Tag Archives: Economy

So, Trump, what are you running on?

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So, Donald J. Trump, what are you going to run on in November?

  • On over 20 million unemployed Americans — more than at any time since the Great Depression in the 1930s?
  • On the 1.284 million coronavirus cases in the United States with almost 80,000 deaths, or 28 percent of the 272,000 who have died around the world?
  • On the fact that, globally, the death rate is 34 per one million, while the death rate in America is 232 per one million?
  • On your chaotic, actually non-existing national coronavirus strategy, with little testing and tracing and with every state fending for itself?
  • On a dysfunctional national health care system, which has failed the country as it was needed the most, and as you still continued to end Obamacare?
  • On your growing isolation in the world in the middle of a global pandemic, as you stopped funding WHO, the World Health Organization, and declined to participate in a world-wide vaccine donor conference?
  • On the forlorn voices and heart-breaking stories of all Americans, as seen through the 21 victims in today’s New York Times, who now discover that America is brutal country, without a safety net, and where those who lose their jobs also lose their health insurance and even their home, and lose hope?
  • On his impeachment?

In 2016, Trump ran on MAGA, “Make America great again,” and he won, barely. He was, I have argued, incredibly lucky to do so. He lost the popular vote but captured three key states – Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania – by a total of only 68,000 votes, enough to win the Electoral College and capture the presidency. To win in November, he needs to be lucky again but with a now highly motivated Democratic Party, he also needs to find new voters, beyond his faithful base. But he has shown no inclination, and no ability, to do so. The coronavirus has shown him at his worst, a clueless non-leader, and, now, polls show that seniors around the country have soured on him. In RealClear Politics poll averages, Trump trails Joe Biden nationally by 4.4 percentage points and in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and even in Florida, Trump’s new home state.

This time, Donald J. Trump does not have much to run on — it’s hard to run on fear,  scandals, incompetence, crisis, but, most of all, on chaos. It’s hard to run when 57.6 percent of Americans think that the country is on the wrong track and when only 35 percent think the country is heading in the right direction.

Still, it’s going to be a hard-fought election. But, as former Republican Peter Wehner wrote in The Atlantic, the coronavirus will likely be when everything changed and when Americans saw “the con man behind the curtain.” Instead of uniting America during this pandemic, Trump has divided the country even more. But under Trump, as George Packer wrote, also in The Atlantic, about America as a failed state, nothing will change, when change, fundamental change, is so urgently needed.

That’s why November is so important and why it can’t come soon enough. We need to end this nightmare.

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And now, Detroit is officially bankrupt…

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Detroit is now, officially, bankrupt, and it’s time, again, in telling the history of this once great city of Detroit — home to the automobile as well as to The Supremes — to remind of the book, “Ruins of Detroit,” by two young French photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre.Ruin in Detroit

Their photos tell the tragic story better than any words of how Detroit’s decline has created a city of poverty and neglect and decay — an urban tragedy.

And then, it’s time, again, to ask the question – how could America let this happen?

Detroit United Artists Theater

Obama on guns — and his State of the Union finally took off

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President Barack Obama’s State of the Union last night was not, I am afraid, a speech to be long remembered.  It was good, but ordinary, although at the same time “extraordinarily ambitious,” as Ezra Klein writes on his Wonkblog:

“Imagine, for a moment, that President Obama managed to pass every policy he proposed tonight. Within a couple of years, every four-year-old would have access to preschool. The federal minimum wage would be at $9 — higher than it’s been, after adjusting for inflation, since 1981. There’d be a cap-and-trade program limiting our carbon emissions and a vast infrastructure investment to upgrade our roads and bridges. Taxes would be higher, guns would be harder to come by, and undocumented immigrants would have a path to citizenship. America would be a noticeably different country.”

That is unlikely to happen, as Los Angeles Times’ Doyle McManus writes, but if Obama meets his most significant and realistic goals – “immigration reform, even modest steps on gun control, an end to the U.S. combat role in Afghanistan, a free-trade agreement with Europe and, oh yes, implementation of Obamacare — and manages to keep the economy growing, even if slowly, that’s not a bad list. Plenty of two-term presidents have done worse.”

