I'm pretty independent, but yes, I generally bat from the 'left' side of the plate. And I like President Obama. I generally think he has done a pretty good job, esp if people remember how bad the economy was following Sept. 2008 and how much the economy was at further risk. And I think President Bush also did good with his stimulus package early Oct '08 and in general played an okay end game and was a decent guy in transition.
My criticisms of both stimulus packages is this:
Not enough roads, schools, bridges. That is, not enough direct infrastructure spending. Although the economist Paul Krugman said you can't do enough of this quickly to make enough of a difference.
And also whatever happened to the discussion of banks "too big too fail." This is a bad situation and it seems like the obvious solution, use Sherman anti-trust to bust up these banks. I heard one of the guys who wrote "13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown" (Simon Johnson and James Kwak) speak on C-Span, I think it was Simon Johnson and he said the largest banks are much larger than they need to be for any kind of economies of scale. There is no reason not to break them up, and ample reason to. Because the only thing scarier than "too big to fail" is "to big to save," and that's next unless we take the obvious step even with less than 100% evidence.
That is, most of my criticism of President Obama is from the left! My country the United States of America has both a conservative tendency and a deeply populist tendency. Sometimes one, sometimes the other. We are also very much in favor of the average citizen and of everyone being included, and those are major positives. So, even if the Republicans win the midterms, as I expect them to, we still have a lot of positives going forward.
02 Nov 2010, 12:38 pm
