The Dakini’s Liberal Report Card for Obama’s First 100 Days

I always give my class my grading rubric before handing out any grades.  That way they know when I consider their performance it’s based on certain things that I expect of them.  It’s only right to let them know what you expect ahead of time so there are no surprises on the final report.  So, in that spirit, here’s my suggested list for items that a real liberal would accomplish in their first 100 Days.  Do you suppose we’ll see any of them in Obama’s first 100 days?

1) Get the troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq. No more use of American troops for nation building and no more supporting Donald Rumsfeld’s ‘Lean Forward’ Policy.  Those folks don’t want us there, we shouldn’t have been there in the first place. We need to leave ASAP.

2) Provide real Economic Stimulus in place of trickle down economics. Get rid of the majority of those tax cuts in the stimulus package which appear to be more Grover Norquist than J. M. Keynes. Let’s do the math so get out your calculator.  (All those from those detractor sites that call me a Republican for being less than enthusiastic about President Reagan-Redux can use their fingers and toes.  It’ll stop you from dragging your knuckles along the floor as you lurch backwards, so be careful.) My bottom line comes to this:  $145 billion for low and middle, $580 billion for high and “other” per numbers from CNN money.

“Roughly $145 billion of the tax bill would be allocated for a tax cut for low- and middle-income workers.

There’s $130 billion in the other category. By far, the largest amount and percentage goes to big business and rich folks. President  Obama should be held to account first for his broken campaign-promise about repealing tax-cuts for incomes over $250K then we should scream  because this package has more for $ high and other than it does for low and middle. That’s even forgetting the massive transfer of wealth going on from the Federal Reserve bailout of the banks. So let’s review:

Low or middle income tax-cuts = $145 billion.

High income tax-cuts = $450 billion.

And other cuts = $130 billion.

So, at least $450 billion dollars of those tax cuts should be replaced with infrastructure spending or something a bit more FDR- like in my book.  Senators!  The ball’s in your court right now.  Make the President live up to his teleprompter promises!

3.  Get rid of the Patriot Act and get FISA right. Last time I checked it wasn’t very progressive to spy on journalists, American citizens and violate upteen different clauses of the constitution in the name of a war against terror.  But then, I’m not the constitutional lawyer, I’m just an economist.

4.  Declare complete support for the Geneva convention along with pledge to never use any form of torture. While there is some movement towards closing Gitmo, I’d like to hear a speech and see a written executive order saying that the US condemns and will not practice any forms of torture disallowed by the Geneva convention.

5. Restore Reproductive Freedom at all levels. This would include restoring support to our service women abroad and to poor women. It would also immediately reverse all those last minute edicts that let practitioners of women’s health opt out  of providing health services because the flying spaghetti monster spoke in their ears and said dont’ do it.  (Removing the global gag rule was a good first baby step, but so much more work is needed here that it hardly counts as progress.)  Remove all barriers that undercut access to birth control, family planning services, and  abortion.

6. Put us back on the road for the Kyoto Protocal. Get the thing signed and ratified.  Put Al Gore on it if you have to as another czar, special envoy or whatever.  Just do it!

7.  Make Progress towards Universal Healthcare. This is just basic common sense.  Just watching the US freefall again on the Human Development Index this year should give you enough ammunition to start this process.  EVERY OTHER DEVELOPED nation is ahead of us in most standards of national social welfare because of our refusal to do this. Do it now!

8. Get the TARP right! Bailing out banks and high powered brokerages firms is not solving the problem. The root of this problem is in the mortgages.  Go back to the root and solve the problem.  We need something like the HOLC and Hillary and McCain had plans for it.  Stop focusing on the folks that funded your coronation and your campaign and start giving some real help to the little people that put their faith in you.  The liberal/progressive thing to do is to help the little guy, remember?

I actually could add to this list and it would include some big things like looking at social security and medicare, but since we’re talking 100 days, I’ll hold it to these items.  Got any to add?