What Obama mentioned in his speech is clearly popular with the American public, according to Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky but “the Republicans just sat there like statues ignoring” them. They are such crybabies every day about what Obama allegedly does to try to make them look bad. They’re doing plenty well at that themselves.”

“Long gone,” writes The New Yorker’s John Cassidy on his blog Rational Irrationality “is the era when he (Obama) treated Republicans as reasonable men and women with whom he could do business. Nowadays, he is in permanent campaign mode. With the ongoing dispute over taxes and spending still far from decided, he is intent on rallying his supporters whilst depicting his opponents as crazed ideologues and craven defenders of the privileges enjoyed by the ultra-rich. “

Well, ok. Still, in my view Obama’s fifth State of the Union never really took off until the end and when the subject was guns and gun control. “They deserve a vote,” Obama repeated time and again:

“Gabby Giffords deserves a vote; the families of Newtown deserve a vote; the families of Aurora deserve a vote; the families of Oak Creek, and Tucson, and Blacksburg, and the countless other communities ripped open by gun violence – they deserve a simple vote.”

“Our actions will not prevent every senseless act of violence in this country.  Indeed, no laws, no initiatives, no administrative acts will perfectly solve all the challenges I’ve outlined tonight.  But we were never sent here to be perfect.”

And the President returned to his them from the Inauguration about inclusiveness, about “us” and “we.”

”The American people don’t expect government to solve every problem.  They don’t expect those of us in this chamber to agree on every issue.  But they do expect us to put the nation’s interests before party.  They do expect us to forge reasonable compromise where we can.  For they know that America moves forward only when we do so together; and that the responsibility of improving this union remains the task of us all.”

Ryan Lizza in The New Yorker thinks that Obama’s urgent message that “they deserve a vote” may come to serve “as the rallying cry for 2013,”  and so “if last night was any indication, the two years to come will be far more confrontational. “

So, no political peace is to be expected in Washington.  But Obama, a much different and more self-confident President than in his first term,  got to say his peace, and he made his troops happy.

“God fortsättning” in the New Year — that’s doubtful…

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In Sweden, my old home country, we used to say “God fortsättning” after the holidays — “good continuation” in the New Year. That’s not an expression you hear in America, which is perhaps as well, particularly in these times of the financial cliff, the debt ceiling, and the political disharmony in Washington.

Yes, the cliff was avoided but at what price? Was it worth it?

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman recently wondered if the deal was a “Pyrrhic victory,” a tactical victory that could pave the way for a major defeat later this year. Yes, the victory was tactical in the sense that the Republicans in Congress for the first time since 1993 voted for a tax increase. But what else? It did nothing to resolve the country’s major economic problems, the debt, budget deficit, unemployment. The settlement contained no new stimulus money to invest in the woefully neglected infrastructure or to create new jobs. Remember, the U.S. still has almost eight percent unemployment. Last Friday’s figure of 155,000 new jobs during December was certainly acceptable, but not more. Many more jobs are needed, every month, to seriously tackle the unemployment crisis.

In the deal, President Obama had to give up on his campaign pledge to raise taxes for everyone earning more than 250,000 dollars per year. Instead, the limit was set at 450,000 dollars, meaning than less than one percent of American tax payers will see their taxes increase. Those are not middle class figures. These are high income earners, who will now be exempted from paying their fair share at the same time as more revenues are needed but when Americans are paying less in income tax than the populations of other developed countries. As Stephan Richter pointed out in The Globalist:

“In all the other countries that come to mind, protecting such levels of income is the sole preserve of conservative parties. In the United States, it is a matter of bipartisan consensus.”

Yes, America IS different from Europe –it’s certainly more conservative. In America, taxes are toxic in a way they don’t seem to be in Europe, maybe because Europeans feel that they get something for their taxes, like universal health care, good public transportation, and affordable education all the way through college?

Washington is also similar to Brussels, if you read The Economist, which called the cliff deal an “abject failure” — “Washington’s pattern of dysfunction is disturbingly similar to the euro zone’s.”

But Europe has also made progress, averted disaster and come together around the euro, as Floyd Norris recently wrote in the New York Times, wondering: “Will the United States follow the European path in 2013? Let’s hope so.”

