Czech PM attacks Obama spending

[Praxius]

BBC NEWS | Europe | Czech PM attacks Obama spending

The Czech prime minister has condemned US President Barack Obama's economic recovery plans as "a way to hell".

Mirek Topolanek was speaking in the European Parliament, in his capacity as current holder of the EU presidency.

Hours before his remarks, President Obama appealed for all countries to bear the burden of spending to stimulate the world economy.

Mr Topolanek said the biggest success of last week's EU summit was its refusal to copy the US example.......

.......He attacked the US's growing budget deficit and the "Buy America" campaign, saying "all of these steps, these combinations and permanency is the way to hell".

"We need to read the history books and the lessons of history and the biggest success of the (EU) is the refusal to go this way," he said......

So does he know what he's talking about?

[Technosoul]

BBC NEWS | Europe | Czech PM attacks Obama spending



So does he know what he's talking about?

no he does not. however our recovery plan that we are usisng to re-establish our economic balance might not suit the needs of every other country in the world.

The Obama plan is based on the concept that a good economy is founded on consumerism. On people buying things from local stores here in the USA.

For that to happen the mass majority of people must be working at some sort of job, for someone or self-employed business, and earning enough over the basic cost of living in order to spend extra money on products that are not mandatory to survival.

The plan is set up first to make it possible for loan companies or banks to lend people money so they can create new jobs, businesses, or to go to schools of higher learning to upgrade their potentials to fit into better bracket incomes.

Governmental contracts will be awarded to union shops to insure that workers make a good wage for a days work along with perks like health insurance.

In an effort to create new jobs he is setting forth a plan to create new fields of employment to in alternative energy and transportation and fuels. And in other areas likewise.

And Obama is not doing this in a half-ass way - he is making sure all things possible are covered to insure success. Bringing down the cost of basics such as health care, housing, energy and transportation, education, and regulating some businesses who have in the past gotten away with those phoney rip-off fees and so forth.

This also puts the buying public back into the dirvers seat, instead of the monopoly being in control (if u know what I mean?).

[Laurahill]

I don't see where he could be going with his remarks.

The Europe of today - Or rather the Western Europe of today is the result of a major reconstruction and spending overhaul that came after two world wars. Germany might not be a great industrial power today had it not been for the expenses spent developing an idolized highway network or a mass transit system rivaling most of the world.

[Scribbler1]

I heard a Czech reporter today saying that The Czech Republic's banks were bailed out at public expense about a decade ago.
I can only assume he thinks anyone who is listening to him has no memory.

Coincidentally, I hear his government is collapsing, in which case I'll consider his ability to tell other government what to do with a little skepticism.

[maximdewinter]

BBC NEWS | Europe | Czech PM attacks Obama spending

So does he know what he's talking about?

I think he's on to something. How come the best criticism of this "borrow more to solve your debt problem" stuff comes from Europe? Here is Daniel Hannan ripping Gordon Brown a new one but you could fill in "Obama" for "Brown" just as well since both are peas of the same pod

YouTube - Daniel Hannan MEP: The devalued Prime Minister of a devalued Government

If only we had politicians who had these size balls in the USA.

[Scribbler1]

Hannan is also a conservative party member. Judging by what I see on C-SPAN's "Questions for the Prime Minister", they're not big on agreeing with the Liberals on ANYTHING.

It's not like the US has a monopoly on partisan bias.

[Dieval]

BBC NEWS | Europe | Czech PM attacks Obama spending



So does he know what he's talking about?

It sounds like he knows more than Obama.... trying to fix the economy by spending more than every other President combined is madness.

[Scribbler1]

I don't know if this will work or not, and since we don't have a say in it that I sincerely hope it DOES work. But I would like to point out that if Congress did their JOBS and didn't whore themselves out to outfits like AIG and the megabanks Obama wouldn't have to spend a DIME on this mess.

A lot of us are so busy whining about Bush and/or Obama they kinda forgot that, didn't they?

[Dieval]

I don't know if this will work or not, and since we don't have a say in it that I sincerely hope it DOES work. But I would like to point out that if Congress did their JOBS and didn't whore themselves out to outfits like AIG and the megabanks Obama wouldn't have to spend a DIME on this mess.

