"We are out of money now. We are operating in deep deficits, not caused by any decisions we've made on health care so far. This is a consequence of the crisis that we've seen and in fact our failure to make some good decisions on health care over the last several decades.
So we've got a short-term problem, which is we had to spend a lot of money to salvage our financial system, we had to deal with the auto companies, a huge recession which drains tax revenue at the same time it's putting more pressure on governments to provide unemployment insurance or make sure that food stamps are available for people who have been laid off.
So we have a short-term problem and we also have a long-term problem. The short-term problem is dwarfed by the long-term problem. And the long-term problem is Medicaid and Medicare. If we don't reduce long-term health care inflation substantially, we can't get control of the deficit."
-Barack Obama, admitting the ugly truth, May 2009
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48 comments:
Ah yes… The pendulum swings and the new buzz words prevail. Sustainability, national debit, savings, stagflation, and trickle down all permeate the news. Once the recovery has happened, no one will talk about economic issues much, we will be in the next pre bubble calm. For now, we pay the piper in every way imaginable.
Keefer,
We don’t care how smart you think Mr. empty suite is.
Lets ASSume he’s got the brains of 10 geniuses combined,
Do you think he (or any group of bureaucrat) can do a better job with the economy then the people of a free economy?
The people’s economy always will go thru tough winters; recessions and depressions aren’t bad they are merely part of the cycle of growth.
So, you think we have a very smart president that’s gonna keep summer going all year long and keep the leaves green all year round?
How many trees are going to survive in the long run without going thru harsh winters.
So I am going to argue that Obama is a dumb ass who thinks highly of himself, never ran a successful anything in his life and he’s not changed overnight by attaining the title of president.
The less he try’s to fix things the better off we’ll all be.
The sooner we allow Housing to ride its natural cycles without intervention (from very smart people) the sooner this economy will feel better.
PS another reason Europe has almost no chance of recovering.
If we don't reduce long-term health care inflation substantially, we can't get control of the deficit.
-----------------------------------
reducing long term health care will enable us to get control of the deficit?
what type of math is he using?
he speaks the hard truth and most don't want to hear it.
problem is he also speaks of the easy solutions (which won't work) that people do want to hear.
Thats how Reagan, Bush 1 and 2 got to power. Telling the people lies that you can have huge deficits, tax cuts, no draft, wars, etc.....they fed right into the typical lazy sheeps thinking.
Repubs always throw a party without paying for it and leave the clean up to the adults.
Al-Queefer said:
‘Barack Obama tells the American people the truth. Now, the question is, do the American people want the truth? Or do they want more fairytales?’
Hmmm,
How does the man from Illinois find the truth when the ‘American People’ cant?
Teleprompter?
A country of euntrepenuers and opportunists with vast experiences of major successes and severe failures have built thee best environment for humans to prosper (not perfect) compared to any other *nation in all of history by listening to fairytales.
If only we listened to the ‘truth’ from someone who’s built….???
I know I know the inbred weak elites keep putting places like Shveeden and places like the sterile Netherlands as best places to live with fake smiling ‘happiest people’ blah blah blah.
But as for me, I would never replace the benefits of individual creativity, from covering my project car on jacks with an ugly blue tarp in front of my house to building a tree house in my back yard with scrap pieces of wood, and rigging a fence around my veggie garden with scrap metal, over living in a concrete flat with ‘on time’ train stops organized by a ‘central committee’
For me happiness is a state of mind. Not an engineered state designed by those who, oh tell us their ‘truth’.
Obammy, gimmee pixies and unicorns!!!!
Admitting the ugly truth or trying to position public sentiment to favor nationalization of entire industries?
What scares me about Obama is he keeps talking about impending doom but I don't hear any plans to reduce the government to 50% of its current level to prevent a catastrophe.
I will give kudos to some of the nickel-dime cuts he's making and proposing, though. Republicans say the problem is too big to nickel-dime away, but as a self-sufficient taxpayer I recognize the value of both small and big cuts. It's what I do in my own home.
Heh Heh. And if we don't make any decisions on health care, like, oh, I dunno, maybe SINGLE PAYER UNIVERSAL COVERAGE, we will go broke even faster.
A friend of mine who is cook cut himself on the job. Wasn't sure whether or not it needed stitches, he went to the hospital.
Didn't need stitches. Got bandaged (gauze and tape). Cost $377.
Get cancer, bankrupt your family. $300,000+.
We need a state run system.
The problem is long, long, long-term, and the public service pigs are still slurping from the trough.
