Remember Urkel, the wacky, destructive neighbor nerd on Family Matters?
He's back. In the White House. Leading the country. The Charles In Charge, the Andy Richter Controlling the Universe, our Nanny, Father Knows Best, the Benson of the Beltway. We all know Who's the Boss. The buck stops at his desk. The heat's in his kitchen and the market is burning our butts. It's the White House as sitcom.
But wait! Urkel doesn't pay attention to market "gyrations." That's so Urkel. They're like tracking polls, he says. True. They're tracking the loss of four trillion dollars of capital since the election made him King Of the Hill.
"Did I do that?" Well, you ain't helping.
As for the gyrating --the market isn't a pole dancer, Steve. The market is the Titanic. It's sinking. Avalanching! Plummeting. Dropping like a lead fart.
"Did I do that?" Sniff-sniff. It's on your watch.
So what, say the academic smarties. The market isn't the only indicator of the economy's health. Well, okay! I'll try to explain that to our fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters who thought the modest investments in the mutual funds of their IRA's or mutual funds would provide some measure of security in the "gyrations" of life. Twenty percent of a five hundred dollar a month dividend means the mortgage won't get paid.
Urkel, you're breaking those piggy banks and making a mess like you always did on Family Matters. From a recent piece on The Daily Orange by Kelly Outram and Abram Brown:
"But for all the heinous things Steve did to his neighbors and all the thousands of dollars in damages he caused, all he could do was stand there and make some nerd sound. He never offered to pay, he never helped clean up, he just said, 'Did I do that?'"
Uh ... see anybody else around?
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Comments
I do think that your little graph pic is a bit disingenuous. Do you have some real economics to back that up that actually show all stuff is Obama's fault?
Especially for retired folks who are on a fixed income and depended upon those small portfolios for things like car repairs, home repairs, extra medical bills.........now that some of them are almost wiped out where will they find those extra dollars....oh wait...I forgot about the magic money tree that grows in the backyard of the whitehouse and on the hill.....can we all get one of these???
I shudder to think of the possibilities. Maybe the dudes from South Park or the little cartoon dudes that watch bad movies and make stupid comments on them.
Please, stop and think for one moment about the quote you shared,
"But for all the heinous things [W?] did to his neighbors and all the thousands [BILLIONS!!] of dollars [& LIVES] in damages he caused, all he could do was stand there and make some nerd sound. He never offered to pay, he never helped clean up, he [NEVER EVEN] said, 'Did I do that?'"
However, in that market where simplistic people like their simple ideology validated, this one is a killer. I wouldn't be surprised if one of those folks thought this is the funniest, most trenchant post they have seen around here in many moons.
History and Americans are hanging this disaster on Dubbel, who is every bit as dorky as Urkel, but lacks the intellectual chops to be a nerd...
Irated!
The only problem is that BOTH of them were 'corn-holeo'...
Urkel's the president. The buck stops there. He's in charge, it's getting worse.
This is the way the political game goes. Suck it up and deal with it.
Lpsrocks -- I don't give a flying f**k what Bush is or isn't. Obama is the president. He's driving the car ... the wrong way in a one way street. I hope you have a lot of cash under your mattress.
You remember the cynical "Don't sell people a war in August" business back in 2002? Suddenly the Repbulican Party which fell all over itself to give Bush his Iraq Sitzkrieg--a war we absolutely did not need and should never have begun and which is costing us billions of dollars every month, has suddenly awakened to the horrors of deficit spending about three trillion dollars too late? And now they're screaming like little babies because Obama wants to help the people who didn't cause this and who desperately need the help?
Well I didn't think you would. And you'll no doubt come up with a nicely disingenous Republican explanation about how all this mess COULD NOT POSSIBLY be the fault of a man who left office barely six weeks ago after eight years of voo-doo economics that made Bush Pere look like Louis Rukeyser.
Okay, one last try: Remember "Fuzzy Math?" Eight years of Neocon Fuzzy math has led to our troubles now.
It informative to know that the Iraq war caused the greed of the derivative explosion, Bernie Madof, Fannie and Freddie's sleeping at the wheel, liar's loans, forced mortages to those who couldn't pay for them ... and controlling all of this was the evil George Bush aided by his chief demon, John McCain.
Thanks. Didn't know any of that at all.
A trite Rwing lie, oft repeated, entirely untrue.
"Conservative" economics-by-ideology caused this. Those who lit the fire ought not complain that it's burning, much less try to sneak the gas can into somebody else's garage.
If you can believe what you're saying...how long until you don the Nikes, eat the applesauce, and pass out before the Mothership arrives?
