, the truth is that they are almost always wrong. Not sure I recall the last time they "expected" a bad economic report of any sort.

Oh wait. I guess I do. That was back prior to Obama becoming President.

So recently I've been spending a lot of time reading anything and everything that has to do with the economy and economic theory... especially the various economic journalist who toss around their weekly or bi-weekly columns. I've noticed a trend. With the exception of the occasional attempts to show why supply side economics have failed, Keynsian disciples rarely talk in terms of actual historical precedent. Rather they talk in terms of theory, studies, and economic "projections". A text books states this, some economic think tank determined this, or some congressional study shows this.

The hard part about it is that much of that is subjective... and not just a "little" subjective either. You can have wide range of disagreements regarding (for instance) how much government spending stimulates the economy short term or how much borrowing that same money to spend harms the economy long term. Likewise you have people who will claim that tax cuts gives you very little return on the investment all the way up to people who believe that tax cuts not only stimulate the economy but also grow revenue.

The problem with this is if you start with a hard theory that you believe is right, and you back it up with other theoretical calculations based on that theory... you are in essence bending reality around the "constant" that is the theory. You can never be wrong about the economic theory... you can only be wrong about the conditions of the situation.

In other words, when our Government has decided to raise Government spending to stimulate the economy and it has failed to do so (which has happened more than once in our history)... it doesn't prove anything other than the economic situation was worse than originally projected and/or the spending was not aggressive enough. Likewise, when we have instead cut taxes and in doing so stimulated the economy (as we have several times historically) it isn't because cutting taxes actually works, it's because the economy wasn't as bad as it seemed at the time.

Now it certainly isn't as simple as cutting taxes is good, spending money is bad. But it certainly is harder to claim the opposite when there is no historical evidence to back up the claim.

What can be more frustrating is a lack of acknowledgment that there "is" a lack of historical evidence or that it even matters? Because the obvious danger is we simply pull ourselves into this infinite loop. We continue down the path of "spending" to stimulate and blaming the lack of results on the economy being worse than originally thought (which by implication is blaming the economic principles prior). The more we spend and fail, the more these same Keynsian disciples see it as an indictment of the prior "failed" tax cut policies which they blame for putting the economy into such a mess to begin with. Because, through their eyes, the only reason their policies have not been more successful is because the previous policies were so unsuccessful that they were not even aware of how bad things were.

But again, the facts of the matter state something else. While the Obama administration keeps telling us that they inherited the worst economy since the great depression, the reality is that statistically it's simply not the case. In terms of GDP slippage, unemployment, and inflation... our economy was much worse off in the late 70s and early 80's. One could even argue that with the collapse of NASDAQ and the economic turmoil surrounding 9/11 that we had the very real possibility of an economic downturn of similar proportions less than 10 years ago.

The reality is that it really hasn't been the depth of the recession that has been the problem... it's that the recovery has been so slow. As much as the left complained about the "jobless" recovery that the Bush administration led, what we are seeing right now is much, much worse. At some point, these Keynsian disciples are going to need to take ownership of the situation and admit that all of their incorrect projections cannot continue to be blamed on everything else. They are going to need to see reality for what it is, or we are all in big trouble.

• Does anyone actually care about the Afghan war anymore?
• Lindsey Lohan is a whittle baby!
• I saw a FB ad asking if people thought Sarah Palin could ever be President... and I didn't discount it off hand.
• Al Gore is a fat head.
• Why do I care that Adrian Peterson will be there for the first day of camp? Shouldn't he be there? Isn't that his job?
• We went from a President who sounded stupid even if he was saying something fairly intelligent... to a President who sounds intelligent even while saying somthing really stupid.
• Angelina Jolie is the new Tom Cruise.
• Nancy Pelosi being 70 years old is an advertisement for a mandatory retirement age.