As a result, this problem - the bail-out bubble - will not be corrected, and our world as we, our children, and children's children, will never be the same.
We've become a nation which has gotten used to the idea that it's OK that masses and masses of people are thrown into poverty.
This country was founded on riots, and so the stage is now set for the mother of all riots to take place in this country.
Keep up the great work public service pigs, because you'll be getting yours soon - directly in the slaughter house.
Well what can you expect, BUSH and Cheney left this country in shambles.
Civil War? Is not unthinkable anymore folks!
I hate to use the old expression "All The King's Horses" but if anyone honestly believes that Obama can save the economy they are sadly mistaken. It is too late.
How about those I Bonds! Negative interest rates. Great, shut off every avenue. The destruction of a way of life for the middle class is being brought to reality.
It won't be long now, maybe summer, perhaps the fall.
You can't argue math, you can't support the economy on "feeling". The USA is going into a depression and there will be nothing for everyone very soon.
we are not out of money until our credit is gone.Are you going to trust ziambabwee to pay you back.We will find the money somewhere.
america is great.
Tell me lies
Tell me sweet little lies
La la la
La la lala
Tell me tell me lies
La la la la
The presidential campaign has been over for a quite a while now.
Time to deliver
It's hard to see a way out of this mess. Whoever got into office would have had the same problem - it is a quagmire.
To me, it is criminal acts that got us to this point. Fraud on a grand scale. Destroying the country and any law abiding citizen it it.
It sure would be nice to see some people go to jail. Doesn't look like it's going to happen though. In fact the perps are still playing.
He's still lying. He is still using the tired old line that if we don't socialize we are "doing nothing". There is no efficiency in our government. Socialism is like Robin Hood with the middleman Government in between him and the poor. I'm not going to expand my business in this environment and hire more people...forget it.
The democratic congress has been in power for years, damn it!
I'll be in my concrete bunker. Call when the free market is again free. (To continue our economic scorched-earth policy)
Off topic, kind of, but maybe not when we are talking about believing things.
Who the heck decided that this is Memorial Day, and why? Yes it has been the last Monday in May for years, so this year that particular Monday is now, and the more traditional Monday is actually in June.
But this is kind of bizzarre. I think a lot of people, including me, were expecting that it would be the weekend of the 31st of May - i.e.the last weekend in May.
So this year I am just going to ignore it.
why come here, when i can just sit back and watch MSNBC?
What a joke. Barry spends $4T on pet democrat projects and then says we're out of money like it's a big surprise. That's like me drinking 10 beers and then next day saying, hey I have a hangover, wonder how that happened.
Even your Lesbian Princess, Rachel Maddow is realizing what a phony Oblahma is:
http://tinyurl.com/psj3px
keith,
you are certifiably crazy!
it is obama who is causing us to be out of money!!! he has spent trillions and trillions of dollars in the short term and has committed us to spend trillions and trillions more in the long-term...all of it is borrowed or printed! it's all debt!
he is now planning to force govt. run health insurance on us that will cost trillions more...all financed through DEBT!
he is the cause of the very problems he says we americans have to face up to now (and yes, americans are to blame too).
Out of money? Of course we are because YOU, BARAK OBAMA, SPENT IT, BORROWED IT, and PRINTED IT AND MADE US DEBT SLAVES TO THE U.S. GOVT. AND FOREIGN ENTITIES.
HOW DARE HE SAY SUCH A THING!
AND HOW DARE YOU, KEITH, MAKE A POST LIKE THIS!
I must say that of all the posts you've made that are good (the vast majority of them) and bad (a relatively small minority of them), this is -- pardon my language - ONE OF THE STUPIDEST. You must have had a brain fart or something.
Ruminate over your post for a while and you will see what I mean. It shouldn't take long for you to understand how wrong you are on this one.
You have spent years now railing against - and justifiably so - govt and consumers living way beyond their means through debt, yet you post this crap from the very person who is NOW RESPONSIBLE for placing us at ground zero for DEBT ARMAGEDDON.
Honestly man, I'm saying this constructively: you blew this post.
My father went to the emergency room in Iceland when he literally lost sight in his right eye with plenty of pain to go with it on a Tuesday . He was checked in and waited a LONG time to get someone to look at his condition. He was given an appointment to go see an eye doctor. Friday , he was DEAD froma major STROKE.
Welcome to SOCIALIZED HEALTH CARE , America ! Don't let it happen !
In the USA , he would have been examined more carefully and been immediately placed on a good blood thinner and monitored to the tune of tens of thousand of Dollars. He would likely have gone bankrupt and sold most of his his Bank owned shit , but he would be ALIVE !!