WHAT racial stereotype would that be?
Please don't worry about the cash under my mattress. I've been worried for years that the financial house of cards was going to come crumbling down and that this mess is going to get worse before it gets better, no matter who is the President.
Obama's plans may not be helping the market and I feel your pain, as my husband is rethinking his retirement plans, but it's hard to conceive that a do-nothing, cut taxes approach would stop the market slide either.
Or that McCain-Palin would have been the magic bullet.
The real mystery is what caused mass amnesia among Republicans, none of whom can seem to remember the name of him who's name must not be spoken.
Two words for you Boni -- Barack won. Deal with it, we had to deal with your village idiot for eight years, now it's your turn to suffer. Some of us are actually enjoying watching you squirm -- the only real sin here is that of your No-Govt buddies, who are begging the govt for a handout. How about welfare reform for CEOs?
Steve you helped create this mess when you were in congres the last two year. "oh did I do that?"
Steven the fresh new faces you promised are all hardcore washington insiders! "oh did I do that?"
Steven the folks you are appointed are all tax cheaters! "OH did I do that?"....
and so on and so on......
I'm not suffering. I'm doing great. I made a pile of money in my career and I'm set. So are my kids.
People who haven't been as lucky or talented or as hard working as me are the ones who're suffering. All of you people are the ones who have do deal with it. Barack is the one who's shitting your your hat, not mine.
And what level of presumption makes you assume I was a Bush man or even a Republican? Ohhhhh, Boni doens't like orange. Obviously it's because he loves green.
It's not that Obama caused it, he's doing everything wrong to stem the slide and it's getting worse. Don't ask me. Ask the market. Investors invest or don't invest based on their view of the future. Obama is doing nothing to assure the private economy that the future will be better.
Any serious student of economics knows that a primary influence upon stock prices is a little thing called investor confidence. There are others to be sure, but confidence is paramount.
With an administration that throws unearned money at problems with very long-term importance while at the same time failing to perform the most rudimentary organizational tasks, that says with a straight face that health care "reform" is essential to our short-term recovery, that is perfectly prepared to ignore the sanctity of contract in dealing with lenders and borrowers, and that lies through its teeth on an array of matters, investors would have to be out of their little pink minds to throw money down the O hole.
And no matter how many times people squeal that leftist pressure on banks to make improvident loans had nothing to do with anything, the fact remains that this was a seminal event for which Frank and Dodd et. al are grossly responsible. To quote Disney, "Wishing It Weren't So Won't Make It Not So."
exactly how Bush made you suffer. Tell me what Bush did to make your life specifically so miserable.
This analysis is also true of the earth-sun system in terms of thermal vibrations and feedbacks. It takes many centuries for some sunlight energy that is absorbed by the oceans to manifest itself in our climate and weather.
In this case, there are a great deal of transients. One is the terrible financial decisions a great deal of financial firms made. Another is the response of the Bush Administration last fall. Certainly one of them is the most recently passed stimulus and TARP packages. These transients will give way to a driving force in the form of the money from these plans and then we will be able to judge their effectiveness. These short-scale, transient responses of our economic system will give way to a steady-state that is driven by government investment at first and then more and more private investment as confidence increases. That is what history shows.
But to say that these transients are going to drive the system on a long term scale only goes to show that your opinion on this subject is severely stunted by your ideology. It's fine really. It makes my argue a lot stronger when you can't supply ANY data to support your argument. It basically made mine for me.
And I am perfectly fine with our President and his choices. Your post here doesn't affect my impression of him or his policies. I even tried to give to you a leash by saying that since Bush was made fun of, Obama deserves the same, but you want to throw something in my face for some reason. What reason that is I don't really know other than some misguided, tangential argument that one person is responsible for the downturn of some economic indicators...so I guess it's really not much of anything.
Buffett cites lack of investor confidence as a major factor in the bleeding (where have we heard that before?) Funny, he made no mention of thermal vibrations and feedbacks or harmonic oscillators or springs. The guy clearly has a lot to learn.
Not wanting to face these report cards, Obama is off playing hooky attending to such emergencies as stem cell research.
It looks like Geithner is selling his New York abode. Let's hope he pays tax on any profit.
I would also bring up the fact that not more than a few weeks ago none other than Warren Buffet was atoning for mistakes that he made by investing in oil as it peaked and other shady businesses that now have gone the way of the horse drawn carriage.
If you don't have anything to say about actual economic theory and how our current situation fits into it, then what do you have to say Gordo? That some guy who has taken a bath on investments over the course of the last few months has something to say about where we are going? Doesn't seem like much to say at all.