Mario Piperni dot Com

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It’s your fault.

Why is the recovery faltering? There are many explanations: a depressed housing market; weaker-than-expected exports; cautious corporations. But consumers, representing 70 percent of the economy’s $14.5 trillion of spending, are the crux of the matter.

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The recovery is a creature of confidence, or its absence. “In normal times, psychology doesn’t matter much. It reflects economic conditions,” says Zandi. “But in abnormal times, it’s the reverse. Psychology determines economic conditions.” What the boom and bust left is a massive case of collective doubt.

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Agreed.

It’s not complicated at all: Obama’s approval ratings have fallen because the economy stinks.  End of story.  Anything else is on the margins…and it’s certainly possible that everything else is pushing his ratings up, not down.

If the unemployment rate is under five percent two years from now and the economy is in full recovery mode, you can bet on a second term for President Obama.  If not, then it’s wide open…unless, of course, Palin is the Republican presidential candidate.  In that case, the unemployment rate could be at 78% with a mosque glimmering in the Rose Garden and Obama would still win it.

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Orrin Hatch, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, had this to say about allowing the Bush tax cuts for the top 2% to expire in January.

“I don’t know anybody who believes that’s a safe or wise thing to do.  And whatever it takes, we should not increase taxes.”

Really?  No one believes it’s a wise thing to do?  Not a  single person?

A number of old Republican hands warning of a deficit crisis have split with the GOP leadership over extending the George W. Bush-era tax cuts.

Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio), President Reagan’s budget chief David Stockman and former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan have each argued that extending the tax cuts — set to expire at year’s end — would increase the nation’s $13 trillion debt.

“It’s like tax reductions, you don’t need to pay for them? To me, that’s nonsense,” Voinovich said.

“It’s crisis time, and we’re ready to go over the cliff.”

Voinovich is on his way out so I imagine he felt he had nothing to lose by going against the party line.  Still I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and choose to believe that not every Republican is a hypocritical accomplice to the rich…just most of them.

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Republican candidate Michele Rollins:

“I know this is a bad market and a very bad time. But you just cannot keep paying people, cannot keep taxing us to pay people to do nothing, because they will continue to do nothing for a very long time.”

Greg Sargent:

Let’s call it the “Let Them Eat Want Ads” Caucus — those candidates and public officials who argue that unemployment benefits are problematic because they discourage people from seeking jobs.

Perfect.  It’s so much more effective for these heartless bastards to portray the unemployed as shiftless bums than to acknowledge that there is currently a single job available for every five people looking.

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