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Don't sweat til 2038
.
Get cancer, don't bankrupt your family. Just go ahead and die.
That's what I'm going to do if I get it.
Found the bill for my grandmother who went to Baptist Hospital for a 10 days in 1961. Had an annuerism in her spinal column and eventually died.
Total bill was $186.
She had insurance so my father had to pay a final bill of $56.
drugs were $3, x-rays $5, private room $9 a day, etc.
Die like a soldier.
Life not worth destroying family.
Even tho I pay $230 per month for insurance, won't cover much.
Medicare and Medicaid is the beast devouring revenues that nobody wants to talk about. The other beast is the wars going on. If the people of America do not face what is draining them of their lifeblood, they will die as a people, as a nation.
Now THAT'S balls:
Continental Airlines Inc. is suing nine pilots that it says got sham divorces so their ex-spouses could collect their retirement benefits while they kept flying."...a loophole in a major federal pension law that in cases of divorce allows payment of benefits before the worker retires.
The pilots divorced and then usually assigned all their benefits to their ex-spouses, who then got state courts to issue orders transferring pension benefits in a lump sum to the ex-spouses...
...the pilots acted because they were afraid of being hurt by turmoil in the airline industry.
Several airlines have terminated pension plans and turned them over to the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., and the Continental pilots might have feared the same thing could happen at the Houston-based carrier.
The average Continental pilot qualifies for...lump sum upon retirement, but the PBGC...makes annual payments rather than lump-sum distributions..."
I don't know where to start on this, other than to note what they did was perfectly legal.
In order to collect money owed to them under a contract entered in good faith, to avoid getting fucked by a premeditated financial system crime wave.
Pilots are paid to keep their minds ahead of their aircraft; to never arrive at a situation that they did not carefully plan for.
We now blame them for using the same skills to collect what is rightfully theirs?
Half of your readers, Keith (and probably 3/4 of the anonymous ones) are point-blank ignorant. The guy above, who says Obama spent $4T on "pet" Democratic projects is a prime example. He's wrong on so many levels I just don't know where to start.
It's one thing to be ignorant. It's quite another to be ignorant and absolutely REVEL in it. Bask in it. Push your ignorance. Sell it like a mantra. Have no shame. Shameless, sad ignorance that you lord over everyone like a virtue.
That's at least half of your readers. True story. They are the heirs to the real estate barons and NAR apologists, only now they can't "invest" anymore, so they take their homespun idiocy and push forward in new directions: politics, economics.
Hell they're fucking experts on all that shit. They literally revel in their abject stupidity. Is there anything, anything at all, more maddening then an egotistical moron?
"Barack Obama tells the American people the truth.
Each time he speaks, he makes sure he CYA. He always adds a qualifier.
Whats there to worry about ?
Haven't we found the elusive alchemy formula ?
Haven't we develop 'perpetual prosperity' ?
Whatever the US needs to finance its budget shortfalls can be met by the Federal Reserve printing the money.
There you go, problem solved.
Don't worry about the Messiah's $4 trillion budget blowout, the Fed has got more than enough ink and paper to cover all that and more.
On the other hand, those of us who have been prudently living within our means and have been faithfully saving that inked paper............
There's a tsunami coming.
Good luck everyone.
edenz
I've had it - I know it's hard to understand, but Obama is cleaning up Bush's mess. If he hadn't pumped in the trillion, we'd be in depression. Is what it is.
And then you have the Fed, who've put us on the hook for trillions more.
But the REAL problem is the $51 trillion that's coming due. The entitlement bomb dwarfs the GM's and the AIG's and the "bailout". If (big IF) Obama can wipe out that bill, then he'd be a miracle worker I don't expect it. The lobbyists is too powerful.
But don't be distracted by the sideshows. The BIG danger for America is the $51 trillion. Not a few billion here and there.
Make the retirement age 75, cancel the prescription drug benefit, mandate high-deductible health insurance, open low-cost drop-in clinics, and our fiscal problems go away.
How do you figure the economy is only Bush's Mess? I want an honest answer here, because i'm absolutely sick of hearing it. They are ALL dirty. Including Senator Barry HUD Obama.
And please enumerate which parts of the Stimulus package save us from Depression and which don't. While you're at it, enumerate which parts of Iraq War funding fail to stimulate the economy in a similar fashion.
Besides increasing tax rates on the rich, eliminating the social security contribution cap and taking out loopholes for companies while increasing corporate tax rate, what else is Obama doing?
