Comments on: For Economy, Holidays Fall Short On Hope

Consumer Confidence Hits All-Time Low In December; Housing Prices Plummet For October

[renonv5]

Consumer confidence hit an all-time low in December, dropping unexpectedly

UNEXPECTEDLY???????????? Are these people for real? I expected it, the average person posting on these sites expected it, why is it that it was a surprise to these analysts? Do they all live in a vacuum protected from the outside world and reality as we know it? I just hope they are prepared to get used to it, I think the American people have had enough.

[heartlandjim]

I keep remembering last week AIG gave an average of 2.7 million dollars to each of their top 158 execs with our money. You know, the genuses that almost went under before we gave them 150 Billion dollars to save their a$$es. How dare we the local yocals want a union so we can make $25 bucks per hour. We are ruining the economy!!

[trillion1]

WarDog, wake up and smell the coffee. What do you think the GOP has been doing for years. Borrow, borrow, borrow. At least Obama''s idea could put unemployed American''s back on the tax paying roll and spending money again. Trickle down was stupid when that moron Reagan thought of it and history has botne it out.

[wardoglrs]

Stimulus is a soft political word for Devaluing the dollar. Obama''s plan stinks cause he has to barrow the money rise taxes or Print it either way you lose. This is a trap and you all need to research this.
http://www.europac.net/

[samthetvcat]

PS You would think that even if people weren''t picking up on the holes in the rationale of the stimulus plan, then they''d at least see reason to pause at the fact that the so-called experts are the very ones who ushered in deregulation and free-trade and who are still for the most clinging to the belief that their ideas represent progress.

But you know what if they''re experts, then forcing them to substantiate their thinking ought to demonstrate that they have in fact arrived at the best solution to the problem . . . not sure why people are reluctant to press them on their thinking, but if you ask too many questions, people just lash out - they did the same thing before the Iraq war and before Paulson''s bailout too. For once it''d be great if we could just deal with a crisis methodically and get it right . . .

[samthetvcat]

Posted by omega40

Yeah, totally I agree with your insight too omega - I guess at least Dems are willing to spread their incompetence around so the spoils go to everybody as opposed to it just being limited to the select few of the GOP''s cronies.

I just wish for once they''d just sit down and methodically address each and every concern that everybody has expressed, think through all the possible permutations from the best case scenario to the worst case scenario and everything in between, and then present the findings rather than just talk about how they''re experts . . . maybe then for once we''d actually get progress from a Government spending behemoth . . .

[omega40]

Posted by SamTheTVCat

I agree with everything you said but don''t underestimate the returns on the corporate funded think tanks(Heritage, Cato, AEI). Millions are spent annually convincing the public that Canadians wait months if not years for emergency medical treatment. What about Bush''s ownership society? Any sort of spending on government safety nets is socialism, you should fund your own retirement, health and unemployment from the shell game that is wall street while paying someone to lose money on your behalf. Of course this social Darwinism the wealthy preach so eloquently about goes out the window when their own fortunes start to vanish.

[pepperwood2]

Extra-Extra - Investors & consumers alike turn confident as GMAC gets government money, offsetting disappointing consumer data.

According to AP, in order to con the investor, generate this false sense of security of buying more stock to bail out Wall Street''s CEO''s.

[hunterdon6]

Nobody has a job left. The jobs were all shipped overseas or to Mexico. Who do these business'' expect to buy their product? They only have themselves to blame,

[samthetvcat]

---"In fact, where are all these third world consumers that the greedy American industrialists claimed would be the worlds economic salvation as they were shipping American jobs off shore?"---
Posted by omega40

You know what totally blows is that we the masses all see how those ideas never lived up to their promise, but the people who came up with the ideas are still in power, and faced with the choice of either admitting that reality hasn''t measured up to their vision or writing a $1,000,000,000,000.00 check that will create landmarks to dot the nation''s landscape, aid the masses, make them captains of industry, etc, the egomaniac''s always going to choose grandiosity in the moment over the messiness and hard work of confronting the excesses of yesteryear.

People who are scared and feel vulnerable have a tendency to want to believe that the people in power have who claim to have the magic bullet can actually follow through on their promises - people thought the Iraq war was going to make them feel more safe, people thought Paulson was going to make the stock market go back up, and now people think a plan that ONLY grows debt as a solution to the problem of growing debt is somehow going to solve the problem of growing debt . . .

If you look past the argument that we should all have confidence in the people in charge, there are a lot of questions that aren''t being asked - like where the experts foresee an end to the stimulus?

[vanitydog]

Animals used in rodeo events are subjected to cruel and inhumane treatment. In calf roping, baby calves are violently roped to the ground by their necks as they run up to 27 mph. In steer-wrestling, the contestant chases a steer, grabs him by his horns and twists his neck, and slams him to the ground. Horses and bulls are forced to unnaturally buck by placing a flankstrap painfully around the sensitive part of the animal%u2019s abdomen. Furthermore, without the use of electric prods, sharp sticks and caustic ointments, there would be no rodeo.

Rodeos are even banned in some parts of the U.S. and entire countries. Yet, AT&T and Verizon both insist on supporting cruelty-to-animals.

[omega40]

Well....where is that well paid (heh-heh) middle class that Larry Ellison bragged he was creating in India? In fact, where are all these third world consumers that the greedy American industrialists claimed would be the worlds economic salvation as they were shipping American jobs off shore?

[samthetvcat]

I''ll bet guys like Phil Gramm and Robert Reich read this data and see it as confirmation that their assessment that it''s a ''psychological'' or ''animal'' recession or whatever . . .

Maybe it''s because people KNOW that the housing market hasn''t hit bottom yet because another wave of foreclosures is about to hit and that credit therefore is still necessarily frozen and that therefore more layoffs will likely happen and that therefore more businesses will also likely foreclose . . .

What scares me is that people so out of touch with what the rest of us are actually THINKING are in a position to shape policy - don''t get me started on the people in power compulsion to have their policy tainted by their grandiose ideas of changing the world to bring glory to their legacy.

Ugh, I''m so scared about where we''re headed . . .

[Meg003]

Does anyone else find CBS''s use of our flag in this way offensive? To me it is disrespectful. Then again, this is "journalism." What was I expecting?