A lot of us are so busy whining about Bush and/or Obama they kinda forgot that, didn't they?

Obama's in the cahoots with Congress... But yeah, I don't want to "bail out" any (more) companies...

[Scribbler1]

Obama is a Democrat, a fact that I always remember. I know I'm tough on the Republicans but I have nothing but contempt for the Democrats either.

I'm hoping that Obama will prove to actually BE what Clinton used to call himself, a "new Democrat", because all the OLD Democrats suck every bit as much as the Republicans.

But I don't want to "bail out" any more companies either, as that doesn't allow them to die when they are badly managed.

And, as far as the bailout goes, I hear they plan on paying for "toxic assets". Since that is the sole reason these banks and other companies said they were failing, what the hell have we been paying for up to NOW?

[Yarn]

maximdewinter:

I think he's on to something. How come the best criticism of this "borrow more to solve your debt problem" stuff comes from Europe?

The federal debt didn't get us into this mess. What got us into this mess was bad investments made by big private financial institutions. We are nationalizing their debt when we bail them out with borrowed money. Note, we aren't actually adding to or detracting from their debt when we do so we are just broadening its ownership. Contrastingly when we bail them out by printing money, what we are doing is paying off their debt with funds recieved from a subtle form of international taxation*

*-There are actually more US dollars outside of the US than in it. So most of this taxation is levied on foreigners.

The more dollars that are printed, the more prexisting dollars are, in a sense, taxed. Consequentially, the more dollars that are printed the less popular the dollar becomes.

The revenue gained from this international taxation is given to US banks which then use it to invest in the US economy. The US economy then uses it to buy goods and services from abroad which sustains the US trade deficit.

Even though this is sort of theft, the world is willing to put up with it to an extent because the dollar is the predominant currency of international exchange and everyone already has so much invested in it. But they are only willing to tolerate so much.

How did this state of affairs come to be?

At the end of WW2, Europe's economies were severely weakened due to the war's destruction. Contrastingly, the US was economically boosted by the war. The war brought it out of the great depression. After the war, its economy was the strongest and most stable in the world. Because of this the dollar emerged as the predominant currency of international exchange. The dollar is still the predominant currency of international exchange, but its days being such may be severely numbered. Chief among its possible successors is the Euro. Europe has recovered. Because the amount of Euros printed is controlled by many sovereign nations, the Euro is printed sparingly relative to the dollar.

Many thought the US dollar printing rate during the Bush years was unsustainable, that it would be the dollar's downfall And the printing rate has gotten far far worse since the Federal Reserve began trying to bail out the banks.

What would happen if the US dollar would to lose its status as the international exchange currency?

The US would no longer be able to maintain its huge trade deficit, and in fact foreign dollars would flood home because they wouldn't be needed abroad anymore. This would make our economic situation far worse. And not just ours for that matter. Ours especially though.

Most of the bail out money spent so far has been printed money. I think we have handed over 2 trillion printed dollars to the financial institutions so far.

If the dollar somehow survives bailing out the banks, Bernanke has promised to subsequently constrict the money supply in order to partially atone for the sin of printing trillions of dollars in just a few months.

Feel safe?

We, as of October were probably going to be screwed no matter what happened. It was only a question of the magnitude of decline, not the occurence of it, and not whether it would be tall or not. Even the success of Obama and Bernanke's machinations would leave us hurting, though not as much. Such success seems plausible but uncertain to me. Though if the fundemental problems of debt increasion and printing aren't solved within the next 10 years, its inconcievable that we won't go far lower than we have so far.

[Morality Games]

trying to fix the economy by spending more than every other President combined is madness.

Normally I just let the right drift along with these silly little beliefs, since they will just replace whatever claim I debunk with one equally absurd, but I'll take rare exception. The only sense in which Obama could even possibly spend more than any other president combined is if we assume uniform monetary value, meaning 1$ in 1860 amounts to the same as 1$ in 2009. Since monetary value is not uniform throughout time, "spending more money than every other president combined" is a pseudo-criticism. In its own time, the massive, FDR-approved government spending of WWII had to be more expensive than anything Obama has done. Technically less dollars would have been spent, but the worth represented by those dollars in relation to the broader economic system was greater than that of the contemporary dollar in our present system.