I don't hear any plans to reign in spending of the Gov't or rationalizing benefits for gov't workers. He says "don't ask if gov't is too big or too small, but is it working?" Well this is part of the problem.
The entitlement bomb is one thing and I'm aware that during a downturn cutting gov't would be counterproductive but there is no mid to long term plan articulated to reign in gov't spending and that concerns the hell out of me..
-Mike
Obammmmmmmy! Gimme fairytales!
Sorry, you can't use the words Barrack Obama and the word truth in the same sentence, they are oxymoron to each other. The man doesn't know squat, so he doesn't have a clue. One of his handlers put it on his teleprompter but he hasn't a clue as to what it really means. Barrack Obama, the child-president.
"...it is obama...he is the cause..."And he did it all in just 4 months. Put a lot of original thought into that post I see.
"...now they can't "invest" anymore, so they take their homespun idiocy and push forward in new directions..."My favorite: Medicare cost concerns must be using "funny math."
keith said...
...Obama...If he hadn't pumped in the trillion, we'd be in depression...You think ANY of these posters are honest enough to concede that; they would proudly stand up after we really cratered due to NOT spending and say "I was for this because it was necessary?"
"...How do you figure the economy is only Bush's Mess? I want an honest answer here...So give us one: the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 is cited most often as the Democrats' biggest contribution to this mess...
It took 25 years to take effect? Pffft.
Tell us what great shape we were in January 19th; that'll be a real hoot.
The plain truth, not even whispered, is that when the GOP says "you went along with it" as their most searing criticism...
the underlying reality of that assertion is that WE DID IT.
As If the years 2000-2006 could somehow be laid off on someone else.
Since the generation that now is retired and will be retiring shorty created our financial problems, maybe Obama Mama should cut their Social Security benefits by 20%. I know this wont be a cure all but its a start.
"Make the retirement age 75, cancel the prescription drug benefit, mandate high-deductible health insurance, open low-cost drop-in clinics, and our fiscal problems go away."
Hear, hear!! We have to adjust to the times and needs of our current status. A few reasonable, no-brainer fixes can cure this mess.
Obama & Congress, are you listening? Please??
.
The Republicans are Truly F**ked up,
No denying that.
But they can't hold a candle to the shifty crooks on the other side!
keith,
we don't need the stimulus; we need the economy to reset at a lower level; all the stimulus and deficit spending has done is to kick the can down the road...you know that and so do i.
we have always had the issue of the 51 trillion money bomb that has to be paid over the next 40 years, but what obama has done in a few short months is increase that sucker by around 20%...to 60 trillion through the immediate and short-to-medium term deficit spending that will be required to pay for all of his programs...and he's not even done...just wait until his so-called climate change bill comes due! he has done this in less than 90 days in office. it took bush eight years to rack up 3 trillion in deficits while it has taken obama 90 DAYS to rack up more than that!!!
HE IS THE WORST! Face it.
If Bush had done this you would have put up post after post about how he is destroying the world. in fact, you did do that with Paulson and Co. when Bush was still in office. but your tune has changed since the messiah has returned to earth.
what obama has done is to pile unsistainable levels of short-term debt on us. he is doing this on purpose: he wants the govt. to run everything -- because he's a socialist -- and the best way to make and guarantee that to happen is get the american people into hock up to their eyeballs in federal debt. once that's done, we are slaves to the u.s. government...PERIOD!
no keith, you are wrong on this. we did not need the bailouts, we did not need stimulus to help the economy; we do not need debt; we do not need printed money. oh yes, we needed them to help the bankers, the unions, some car companies, and the politicians who serve at the behest of these special interests...but the american people needed this like a hole in the head. what we really needed -- and still need -- was a reset of the economy...not a continuation of the bubble through obama's debt and printed money.
that's his legacy now. continuing the bubble, putting us into debt overdrive, and kicking the can down the road for an even more cataclysmic day reckoning.
THE WORST...HE IS THE WORST.
and it's time for you to stop supporting his economic idiocy and return to the "keith" of pre-election day 2008 when you actually made a lot more sense.
p.s...poster "moretroops" -- you've got your head stuck up that place where the sun don't shine. you have no idea what you're talking about and you know nothing about this site...or hp.com. you are totally clueless on politics, economics, and finance. go get yourself and education and then come back and post.
Dear Mr. "I've had it said":
Right when you said this -- "just wait until his so-called climate change bill comes due!" -- you revealed yourself. Just as ignorant as the rest.
Wait, let me guess, your waitin' for The Rapture, when Jesus comes back to bail us all out, right? Who the hell cares about climate change. Our Lord and Savior wants us to drill baby drill.