When Will They EVER Learn?

As reported by today’s NY Times:

WASHINGTON — Without a single Republican vote, President Obama won House approval on Wednesday for an $819 billion economic recovery plan as Congressional Democrats sought to temper their own differences over the enormous package of tax cuts and spending.

There is just no end to the inability of politics to deal withan economic crisis of this proportion.   Despite packing the economic stimulus program with worthless tax cuts and yet another form of rebate,  the Obama administration failed to get a SINGLE republican congressman to vote for its stimulus plan.   Additionally, Obamasold out poor women’s expanded access to birth control in a blink of an eye for absolutely nothing.  Any one who has read any material on economic development knows that family planning plays an essential role in bringing nations and populations out of poverty and into the realm of human capital instead of human detritus.  However, the principle and lesson were handily tossed and as usual, children, women and the very poor will be kept in their place so some political bipartisan marketing can rule the day.   So now we have a less than adequate stimulus plan, packed with expensive little nothings that includes stuff that will NOT work and still not ONE Republican vote for the sell-out.  Way to go oh He-man agent of Change and Feminist in Chief! 

Tax Cuts Don’t Cut It or Cure It!

The economics blogosphere is pretty lit up with discussion about Krugman’s latest Op Ed piece  questioning the motives of Republicans over the Obama Stimulus Package.  Believe me it was a joy to read Krugman call down John Boehner for spouting ‘dishonest flak’.  I also enjoyed reading Brad Delong  dispatch Ben Stein (a real economics midget) and John Cochrane (one of the supposed gods of finance) with such ease.  As I have often said here and they argue effectively in the links, there’s a big difference between using tax cuts and government spending for stimulus.  These discussions have pretty much been based on theory we teach first year econ students which makes Delong’s send off of THE John Cochrane even funnier.  Tax cuts just are not an effective way to get an economy off of a downward economic spiral caused by decreases in investment and household activity.  PERIOD.

But rather than rehash my previous pieces here or paraphrase Delong and Krugman, let me take a different track.  No theory this time for me.  I’m going to share with you a nice piece of empirical work by Larry Mishel that proves the point just as effectively.  Hello, Congressman Boehner!  We TRIED tax cuts to stimulate the economy just a few years ago in 2003.  Remember those?  And guess what?  THEY DIDN’T WORK!!!!!    Larry Mishel demonstrates quite effectively that the 2003 tax cuts for “Jobs and Growth” neither created jobs OR growth.

Tax cut approach has already been tried and failed as stimulus:…[The administration claimed t]he Bush tax cuts of 2003 … would generate 1.4 million jobs on top of the 4.1 million jobs that were expected to be generated over the eighteen months following June 2003. See [here]…

EPI tracked the initiative’s effectiveness through a website, www.jobwatch.org, and found that it fell far short of its goals. Not only did the promised 1.4 million additional jobs not appear, but the 4.1 million jobs expected with no action also failed to materialize. In all, only 2.4 million jobs were created—1.7 million short of the administration’s projection without their new policy. Thus, by the Bush administration’s own metrics the tax cut program fell short by a total of 3.1 million jobs (149,000 pr month). For an analysis of how the Bush 2003 tax plan (The “Jobs and Growth” plan) fell short of its job claims see [here]…

On what basis can the conservatives who embraced those failed initiatives now claim that tax cuts are the best policy?

Krugman Gets It Right Again

Two things stuck out in my mind when I finally read the inaugural speech written by Jon “the groper” Favreau. The first was didn’t some one get a fact checker for this kid or at the very least get him a calculator? (Turns out I wasn’t the only one that noticed this one, it hit immediately on the wire at MarketWatch.)

LONDON (MarketWatch) — Less than a minute into his presidency, Barack Obama committed his first gaffe. That’s wrong. Forty-three Americans, including Obama, have taken the oath of office.

The new president of the United States said in his inaugural address that “Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath.”