That’s not likely to happen. With the debt ceiling crisis and the resolution of the automatic spending cuts looming in a couple of months, the Republicans seem primed for revenge after the cliff deal, which could make the cliff deal negotiations come to seem like child’s play.

“Good continuation…” well, the New Year actually doesn’t look that good.

Fear can pave the way to avoid the “financial cliff”

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I haven’t blogged much lately, in fact, very little since the November 6 elections. I needed a break, and I hope you haven’t missed me too much. In any case, I am back with the goal of writing more about issues beyond politics and the political quagmire here in Washington.

My blog posting yesterday about the death of jazz legend, Dave Brubeck, was part of that effort, and I hope to continue so. But, first, I must write about the “financial cliff” – the financial Armageddon that looms at the end of the year if the White House and Congress cannot agree on a new approach on how to solve America’s serious financial problems and growing national debt.

It’s already a month since President Barack Obama’s convincing victory over the Republican challenger Mitt Romney. The Republicans are still trying to come to terms with what actually happened and why. Meanwhile, all eyes in Washington have been focused on the “fiscal cliff,” by some called the “austerity crisis,” a matter of seldom seen proportions and seldom seen consequences if not dealt with before the New Year. If the White House and Congress cannot come to an agreement, a series of automatic events – all extremely negative — will unfold, both on taxes and on budget cuts.

The financial cliff came about because of previous failures in Washington after the big debt ceiling crisis of 2011 to lower the budget deficit and the national debt. The parties decided to postpone the tough decisions – kick the can down the road, as it is so often put. So, no one imposed the cliff on Washington – the politicians did it this to themselves, and they will go down together if there is no deal before December 31, although polls show that most voters will blame the Republicans.

If there is no deal, all American will see their taxes go up next year — by an average of 3 446 dollars. In addition, 200 billion dollars in tough spending cuts will take effect. A non-deal will cause the U.S. economy to shrink and unemployment to turn upwards, to over 9 percent. That would be not only a shame, it would be catastrophic for an economy that now shows encouraging signs of steady improvement, including steadily lower unemployment figures – to now 7.7 percent, the lowest since December 2008, just before Obama entered the White House.

Indeed, it’s a frightening scenario, and, for many, it seems incomprehensible that the White House and Congress will let this happen. Too much is at stake, both politically for the parties, and economically for the whole country. No one wants to be blamed for such a collapse and common sense says that there will be a deal. But time is rapidly running out in this “magic moment,” for a deal, as a leading Democrat put it recently. There is no better time than right now to make a deal.

So far, the Republicans have resisted the “balanced approach” — with tax rate hikes for the richest two percent of the population, those with incomes of over 250,000 dollars per year, combined with a series of spending cuts – an approach on which Obama campaigned and won the election. Stubbornly, the Republicans have so far said no to all tax rate hikes, but without them, Obama has repeatedly and firmly stated, there will be no deal.

During the election campaign, the majority of voters seemed to think that Obama’s “balanced approach” was sensible, and those sentiments linger. The President’s approval ratings are up, over 50 percent, and he is now clearly in the driver’s seat.

Maybe, in the end, plain fear of a failure and the subsequent wrath of the voters, who want a deal and want Washington to come together, will drive the parties together to reach an agreement. There have been cracks in the unified resistance among the Republicans in Congress to higher taxes. No doubt they see the writing on the wall.

If the Republicans don’t meet Obama partway, they “would contribute to a recession that would discredit them for a decade,” David Brooks warns in the New York Times today.

Fear… fine! Who cares? The main thing is that there is a deal before midnight strikes on December 31.

Lower unemployment brings consolation to criticized Obama

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Unemployment in the United States has fallen below 8 percent for the first time since Barack Obama became president in January 2009. The new figures suggest that unemployment in September fell 8.1 to 7.8 percent.

Jubilation in the Obama campaign? Hardly, but, surely, relief, and, definitely, consolation for the president after all the brutal criticism of his performance during the Denver debate last Wednesday.

“Never has such a strong political hand been so needlessly, carelessly, calamitously thrown away,” wrote historian and Columbia University professor Simon Schama on the Daily Beast.

