Edit

That is absolutely how we got into this. no one regulated derivatives, which is what default swaps are. And the reason they didn’t is because no one could agree on whether they should be regulated, or if they should, which regulatory agency should do it. SEC and CFTC had huge fights about this, culminating in the Shad-Johnson accord. Which was undone by the Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000.

Don’t get me started on THAT subject. If you’re throwing that out as a perjorative, then its clear you know really don’t know anything about the man’s jurisprudence. To say nothing of me.

The problem has not been the institutions; it’s been the lack of leadership. Mary Shapiro is an excellent leader, and together with Warren and Bair, will “truly protect the consumer.”

You don’t start where you want to end up. You aim high. If health care taught people anything this is it, though obviously many didn’t learn the lesson.

However, I’m not surprised in the era of Obama Democrats are buying Republican talking points. It’s the in thing.

Perhaps without knowing it, you’ve just made my point. I am all for protecting the consumer; I just don’t thing we need another government agency to do it. The better way is to reorganize the agencies that exist: shutter the ones that aren’t effective or rendered moot, and realign the objectives of those that remain.

iceblinkjm, ordinarily I’d quibble with you, but I’m not really up to it. But I’ll make you a friendly wager — you won’t see a new agency. You will see regulatory realignment.

It’s a good thing your not in politics as a strategist. That’s a loosing strategy if I ever heard one.

Not if he’s smart, he won’t. It’s a loser.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/01/frank-luntz-pens-memo-to_n_444332.html?view=print

http://www.taylormarsh.com/2010/01/28/enough-time-for-results/

http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/running_small_business/archives/2010/01/what_obama_said.html

The real pain on small biz is health care.

Read Brad Delong’s new book, with Stephen Cohen. You might find this interesting LL:

http://tinyurl.com/yhluuyd

“Bottom line: Hensarling was correct in that the annual budget deficit soared in 2009, though it did not increase by twelve-fold as he asserted in his comments. However, he does come close for some years. The 2009 deficit was about nine times the size of the 2002 and 2007 deficits, when Republicans
controlled the White House and at least one chamber of Congress.

Obama was essentially correct when he said he inherited a budget deficit of $1.3 trillion. Though the budget deficit for 2008 was a then-record $458.6 billion, the CBO issued a projection in January 2009, just days before Obama took office that the budget deficit would reach $1.2 trillion that year, before the cost of any new stimulus plan or other legislation was taken into account.

As for the impact that Obama’s first budget would have on the national debt, the CBO estimated the national debt would indeed triple by the year 2019 under the president’s budget, from $5.8 trillion to $17.1 trillion. The
president’s budget office, the Office of Management and Budget, projected that the national debt would increase to $16.0 trillion by 2019.

When the CBO issued its projections for Obama’s budget in June 2009, it projected that the national debt would double to $11.7 trillion by 2019 if its pre-Obama baseline economic assumptions were held steady for 10 years. A more recent CBO baseline projection from this month puts the national debt at $14.3 trillion in 2019 and $15.0 trillion in 2020.

The budget process begins at the first part of each year when the president submits his proposal to Congress, which spends months debating and negotiating toward a final bill. That bill would go into effect on October 1, if it is passed by Congress and signed by the president in time. If that has not happened, Congress can pass continuing resolutions to allow the government to continue using the old budget. “

I hope we all realize that roughtly 1.65 trillion of this budget needs to be borrowed.

Cheers

First, here’s a picture that says all that needs to be said about Obama’s Budget. You just can’t spend your way out of debt; it doesn’t work.

http://jsmineset.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/clip_image00145.jpg

http://market-ticker.denninger.net/
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/
http://www.financialarmageddon.com/
http://jsmineset.com/
http://www.businessinsider.com/
http://www.realclearmarkets.com/
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/
http://www.zerohedge.com/
http://www.roubini.com/index.php
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/
http://wallstreetpit.com/
http://www.creditwritedowns.com/
http://thecomingdepression.blogspot.com/
http://seekingalpha.com/
http://www.moneyandmarkets.com/

Thanks Kris..I am not well schooled in economics but I don’t trust conservatives.

I try to keep up on what Dean Baker,Simon Johnson,Paul Krugman and Robini(sp?) are saying. It is so hard to know what information to trust in this area for someone fairly ignorant on the topic.

Going back to the party that dug the hole in the first place seems illogical to me and desperately wrong. Did anyone see any brain cells to rub together when Obama visited the Repub caucus? If that is the best they have to offer..well?