Then I thought, well that’s nothing new considering how much Obama re-invented all kinds of history and things in the primaries: like we have fifty seven states, a great lake in Oregon, the US army liberated Auschwitz and on and on. But the second one really disturbed me because plagiarizing and paraphrasing great thinkers in a major speech without crediting them is just plain something one should not do. I wasn’t the only one who caught it. Economist and columnist Krugman caught it also. The prez’s economic meme was a wrangled and mangled copy of something the great economist John Maynard Keynes once wrote.

Or consider this statement from Mr. Obama: “Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions — that time has surely passed.”

The first part of this passage was almost surely intended as a paraphrase of words that John Maynard Keynes wrote as the world was plunging into the Great Depression — and it was a great relief, after decades of knee-jerk denunciations of government, to hear a new president giving a shout-out to Keynes. “The resources of nature and men’s devices,” Keynes wrote, “are just as fertile and productive as they were. The rate of our progress towards solving the material problems of life is not less rapid. We are as capable as before of affording for everyone a high standard of life. … But today we have involved ourselves in a colossal muddle, having blundered in the control of a delicate machine, the working of which we do not understand.”

But something was lost in translation. Mr. Obama and Keynes both assert that we’re failing to make use of our economic capacity. But Keynes’s insight — that we’re in a “muddle” that needs to be fixed — somehow was replaced with standard we’re-all-at-fault, let’s-get-tough-on-ourselves boilerplate.

At least some body in the press didn’t overlook it this time. Krugman caught one more ripped off and just plain wrong idea that I missed. It appears our “new Era of Responsiblity” message came straight from what Dubya called for eight years ago. Oh, dear.

Party like it’s 1929!

The economy may be in recession, but the Champagne flowed freely at Tuesday’s celebrations of the inauguration of Barack Obama — thanks in large part to donations from some movers and shakers on Wall Street.

Those figures don’t include the $124 million that federal, state and local governments are providing to pay for security and the official swearing-in ceremony.

The finance, insurance and real-estate industries have been at the center of the recent economic storm, but even so, people who work in those industries contributed at least $7.1 million to help fund the dozens of events and parties celebrating Mr. Obama’s official move into the White House, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington nonprofit group that studies money and politics.

That is more that a quarter of the $27 million of donations that have been disclosed so far by the Presidential Inauguration Committee, which estimates the festivities will cost about $45 million. That would make it the most expensive inauguration ever.

The market is below 8000 and the list of huge layoffs happening in industries around the country continues.  But hey, we got the nation’s most expensive party ever according to today’s New York Times where the headline read:  A Wounded Wall St. Helps Pay for Inauguration Bash.  I’m beginning to sense the fall of the Roman empire with Nero in charge of the chaos.  Of course, the top of the donor list included the the Uber Lord of the Under World, George Soros whose combined family donations came to $250,000.  Given an average family of four in the US doesn’t even live off of $50,000 a year and the total is about the average price of an average home, I’d have to say there are a lot of people being shunted towards Obamaville and other tent cities that would really appreciate a donation of that size for something other than a big party in their honor.

Let’s just highlight reality a moment and forget about the cost of designer ballroom dresses that would feed entire families for months.

My Mourning Tribute

 

Well, primary engineering rules the day.  I feel like I did during the Dubya’s inauguration.  One more cheater prospers.  Here’s to you my friends,  join me on my knees praying that we don’t get fooled again!!!

so, it appears

I’ve been tagged in some bizarre Puma equivalent to a chain letter  where  I have to tell folks 6 random things about myself and then tag six other bloggers to do the same.  The easy part is tagging six other bloggers … don’t hate the player folks, hate the game!

So, here’s the easy part first.  (Hey, doing the easy things first got me through school, what can I say?)

http://www.partizane.com/

http://thatsmeontheleft.blogspot.com/

http://spiral-gate.blogspot.com/

http://huntingdonpost.wordpress.com/

http://ladyboomernyc.wordpress.com/

http://annabellep.wordpress.com/

Okay, six random things about me:

1)  I wrote a song that Beyounce recorded.