On the Republican side, joy is mixed with relief and new hope. Columnists like George Will, David Brooks, and Charles Krauthammer lined up in their praise for Mitt Romney’s effort. The Romney campaign has undoubtedly new wind in its sails. But will it last? And is there enough time in campaign for Romney to reinvent itself in the eyes of voters?

Obama campaign will of course make every effort to prevent this from happening. Counterattacks are already underway zeroing in on the question: who is really Mitt Romney — the candidate who moved steadily to the right during the Republican primary election campaign, or the new, “moderate Mitt”, the Massachusetts Governor who worked with Democrats and passed Romneycare?

The Democrats have plenty of ammunition. Just look at Jonathan Cohn’s blog at The New Republic!

In the remaining three debates, on 11 October between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan and on 16 and 23 October between Obama and Romney, we will certainly see a very different president than Wednesday. He, with the help of Biden, must now go on the offensive, because we have a new race.

Democrats come out ahead after Charlotte convention

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The two political conventions are over and the question is: who won?

We will know in a week or so. The Republicans, with a bland speech by Mitt Romney, a speech by Paul Ryan that drove the fact-checkers crazy, and with Clint Eastwood…, they did not have a strong convention. It seems that they received only the smallest of bounces in the polls, but the verdict is not in yet, for either party.

I would be surprised, though, if the Democrats do not come out ahead, thanks to the cumulative effect of the past three days in Charlotte. It had the better speeches and the greater enthusiasm. It had the unforgettable testimony by Michelle Obama and the equally unforgettable, masterly lecture by Bill Clinton. And, of course, last night it had Barack Obama himself, whose speech left the delegates enthusiastic and strengthened in their resolve to win in November, although he did not deliver another glorious, mesmerizing speech that we have almost been spoiled with. It was a good speech, more than ok, solid, and, at times, eloquent, but there was also somehow something missing.

Joe Klein on his blog in Time Magazine was disappointed. He wrote that the president did not close the deal and it left Klein him wondering what Obama will do in his second term, if he is re-elected. And John Cassidy in The New Yorker wrote that the president was playing it safe, short on new ideas and policy proposals, knowing he was head in the polls and not wanting to give the Republicans new ammunition.

I don’t know, maybe our expectations were set too high, maybe we failed to take into account the fact that, this time, it was the President speaking, not a young State Senator like in 2004, or a presidential candidate like in 2008. Here was a battle-hardened leader of the country, who had been dealt an awful hand, and who realized that things were not improving as fast as he, or the country, would like. Yet, he said that the country was better off today than four years ago and that the choice in November was one between going forward and turning back to the failed policies of the Bush years, policies that got us in this fix in the first place.

“All they have to offer is the same prescription they’ve had for the last thirty years: “Have a surplus? Try a tax cut.” “Deficit too high? Try another.” “Feel a cold coming on? Take two tax cuts, roll back some regulations, and call us in the morning!”

And, he asked for more time:

“I won’t pretend the path I’m offering is quick or easy. I never have. You didn’t elect me to tell you what you wanted to hear. You elected me to tell you the truth. And the truth is it will take more than a few years for us to solve challenges that have built up over decades.”

Today, on Friday morning, the hard reality struck when the latest job figures were published, pointing to a continued slow recovery. Only 96,000 new jobs were created in August, although unemployment decreased from 8.3 to 8.1 percent, but mostly because so many had stopped looking for a job.

Will such numbers decide the election or will the American people let Obama continue his unfinished work? That’s the big question.

Is Romney’s risky bet on Ryan about to fail?

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Lots of stuff about Mitt Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan as his running mate.

John Cassidy in The New Yorker writes about “desperation:”

Until Romney picked Ryan, the principal rationale for his candidacy had been that he was a practical businessman who could appeal to independents and get the economy moving. Now Romney has tethered himself to a conservative ideologue who serves in an institution, the House of Representatives, that, according to the latest Gallup poll, has an approval rating of ten per cent. Such an abrupt reversal smacks of desperation.

Nate Silver on his blog FiveThirtyEight calls the Ryan selection “dubious” and compares it to John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin in 2008. Silver thinks Romney’s chances of winning in November have been reduced.

My first take on the selection was that Mr. Romney had looked at the polls, concluded that he was losing, and deliberately made a high-risk choice that could shake up the campaign — somewhat as Mr. McCain did with Ms. Palin four years ago. Reporting since then, however, has suggested that Mr. Romney made the pick despite reluctance from his pollsters and others on his political team. So it looks increasingly as though he made a different sort of gamble — more of a true all-in move.

