Obama Defies Pessimists as Rising Economy Converges With Stocks (1 Viewer)

[livefromDC]

Pres. Obama in the midst of the most scandal laden, promise breaking administration in recent history

I don't think that means what you think it means. "In the midst" doesn't mean to follow directly after another, to come immediately after, or to succeed.

What you meant to say was:

Pres. Obama is succeeding the most scandal laden, promise breaking administration in recent history

Unless, you're just playing politics, but clearly you know that scandals surrounding W's administration trump anything in the past 20 years.

 

[Mojomajik9]

Tell me about the dotcom collapse, please. When was it and how bad did the market do?

Speaking of the docom collapse, it is the 10 year anniversary. Just read a good article on the mistakes dotcoms made in devising their business models.

Eight months after the bubble burst - at a time when the scope of the failure had become clear to most all - USA TODAY published an analysis headlined: What detonated dot-bombs? It delved into a handful of "mistaken assumptions," which, in retrospect, seem difficult to imagine as conventional wisdom:

It's okay to sell products for less than what they cost you, because that will bring you lots of customers.

Internet-based companies are immune to economic cycles.

Internet companies can't spend too much on advertising.

Internet companies that carry no inventory are infinitely profitable.

http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/58280

So really, the dotcom collapse had nothing to do with Clinton or his policies but investors and innovators making poor business decisions..and sometimes creating really bizarre sites like Flooz, which I had completely forgotten about until I read this piece.

 

[Galbreath34]

I still think the phrase irrational exuberance really fits it best.

Triple and quadruple digit P/E's make sense because you're buying certain growth, um, yeah. I ate some cheese, but glad I didn't eat the whole wheel.

 

[KingBarkus]

I've been saying for a while now that Obama is another Clinton... Just like Clinton, Barry Obama represents the best hopes of the Liberals ("Healthcare for all!!") and the worst fears of Conservatives ("He's gonna take away our guns!!")... in reality, like Clinton, he is a centrist and, like Clinton, he will be good for the economy.

You could not be more wrong. Obama is single-handily killing the Democratic party with his radical left agenda. We are on a path to the 2010 elections that will make 1994 look like a down tick. Clinton was a pragmatist, not an ideologue (Obama).

 

[Shawn]

You could not be more wrong. Obama is single-handily killing the Democratic party with his radical left agenda. We are on a path to the 2010 elections that will make 1994 look like a down tick. Clinton was a pragmatist, not an ideologue (Obama).

Once again, you just make stuff up. That's what happens when you live in a bubble I suppose.

 

[Rugger]

Once again, you just make stuff up. That's what happens when you live in a bubble I suppose.

Or only listens to a certain radio host.

 

[varanook]

You could not be more wrong. Obama is single-handily killing the Democratic party with his radical left agenda. We are on a path to the 2010 elections that will make 1994 look like a down tick. Clinton was a pragmatist, not an ideologue (Obama).

No he isn't killing the D's with some crazy far left agenda. That is just silly and really uneducated.

The D's are killing themselves by being wishy washy OR they are just proving themselves to be just the same as the R's with the whole wanting stay in power thing.
The D's had an opportunity to craft meaningful financial and healthcare legislation that would help the middle class for years to come but ended up simply wussing out to the powerful lobbies in Washington. Far left has little to do with it.

Edit.
I don't understand how you can think that. Maybe I am missing something and you can educate me on how the D party is being destroyed by Obama's far left policies.

 

[KingBarkus]

Once again, you just make stuff up. That's what happens when you live in a bubble I suppose.

Bucktown is a bubble? Who knew?

 

[KingBarkus]

No he isn't killing the D's with some crazy far left agenda. That is just silly and really uneducated.

The D's are killing themselves by being wishy washy OR they are just proving themselves to be just the same as the R's with the whole wanting stay in power thing.
The D's had an opportunity to craft meaningful financial and healthcare legislation that would help the middle class for years to come but ended up simply wussing out to the powerful lobbies in Washington. Far left has little to do with it.

Edit.
I don't understand how you can think that. Maybe I am missing something and you can educate me on how the D party is being destroyed by Obama's far left policies.

Look at the elections in New Jersey, Virginia, and Massachusetts to see how people are not buying Obama's agenda. Here is an article written before Scott Brown's election.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1520215220100115

You also have Democrats like Bayh retiring. How is Reid doing in Nevada?

 

[varanook]

Look at the elections in New Jersey, Virginia, and Massachusetts to see how people are not buying Obama's agenda. Here is an article written before Scott Brown's election.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1520215220100115

You also have Democrats like Bayh retiring. How is Reid doing in Nevada?

These aren't Obama policies per se but policies the D party ran on to win the presidency and the congress. Mind you, very necessary items for the future health of the country. Now they haven't followed through on the promises made so they are being squeezed a bit.