Or, maybe, you think climate change is a big conspiracy by all those so-called "scientists" to get more research funding. Damn scientist with their 'puter models.
You know better though. There there.
"...we had to spend a lot of money to salvage our financial system..."Not true. We did it to keep the criminals, who premeditated the fraudulent conveyance of liar-loan pools as AAA securities, from going out of business.
Let them(and go ahead and throw them in jail...AS IF.)
For the amount of money we threw down that hole, we could have capitalized new, honest institutions and driven out the criminal element to make room for them.
Instead, we reward it. Any individual with a pulse sees this, and will not patronize the criminal system further.
What's left is Other People's Money and it's crooked custodians.
Keith said:
"Make the retirement age 75, cancel the prescription drug benefit, mandate high-deductible health insurance, open low-cost drop-in clinics, and our fiscal problems go away."
Yep. And then let all the baby boomers suddenly encounter $900/mo prescription bills for their Diabetes type II meds, Viagra, high blood pressure pills, anti-depressants, designer allergy pills and whatever the hell else their doc prescribes that the drug companies gave them an incentive to write a script for - and that the prime time TV ads told them they needed. Yeah, and then tell them their american dream future requires full time work till 75; after which they need to go to low cost public clinics. Bwahaha!
Yeah, sure Keith. Please. You WILL see a revolution then.
Cause in the end, it's all about yourself. And your wallet. Not the well being of other guy/ the country. As long as you get yours first.
The low cost clinic ain't for you, they are for the other guy, and can be OK as long as your taxes don't go up and due to your own special status of whatever connection you can skip the line in an upgraded private hospital.
You know it's true. And the one who even suggests true equality? Out the door the next election. On a rail with tar.
It's the deep dark reality of the US, like it is all over the world. We're just bigger hypocrites than most of them.
Anon 2:25 said
"For the amount of money we threw down that hole, we could have capitalized new, honest institutions and driven out the criminal element to make room for them."
That is a great thought, however, it's much easier said than done. In fact, it may have been impossible. Is there anyone out there, who could have taken Citigroup's entire portfolio of depositors and debtors over? What about AIG/Goldman Sachs? Fannie/Freddie? By the time we allowed those institutions to get levered up as much as they did, there may not have been any other way out except the money bomb.
It makes me sick what happened and now I want justice, but I don't know what else could have been done.
Were there a line of well capitalized banks, investment houses and mortgage servicers out there begging for a piece of Citi, Fannie, Freddie, Merrill, etc etc?
If there were, we will find out by 2012. Something tells me that there were not and the Paulson/Lewis/Bernanke scandal is that something. B of A was forced to bend over and take Merrill in a prison-style attack. It's too bad because a good bank was ruined forever with that debacle and the Countrywide mistake.
The other option would have been to let everyone fail naturally, like they did with Lehman and watch money markets go under and the FDIC/Treasury go bankrupt overnight. That would have been a scary proposition and may have ushered in the Great Depression II. Fortunately or unfortunately, Bernanke and Co. were not willing to face that.
"what obama has done is to pile unsistainable levels of short-term debt on us. he is doing this on purpose: he wants the govt. to run everything -- because he's a socialist -- and the best way to make and guarantee that to happen is get the american people into hock up to their eyeballs in federal debt. once that's done, we are slaves to the u.s. government...PERIOD!"
Don't blame Obama, the American people did it to themselves. They've been working on it for about the last 30 years. From the private level of maxed out credit cards, 2nd mortgages on McMansions, spending orgies at the mall, municipalities paying $100K for police officers, Big Spenders in Clownifornia all the way to the idiots in DC.
Now it's time to pay the piper. All Obama did was what every politician would do, employ all means at his disposal to delay the inevitable. Of course the further we delay the day of reckoning the more unpleasant the outcome will be. But as Keynes said, in the long run we're all dead.
Oh yeah, in the future there will be no Medicaid/Medicare. Why? Because we won't have the resources to pay for it and nobody will loan us any money. As a consequence that will also resolve the Social Security crisis 'cos life expectancy will decline. See, everything will work itself out.
.
'HOPE and CHANGE'
How's that workin out for ya?
.
"...CHANGE'
How's that workin out for ya?..."Must be working out pretty well for those who say this is all Obama's fault.
Because if they were to acknowledge the truth of what you just posted, they would realize that a continuation of the Bush policies are neither good nor what the people want.
It's another variation of "you went along with it."
Coming up with it in the first place deserves a little credit as well; don't you agree?
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