Paul Ryan has been called a ”deficit hawk” and we know he wants to cut the taxes, especially on high income earners, but also cut sharply in the government’s role when it comes to pensions, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, etc. Leading economic commentators are punching holes in Ryan’s reputation as a responsible economist and write that it’s impossible to reach a balance in the economy with the Ryan plan.

Paul Krugman in the New York Times calls Ryan an “unserious” man. His plan would increase, not decrease, the deficit:

If this sounds like a joke, that’s because it is…Mr. Ryan isn’t a serious man — he just plays one on TV.

And the Financial Times’ Martin Wolf is equally critical, calling Ryan’s plan ”incredible.”

Is the Ryan bubble about to burst? Is Romney’s bet on this right-wing ideologue about to fail? It is still a bit too early to tell for sure. But the signs are ominous. We will know more after next week’s convention.

Ryan’s budget will haunt the Republican ticket

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They look happy, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, but it’s hard for me to see how Romney’s choice of Ryan as his running mate will strengthen the Republican ticket, increase its chances for victory, and bring joy for the party in November.

Yes, the choice will energize the far right in the party — the born-again Christians and the Tea party, who will now feel more motivated to actually turn out and vote. That’s not bad, of course, but beyond that? Not much.

Ryan is not broadly known and has no strong geographic base. It is unlikely that he will succeed in helping Romney carry his home state of Wisconsin in the fall. And his view of America, based on his budget proposal that he persuaded his fellow Republicans in the House of Representatives to support, is too radical and too controversial for the broader electorate. But the former Governor of Massachusetts, seen by many as a moderate voice in the Republican party, is now closely associated with that budget, and he will not be spared in the coming months.

Here is what the The New Yorker’s economic commentator James Surowiecki wrote about Ryan’s budget last spring:

But the simple truth is that his plan is not an evenhanded attempt to solve America’s long-term budget problems. It’s a profoundly radical document, its proposals skewed by ideological biases. Raising taxes, of course, is out of bounds. The same goes for using federal power to hold down Medicare costs, which will be the key driver of future budget deficits. Instead, House Republicans would cut spending on almost everything else the government does.

This budget will be a big negative for Romney/Ryan during the rest of the election campaign. The Obama team will see to that and their attacks will be relentless. Here is what Jim Messina, Obama’s campaign manager said today, and this is just the start:

In naming Congressman Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney has chosen a leader of the House Republicans who shares his commitment to the flawed theory that new budget-busting tax cuts for the wealthy, while placing greater burdens on the middle class and seniors, will somehow deliver a stronger economy. The architect of the radical Republican House budget, Ryan, like Romney, proposed an additional $250,000 tax cut for millionaires, and deep cuts in education from Head Start to college aid. His plan also would end Medicare as we know it by turning it into a voucher system, shifting thousands of dollars in health care costs to seniors. As a member of Congress, Ryan rubber-stamped the reckless Bush economic policies that exploded our deficit and crashed our economy. Now the Romney-Ryan ticket would take us back by repeating the same, catastrophic mistakes.

Here is what Paul Ryan said himself today, in his first speech as the Republican Vice Presidential candidate:

“Detropia” — a film about a city in tragic decline

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“Capitalism is a great system, I love it, but it exploits the weak”, says one of the main characters in the stunning documentary “Detropia” currently playing at the premier documentary film festival “Silverdocs” in Silver Spring, Maryland, just outside Washington, DC.

The film, about the impact on an entire city and its inhabitants of the brutal side of American capitalism, is the grim tale of the decline of Detroit, from a glamorous city with nearly 2 million inhabitants and a thriving automotive industry, to a city in tragic decline that has lost over half its population and with a higher percentage of poor people than any other American city.

Made by young documentary filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, the film is currently shown in packed theaters at the festival on the premises of the American Film Institute. Their film creates the same heartbreaking impressions as the two young French photographers Yves Marchand’s and Romain Meffres’ book “The Ruins of Detroit”, which I wrote about last year.

And the conclusion is also the same: how could America let this happen?