While not being an Obama fan, I doubt that he is solely responsible for this debacle in our economy. We were on a fast track for economic failure already. Have you forgotten the Bush bailouts at the end of his term. They were a trillion dollar boondoggle, and when the Congress and the Senate said no to the auto bailouts, Bush did it with an executive order.
He continues to accelerate the painful descent down economically, but is not the root cause.
Dee,
I went to school and graduated with a polital science and economics degrees.
Everything I ever learned in Micro or Macro Econ to get an economy going the president is doing exactly the opposite.
We could turn around the consumer part of the economy by having him do two things.
1 say he is going to have an across the board tax cut of 5%.
this would cut costs of goods by lowering the cost to produce the goods.
With costs reduced more people can be employed and he can turn arounf the huge numbers of lay offs.
with lower prices and more people working more demand for goods will increase.
with more people working and investing more tax dollars will be created and he can do his stupid social programs
2 Tell the states that they are not allowed to steal the tax cut like they did under George Bush.
When the last tax cut came states like CA increased thier taxes by at least what the government gave back. So net result was less take home for larger states after the federal tax cut.
3 there is nothing that the government can do to provide jobs, income, or products that are not going to be a loss to the private sector, done as efficiently as the private sector or as cheaply as the provate sector.
4 social programs only hurt the economy- they take needed $ from the private sector and give them to government that has too many layers and the same $1 is turned into .20 of goods where in the private sector that same $1 is turned into .40 to 70 cents worth of product. It gets worse when it is federal funds handed to the state to spend.
5 he can announce a rebuilding program and rebuild the national infrastructure. Bridges, roads, airports, rail lines, harbors, Levis, schools, housing (projects) and power plants.
Just announcing the rebiulding of them will see an increase in the economy as companies gear up to do bid on this work, and do sections of this work as well as provide the needed materials for the jobs.
Instead he does everything exactly the opposite of what government can do to end the ressission and bring about prosperity.
He either does not under stand economics and is not as smart as he says he is (I have found the ones who tell you how very smart they are... really are not that smart at all) or he is that smart and is trying to desrtoy the Economy/ Country for a reason.