2) I would eat sushi everday if I could afford it.

3) I had a speaking role in a French Movie of the Week that was filmed in New Orleans called Scarlette’s Children.  I played a waitress at cafe du monde even though the scene was filmed in the courtyard of a hotel and not cafe du monde.

4) I have a hobby of being a sound engineer … I’ve mic’d Elvis Costello, Joss Stone, Keith Richards (and had a 2o minute conversation with him in which i understood NOT one word, but said, really? and yes?  a lot), all of the Nevilles,  the ZZ Top dudes, was supposed to but refused to mic Nelly, mic’d Randy Newman several times and a whole bunch of other folks …

5)  This is a picture of me playing one of the big steinways at Carnegie Hall a few years a go

6) My favorite movie of all times is Local Hero.  I own every single session of Cowboy Bebop.  My steinway grand and the front two rooms of my house were used in the imax movie Hurricane on the Bayou as the supposed home of Allan Tousaint.  He plays my piano and watches out for Hurricane Katrina.  The stupid crew filmed and left my kitchen door open and you get a great view of the kitchen sink area where they stacked a bunch of cans of soda pop, I did actually straighten up for them but cringe every time I see that.  They shot most of it from outside my dining room window because my house is really small and the imax cameras are HUGE. As a matter of fact, I’d bet the IMAX screen is about twice the size of the two rooms they used for the set.

Update: here’s a pic of my dining room/piano room with the kitchen door CLOSED.

 

Still Too Little and WAY TOO REPUBLICAN

The Financial Time’s Martin Wolf adds his voice to the growing number of economists saying the Obama financial plan is a dud.

“Last week, President-elect Barack Obama duly unveiled his American recovery and reinvestment plan. Its title was aptly chosen, for Mr Obama spoke, astonishingly, as if the policies of the rest of the world had no bearing on the fate of the US. He spoke, too, as if a large fiscal stimulus would be enough to restore prosperity. If that is what he believes, Mr Obama is in for a shock. The difficulties he confronts are much deeper and more global than that. “

His criticisms echo many of those I’ve mentioned before as well as those you’ve read if you’ve followed Dr. Krugman’s op-ed pieces, blog, or my cites of his comments here.  Wolf warns that the U.S. could face the same type of ‘lost decade’ suffered by the Japanese after the Asian Financial Crisis of the 1990s.  The Japanese experience is well documented and studied.  Wolf cites a book by Richard Koo of the Nomura Research Institute that points to the combination of downward asset prices combined with high indebtedness in the private sector that forces both households and businesses to stop spending to pay down debt.  In *The Holy Grail of Macroeconomics: Lessons from Japan’s Great Recession (Wiley, 2008), Koo documents that the government winds up being both the lender and the borrower of last resort.  Recognition by the government of these theories of depression economics led the Japanese government to take action that led to a prolonged slump instead of a prolonged recession.

The Obama administration is holding on to the tax cut portion of its plan despite decades of economic research showing that tax cuts are not as efficient as government spending in aggregate-demand led recessions.  Now the Financial Times is no ‘liberal’ rag.  Its closest U.S. counterpart is the Wall Street Journal.  Wolf not only argues that the spending portion of the package is too small, but that the bigger the tax cut portion of package, the bigger the fiscal stimulus must be.  I’ve highlighted some of his relevant arguments below.

“Any complacency about US recovery prospects is perilous. Moreover, the fact that the US has a structural current account deficit has bearing on the second point Mr Obama’s advisers must make. Fiscal stimulus is a necessary palliative for a debt-encumbered economy afflicted by falling asset prices. But the likely longevity and scale of the needed fiscal deficits are quite scary.

