It's the ability to shut this turkey down before it costs the American public yet another $100 billion. That's what the left fears.

Well, we the taxpayers bailed out Wall Street. Internal consistency, if nothing else, would dictate that we also bail out Detroit. And why save the jobs of men in three-piece suits while we throw blue-collar workers out into the streets?

Well fair enough as you put it, the better answer is to not do either.

Actually, moron, your "better answer" would have meant another Great Depression. But what's important is your ideology, after all.

Do you halfwits ever stop to think why you aren't allowed to run anything anymore?

So the "Dear Leader" had doubled the national debt in 3 months. I stand in awe.

Even Milton Friedman had to concede that "we are all Keynesians now". <link> The classical Keynesian prescription for dealing with economic expansions and contractions is simple. The government should run budget deficits during contractions and budget surpluses during expansions.

Ronald Reagan inherited a contracting economy and he ran deficits. Bill Clinton inherited an expanding economy and he ran surpluses. So far so good. George W. Bush inherited an expanding economy and, being a total idiot, he decided to run deficits. Barack Obama inherited not just a contracting economy but a collapsing economy.

Under this circumstance, Obama has no choice but to ignore the magnitude of the budget deficit. Yes, it will run up the national debt, but if Bush hadn't been so reckless in running budget deficits during an economic expansion, this would be less of a problem.

businessanalyst:

So the "Dear Leader" had doubled the national debt in 3 months. I stand in awe.

I cannot resist (once again) that Incredibly Obvious Question: What do YOU think should be done to address the economic crisis?

Your snide tone suggests that your advice to outgoing GW Bush and incoming Barak Obama would have been: "do nothing". Did you know that this experiment has already been run, to VERY conclusive results, back in 1930-1933? Or, does it even matter to you that your ideology has been proven wrong over and over again?

Well, perhaps I'm being unfair. Perhaps you really do have in mind some alternative approach to addressing the economic collapse. Could you give us a hint? Because none of the very public rightwing whiners have yet suggested any real alternative, other than a sort of neo-Hooverism. And that goes for pretty much all the problems now facing America. To every challenge, Republicans seem to have only one answer "No"... sometimes leavened with "lower taxes/less regulation".

How many times must an ideology fail so utterly and so obviously before its adherenets start looking for something better?

Pwoxby, i'm not sure what the "surplus" was in Clintons time (I thought it was more a balance budget then a surplus???), but it definitely was no where near the magnitute of deficit that either Regan or Obama invoked. So you can't make it sound like a perfect plan except for Bush (believe, i hate Bush for his spending policy...I just think you are giving Regan and Obama too much of a free pass here). The deficits and surplusses need to be at least similar in magnitude. Since i can't imagine any president having the political will or ability to pass a huge surplus that will match the deficits of the lean times, I'd prefer we just try to stick to the a balanced budget all the time.

Mmmm- easy with the name calling...what evidence do you have that we would be in a "great depression"? Do yourself a favor and read an account of the actual great depression sometime. The Worst Hard Time is a good one that focuses on the dustbowl. I find it hard to believe that letting a few companies fail would put us anywhere near the hardships of that time. Unemployment was near 30% at one point. How about we wait until we hit even 15% before we start using scare tactics like a second great depression. There are plenty of people within wallstreet that will tell you they think companies should have be left to fail. it would have been a tremendous mess. and the economy would have been in the shitter for a while. but we would have made it through. and we'd be a stronger economy after for having cleaned out the poorly managed corporations.

I'm always amused by the dire predictions of those without one iota of economics training. Newsflash: What you hear on Oprah is not always true.

Nationalization is not a tenet of Keynesian economics. In fact, it's antithetical to the capitalist underpinning of his overall body of work.

He would have allowed all of the companies to go into bankruptcy--which for those of you who don't know--does not always mean dissolution.

businessanalyst:

So the "Dear Leader" had doubled the national debt in 3 months. I stand in awe.

Let's get out facts right, he doubled the deficit from last year, not the national debt. And deficit spending is what any economist would tell you to do to correct a recession.

@ bfish:

Yes, you are correct. However under Clinton, national debt as a fraction of GDP declined substantially. <link>

@ tonydavisnelson:

Let's not confound issues here. My comment on Keynesian economics was in response to a comment about President Obama running large budget deficits. I said nothing in that comment about the nationalization of failing companies. What's an Oprah?

I just don't get the Right's issue with this round of deficits. Not that I like deficits - I definitely don't. I am worried about these deficits. However, the Right was utterly silent about G.W.'s huge deficits to fund their beloved war in Iraq. He doubled the national debt and they never made much noise about it. Ronald Reagan was the first Huge Deficit president and he is idolized by the Right. But that was to wage the Cold War and to provide them with fatter wallets with lower taxes, for them. And the Right has been quiet for a long time about the giant trade deficits and especially about the huge loss of jobs to overseas outsourcing, because the Right is, of course, happy with the profits from these circumstances.

Now, however, suddenly the Right is deficit conscious. They rail about our children being saddled with huge debts. They are right, of course, but only belatedly, and when I hear them admit that their past "deficits don't matter" has significantly contributed to our mess, I won't take them too seriously. They are only trying to make political points.

The major issue is: which costs greater - letting the entire capitalist structure fail or rescuing it from that collapse? That is what I understand, from every interview with serious economists I've heard, has been the dilemma. We all know that if Obama had let it all collapse, the Right would have called for his impeachement.

I have NOTHING against running a huge deficit this year. The U.S. gov't should be sending money to states to cover shortfalls and cuts, should implement stimulative tax breaks and should have a few stimulative, productivity increasing programs to boot. If you look at the stimulus package too much of it is spent on Dem pet projects that are hard to cut in the long run and not enough on jobs.

Separately, there is a big difference between this year's budget deficit and the structural deficit projected in Obama's budgets to come. Nowhere in their projections (using rosy growth measures) does Obama's deficit decline to a reasonable percentage. In fact, his budgets increase government's % of the U.S. GDP forever.

This is also the difference between Bush's budgets and Obama's. Bush could have left Iraq and Afghanistan and his budgets would have balanced fine. Obama's are not so forgiving.

Mr EbenCooke asked what I thought should be done instead. Exactly what President Obama SAID he was going to do during the campaign, that's what. Money was going to be spent (he said) on helping new businesses in the alternative energy realm and the infrastructure to support them - money that would be seed capital for many new jobs for a generation or more. Somehow that's not what's happening is it? Instead he's paying off his pals at the UAW with taxpayer's money.

I'm sure the assholes that really got us into this predicament are laughing about how regular ol' liberals and conservatives llike us are pointing at each other, like we're to blame... It's a brilliant diversion from the real issue.

In 2007, there were $62 TRILLION DOLLARS in Credit Default Swaps sold, more than 4 times the U.S. GDP and 20 times level of federal spending. Read that last sentence again. And as we all know, it was pure speculation and essentially unregulated. You could read over the corporate financial reports without gettting any clue that this was going on. While they were putting the future of our nation on the gambling table, they paid themselves $100 million dollar salaries . . . which they continued to receive when their game crapped out.

And now these same bastards are the ones being tasked with fixing the economy...

You think the government is the problem. You are wrong. The government is belatedly, and with only limited resources, trying to repair the damage caused by reckless abuses of the free market.