I cannot see how Obama is solely to blame

 

[dtc]

Speaking of the docom collapse, it is the 10 year anniversary. Just read a good article on the mistakes dotcoms made in devising their business models.



http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/58280

So really, the dotcom collapse had nothing to do with Clinton or his policies but investors and innovators making poor business decisions..and sometimes creating really bizarre sites like Flooz, which I had completely forgotten about until I read this piece.

The dotcom bubble was caused by idiots in charge of their own investments. People who dig ditches, fight fires and do heart surgery may be the best at their respective profession, but that does not qualify them to handle their own money via Scottrade. What happens is people catch on too late to the easy money and put their money in. Others see the easy gains and follow suit. Before long you've got people buying stock based on what the share price is or how much it's increased instead of what the earnings potential is.

It's one of the fundamental problems with our markets and society, imho. Short term solutions to long term problems combined with a lack of discipline has led us to believe anyone can do anything and that cheap is good. The people who invested in every dotcom or IPO were idiots and would have been better off with a balanced portfolio. Instead, there were people taking HELOCs to invest in puppyshow.com.

I can't see how that is Clinton or Bush's fault.

default swaps are a different animal.

 

[Galbreath34]

I'm still trying to figure out what's so radical left wing about increasing troops in Afghanistan and after more than a decade of debate pushing for SOME kind of health care bill.

 

[dapperdan]

Interesting blurb at The Big Picture about the current state of economic growth:

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/03/will-consumer-demand-falter-in-q2/

Consumer Metrics Institute is a (relatively) new econometric data and research firm.

What makes them so interesting to me is that they are not economists — they are simply number geeks trying to analyze U.S. consumer data in real-time. The goal is to uncover macro-economic trends by using different data then everyone else.

Rick Davis runs the place. He is a physicist enamored with what numbers say — and he is less than impressed with what the economics profession does:

My real gripes with the established economists are their lack of innovation. The lags and revisions in their data drive me crazy. There are enormous amounts of real-time data available that hardly anyone knows how to analyze. Our current problem is that we are so far ahead of the traditional data sources that hardly anyone takes us seriously.

Its not all good news: Their daily economic data of the ‘demand’ side of the economy has been shrinking at an annualized rate of over 1.5% during the trailing quarter. They expect this contraction will flow down to the ’supply’ side of the economy over the next few months, with the lagging GDP shrinking in the second quarter (see this chart).

 

[dapperdan]

The dotcom bubble was caused by idiots in charge of their own investments. People who dig ditches, fight fires and do heart surgery may be the best at their respective profession, but that does not qualify them to handle their own money via Scottrade. What happens is people catch on too late to the easy money and put their money in. Others see the easy gains and follow suit. Before long you've got people buying stock based on what the share price is or how much it's increased instead of what the earnings potential is.

It's one of the fundamental problems with our markets and society, imho. Short term solutions to long term problems combined with a lack of discipline has led us to believe anyone can do anything and that cheap is good. The people who invested in every dotcom or IPO were idiots and would have been better off with a balanced portfolio. Instead, there were people taking HELOCs to invest in puppyshow.com.

I can't see how that is Clinton or Bush's fault.

default swaps are a different animal.

Ahhhh, the dot.com bubble....the best comparison article I ever read about the dot.com bubble was an Op-Ed piece in the Wall Street Journal that ran in the early spring of 1998 or maybe it was 1999 (maybe late February)...I remember the time because I was visiting my daughter in Palo Alto and it was cold and raining, funny how you remember things based on where you were...anyway, the comparison was made with the railroad boom from a century earlier, still the best comparison I've ever seen of the dot.com boom/bust. The two booms have followed very similar investment paths.

Rather than saying the dot.com was caused by "idiots"; I would simply say that people are people, and we haven't changed all that much in thousands of years. It is a part of the human endeavor.

btw...I'll go on record as saying that I have no problem with the basic concept of the credit default swaps, provided that: A) they are listed on a public exchange, and B) the institution writing the swap has to put up reasonably sufficient collateral when they write the swap. Same thing as when you write an option, or the need to have sufficient reserves as an insurance company writing an insurance policy. The problems isn't the swap, per se, imo, it is the amount of leverage that is accompanying the writing of the swap. Just my opinion.

 

[dapperdan]

These aren't Obama policies per se but policies the D party ran on to win the presidency and the congress.

I'm sort of lost on the logic...

The Democratic Party didn't run for the Presidency, President Obama ran for the Presidency. At some point, the President has to be accountable for the policies he ran on as a candidate and then followed through on as President.

They are Obama's policies.

Reagan's final policies weren't exactly as he proposed, but they were pretty close to what he wanted. They became his political responsibility.

Same thing with Obama. They might not be identical to his perfect vision of governance, but they are close enough to tag his name to them politically.