“The Congressional Budget Office forecasts that US output will be 7 per cent below potential over the next two years, on unchanged policies. If so, the actual deficit should now be much larger than the structural one. It is easy to see, therefore, why the critics argue that the Obama plan for an additional fiscal stimulus of 5 per cent of GDP over two years is too small, even though the CBO forecasts a baseline deficit of 8.3 per cent of GDP this year. It is also easy to understand why many object strongly to tax cuts, since the more likely cuts are to be saved the larger the package must be – and, in addition, taxes will clearly have to rise in the longer term.

The bigger point, however, is not that the package needs to be larger, although it does. It is that escaping from huge and prolonged deficits will be very hard. As long as the private sector seeks to reduce its debt and the current account is in structural deficit, the US must run big fiscal deficits if it is to sustain full employment.”

Obama’s tax cuts, at this point, seem clearly aimed at placating Republicans in the Senate to achieve some magical, happy, consensus vote of 80 that says yes, he can.  I’m trying hard right now to determine if this is some weird need to look popular and right or an even weirder need to be able to say “see, everyone thought it the right thing to do, it wasn’t just my policy” if and in this case WHEN it fails miserably.  I’m tempted to say both and probably more right up to and including the weird fetish Obama seems to have with Republican Presidents like Lincoln and Reagan, himself.

David Sirota clearly points to continual inconsistencies in Obama’s campaign rhetoric in his column.

“The veto is the legislative equivalent of a nuclear warhead – a rarely used instrument of devastating force that singularly vaporizes the votes of 535 elected representatives. So when a president-elect issues a veto threat before being sworn into office, it sets off a particularly big explosion because it is a deliberate agenda-setting edict about priorities for the next four years.

That’s why every American who isn’t a financial industry executive should be nervous.

After President Bush this week asked Congress to release the bank bailout fund’s remaining $350 billion, Obama pledged to veto any bill rejecting the request, meaning he is beginning his presidency not by “turn(ing) the page on policies that have put the greed and irresponsibility of Wall Street before the hard work and sacrifice of folks on Main Street,” as he once pledged. Instead, he is promising a mushroom cloud unless lawmakers let taxpayer cash continue flowing to the biggest of Big Money interests.

Amid paeans to “new politics,” we’re watching old-school paybacks from a politician who raised more Wall Street dough than any other – a president-to-be whose inauguration festivities are being underwritten by the very bankers who are benefiting from the bailout largesse. Safely distanced from electoral pressure, Obama has appointed conservative economists to top White House positions; floated a tax cut for banks; and is now trying to preserve corporate welfare that almost exclusively benefits the political donor class.

This isn’t much-ballyhooed “change” – it’s money politics by a different name. How do we know? Because neither Obama nor anyone else is genuinely trying to justify the bailout on its merits – and understandably so. Even the most basic queries prove such merits don’t exist.”

I think I’ve indicated as strongly as possible that these are truly perilous economics times.  We need leadership with a bold vision based on knowledge of what works.  FDR didn’t have much economic theory  when he confronted the Great Depression.  Barrack Obama does and yet continues to make the same kinds of mistakes that Hoover made in the name of “new politics”.  I know how much taking a stand in the PUMA corner lands one in La La Land in the eyes of many progressives/liberals. So many voices in the wilderness of spam shout that I’m just not giving Obama a chance because I hate him so much because Hillary lost.  I’d also bet that these same folks believed in Santa Claus way pass the normal age.  If you think it’s wrong because it’s coming from a PUMA site, then I’m just going to ask you to look at the facts here and look at the voices of dissent.  Krugman and Sirota are icons of the left.  Wolf is British.  These folks are saying the same things that I have said for months.  The guy isn’t who he said he was and you can tell a lot by the actions he’s taking now. There is a lot at stake here and it’s time to stop hiding behind the feel good historic nature of this president and expect something more than repackaged trickle-down economics.

Note:  You’ll have to be patient with me for a bit since this is the beginning of a semester and I’m also facing some publishing deadlines.  I’m afraid my focus will be elsewhere so I won’t be as consistent as usual in my blogging efforts.

