The markets started off jittery yesterday and throughout the morning they just kept dropping. Later in the afternoon President Obama made an attempt to reassure Americans. During a statement at the White House he said, "Markets will rise and fall, but this is the United States of America. No matter what some agency may say, we've always been and always be a triple A country."
It’s unclear how most Americans reacted to Obama’s five minute speech. But investors did not seem impressed. The Dow ended up closing 634 points lower and the S & P index lost 6.6 percent.
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, says it's no accident that President Obama quoted directly from Warren Buffet. Much of his speech sounds remarkably similar to rhetoric employed by billionaire Warren Buffett.
The DSM and Mental Health in America
Lessons From a Female Union Electrician
Defining Normal After a Diagnosis of Schizophrenia, The Mayor of Oklahoma City, A New Kind of Commencement Speech
Diplomatic Damage Caused by Drone Strikes, In Defense of the DSM-5, Bob Woodruff's Advice for New Grads
Defining Normal After a Diagnosis of Schizophrenia
The show is a co-production of WNYC Radio and Public Radio International, in collaboration with New York Times Radio and WGBH Boston.
Major funding provided by:
Comments [2]
I sure hope the electorate is smarter than the first commenter here. Deficits are important but it was the GOP that pursued a stimulatory policy from 2000-2008 that rose the public debt from $6T to $11T. Now that Obama and the Dems are forced to use deficit spending to make up for some of the drop in GDP to keep it from falling more than the $400B/yr that it has already lost, the GOP wants to reign in spending. Too bad they didn't practice what they are now preaching when they had a chance to. The GOP has no credibility on the economy. Jobs first, deficits second.
“We didn’t need a credit ratings agency to tell us we need a long-term balanced approach”
Apparently the President did need that international embarrassment along with a huge political defeat in 2010 and he still ignored, derided and dismissed his Republican opposition's prescient concerns about debt reduction.
How can a President who spent more than any man in human history be taken seriously when he says he suddenly wants to reduce the debt as he campaigns and fundraises for re-election and provides no plan for debt reduction?
"We knew from the outset that a prolonged debate over the debt ceiling..could do enormous damage to our economy"
Then why did the President and his party cause "a month of wrangling" themselves by not raising the debt ceiling in 2010 when the Democrats controlled Congress and the recent "manufactured" crisis could have been avoided? Was this needless economic risk done for self interested political reasons to get the Republicans to raise taxes and alienate their base?
The "grand bargain" like the Emperor's New Clothes does not exist yet we are all supposed to praise it or be thought a fool.
Leave a Comment
Register for your own account so you can vote on comments, save your favorites, and more. Learn more.
Please stay on topic, be civil, and be brief.
Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments. Names are displayed with all comments. We reserve the right to edit any comments posted on this site. Please read the Comment Guidelines before posting. By leaving a comment, you agree to New York Public Radio's Privacy Policy and Terms Of Use.