U.S. introduces new generation of Stud Missiles

WASHINGTON (AFP) - CIA agents are offering the potency drug Viagra and other gifts to win over Afghan warlords in the US-led war against Taliban insurgents, the Washington Post reported on Friday.

Viagra: Bombs AWAY BOYS!

Alright, why does the CIA hate Afghani women and goats so much they have to hand over viagra to warlords?

The aging chieftains often have up to four wives and are open to the Viagra pill as a way to “put them back in an authoritative position,” said another official.

…

Life is now much more HARD in the Afghani resistance.  It seems giving out birthcontrol to hapless burkha-clad women is  a problem, but giving viagra to their nasty old husbands is strategy to win the war on terrorism.  If most of these old dudes have at least four wives and some of them are young woman, I’d just like to say, way to go CIA, we’ve just upped the ante on torture policies.

If you really want to dig a little deeper into this, just go to the comments section of the Al Arabiya News Channel.  Yes, I went there.

Beacon of  wisdom and light Alamgir-Pakistan posted this:

for the deprived american female soldiers who probably masturbated…ooops masterminded this operation. I’ve heard planeloads of blonde “women rights” activists and reporters are available in the Afghani beauty parlours and ministries fighting over picks of native flavour. They get off on the idea of “sleeping with the enemy”… ha! what else can you expect from the daughters of the west. they are the civilised ones after all.

Jamal equates it with suicide-bombing:

WHEN U ARE FIGHTING UR ENEMY,U WILL USE ANY WEAPONS THAT CAN HELP U TO DEFEAT UR ENEMY.IF KIDNAPPING,SUICIDES,CAR EXPLOSIONS,BLOWING UP HOSPITALS AND SCHOOLS,KILLING WOMEN,AND DOING DRUGS IS LEGAL FOR TALIBAN TO USE,VIAGRA IS LEGAL TO THE U.S. TOO.

The BBC outlines this charming anecdote:

In one case, a 60-year-old warlord with four wives was given four pills and four days later detailed Taleban movements in return for more.

“Whatever it takes to make friends and influence people,” the Post quoted one agent as saying.

“Whether it’s building a school or handing out Viagra.”

‘Silver bullet’

The newspaper said the use of Viagra had to be handled sensitively as the drug was not always known about in rural areas.

It quoted one retired agent as saying: “You didn’t hand it out to younger guys, but it could be a silver bullet to make connections to the older ones.”

In the case of the 60-year-old warlord – the head of a clan in southern Afghanistan who had not co-operated – operatives saw he had four younger wives.

The pills were explained and offered. Four days later the agents returned.

“He came up to us beaming,” the Post quoted an agent as saying. “He said, ‘You are a great man.’

“And after that we could do whatever we wanted in his area.”

Whatever it takes to make friends and influence people — whether it’s building a school or handing out Viagra,” one CIA operative who has worked in Afghanistan was quoted as saying.

 Ah, my tax dollars at work.  Maybe the Obama Adminstration will send Pastor Rick Warren over there to give them copies of  “The Purpose Driven Life” as phase two of this all out assault on the Taliban.

A little too little and maybe a little too late

 As the details of Obamanomics finally roll out to the public, it is increasingly obvious that what we are seeing is some kind of Reaganomics lite.  I mentioned this in a post on January 5th trying to answer Paul Krugman’s concerns on how  ‘bold and swift’ the Obama plan will be.   Today, Krugman answered strongly not bold enough in the Obama Gap.

But Mr. Obama’s prescription doesn’t live up to his diagnosis. The economic plan he’s offering isn’t as strong as his language about the economic threat. In fact, it falls well short of what’s needed.”

Today’s Market Watch outlines the abysmal labor market.

Total hours worked in the economy fell 1.1%, with the average workweek falling to the shortest ever, signaling an annualized decline of 6% in gross domestic product in the fourth quarter, wrote John Silvia, chief economist for Wachovia. Hours worked have declined “at an eye-watering” 7.7% annual pace in the quarter, Shepherdson said.

An alternative measure of unemployment that includes workers too discouraged to look for a job rose to 13.5% from 12.6% in November; it’s the highest in the 13 years since those data have been kept.

These are serious numbers that followed the even MORE serious numbers in manufacturing reported earlier in the week.  Rather than repeat what I said earlier, I’d like to show some that I’m not alone out there in the liberal wilderness. Yes, I said LIBERAL wilderness.   The Black Agenda Report which has never been in the Obama corner and endorsed Cynthia McKinney outlines Obama’s hostility to both Universal Health Care and what is traditionally the Democratic Party’s approach to the economy.

In a similar vein, “Obamanomics” at best falls short of the bold progressive initiatives and challenges to financial and corporate power required to spark equitable domestic development. As adjusted in response to the banking crisis and deepening recession, moreover, Obama’s economic program could well amount to “something akin to a national austerity program….” Instead of forward movement on jobs, education, retirement, and health care, Jack Rasmus finds, “what me may well get is ‘Let’s all tighten our belts to get through this crisis.”

Turning away from the op-ed pieces, let’s examine this front page headline from the NY Times: Senate Allies Fault Obama on Stimulus.

WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama’s economic recovery plan ran into crossfire from his own party in Congress on Thursday, suggesting that quick passage of spending programs and tax cuts could require more time and negotiation than Democrats once hoped.

Senate Democrats complained that major components of his plan were not bold enough and urged more focus on creating jobs and rebuilding the nation’s energy infrastructure rather than cutting taxes.

So here we have more evidence that many are beginning to see that the Obama plan is not bold and will not be swift.  Back on MarketWatch, we once again have the winds of cold, harsh reality hitting the face of any one connected to the U.S.  Economy.

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The U.S. recession will last two full years, with gross domestic product falling a cumulative 5%, said Nouriel Roubini, chairman of RGE Monitor. Roubini was one of the first economists to predict the recession and the credit crunch stemming from the housing bubble. For 2009, Roubini predicts GDP will fall 3.4%, with declines in every quarter of the year. The unemployment rate should peak at about 9% in early 2010, he said. Consumer prices will fall about 2% in 2009. Housing prices will probably overshoot, dropping 44% from the peak through mid-2010. “The U.S. economy cannot avoid a severe contraction that has already started and the policy response will have only a limited and delayed effect that will be felt more in 2010 than 2009,”

As we get more and more evidence that Obama’s actions never reach anywhere near the level of his rhetoric, will the koolaide start wearing off even before the President Elect gets to give his first State of the Union Address?  I’m waiting to see if it comes any where near even one of FDR’s minor fireside chats. 

Meanwhile,  Senator Harkin from Iowa, the state where, oddly enough, I attended Herbert Hoover Elementary School had this to say in the Times article today.

“There is only one thing we have got to do in the stimulus, and that is how can we create jobs,” said Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, as he left the meeting. “I am a little concerned by the way that Mr. Summers and others are going at this in that, to me, it still looks like a little more of this trickle-down, if we just put it in at the top, it’s going to trickle down. A number of people in there said, ‘Look, we have got to have programs that actually create jobs and put people to work.’ ”

Okay, did Senator Harkin just call Obamanomics more trickle down economics, voodoo economics, Reaganomics?  Can I get a witness?  Again, it’s very hard to argue for business tax credits when most businesses are just looking for customers.  If you don’t put the money into the hands of customers, a few tax credits here and there aren’t going to accomplish anything.   There has to be income first.

Anyway, is it too early for me to buy an ‘I told You So’ bumper sticker for my poor worn-down mustang yet?

NOTE: For those of you into really snarky satire, there’s a post at today’s Daily Beast about Obama’s package being inadequate.  Also, other blogs are discussing this same topic.  Jane at FDL and even HuffPo have put up threads. The link to FDL is on the right side.  I think you can manage to find the other on your own.