Where is the US economy headed?

I'm not playing dumb; you are dumber than most, but I still challenge most of what you say.

What's wrong with Obama setting goals to reduce our imports from the Middle East and Venezuela?

Where did you get your info that that is impossible?

Nothing wrong with the goal, if the proposed way to achieve the goal was realistic. I am still waiting for any shred of evidence that it would be realistic. Only Obama or his supporters must know this information, you guys are the only ones that believe it. Wouldn't it be nice if you had some basis for your belief, beyond some outlandish statement? You are an Obama supporter, and you claim to believe his claims, but apparently you have no basis on which to believe the claims, except Obama said it so it must be feasible.

You guys are very weirdly devoted to something, apparently without any basis for the devotion. I am trying to get at the core of the issue here, and pin you down, but you are like Cassius Clay, you dance like a butterfly.

No, okie, you must present evidence that it is not an achievable goal (your claim). Show us?

I guess Obama's plans are not based on evidence, huh ci? You can't find any at all, can you? You said you assumed he has experts. Just go get their data, ci. It should be easy.

okie, You can't have "evidence" until something is done. Obama is talking about ten years into the future.

What evidence do you have that his plan to reduce oil from the Middle East and Venezuela will not be met?

You're the one questioning his statement, so you "must" have "evidence" to show why he will not be able to meet his goal.

You can't have evidence until something is done? How do you know what to do to get something done, if you have no evidence of any plans, ci? Your thought process is truly fascinating.

Such as, if you plan to replace your lawn with something other than grass in 10 weeks, but you have no plan for what that might be, and you cannot tell anyone what it is until you do it, because I guess you don't know what it is or what it will be until you do it, and you cannot explain how it can be done, or the cost, or anything about it. But how do you know what you will do, ci? Or when you will do it? You are one confused son of a gun!!!!

okie, Do you know what a plan is? Do you know what "goals" are? Evidently, you have been ignorant about these pursuits during your life. Have you ever heard of a "five year plan?"

How have you survived all these years? It's really amazing!

okie, Did you plan for your retirement? Did you meet all of your goals? How did the bear market during the past several years changed your plans if any? Did everything turn out as you planned? Did you ever revise a plan you made based on changed circumstances?

Probably not, because you are so perfect.

I have. The Soviets had a few. They all went ape-****.

Your observations are very limited in scope about "five year plans," - including most everything else.

A little perspective on the stock market since October 19, 2000. The market closed with the DOW 9,975 after it plunged 430 points to close below 10,000 for the first time in seven months. The Nasdaq closed at 3,172, and the S&P at 1,342.

Today's close: DOW 8083, Nasdaq 1653, and S&P 857.

Permit me, TAK, to rearrange your numbers a bit and do so rounding:

Dow 2000: 10,000 Dow 2009: 8,000 (down 20%)
Nasdaq 2000: 3,200 Nasdaq 2009: 1,600 (down 50%)
S&P 2000: 1,350 S&P 2009: 850 (down 40%)

Your mentioned "a little perspective." I don't know what you had in mind, but my little perspective is that it may well take us 5 years to get back to where we were in 2000, despite the recent gains in the markets. Could be longer given the world economy.
Folks now 55 or over got screwed royally. Folks between 40 and 55 may come out relatively okay.
I don't see the stock market as being the place to be.
Thanks for trying to get this thread back on track vs personal attacks. It probably won't work, I fear.

I was going to tell ci the same thing, but more appropriate for you to tell him than a lowly okie that he deems stupid and without a brain.

The politburo loved 5 year plans, 10 year plans, and so on. I have been trying to get ci to tell me something about Obama's worthless 10 year energy plan, just to see if ci knows the foggiest of what it is, but still to no avail, spendius. Is it time to totally give up on ci?

Odd. I've been watching the Dow climb this year, in spite of continuing job loses. If the market knows something I don't, could it be the economy has become divorced from US employment?

close, the economists have become divorced from economic reality. they know the numbers, and think that they know what the numbers mean, but they don't.

A couple theories, and I admit partisan, but I think valid. The Obama Market Effect was real in my opinion, the prospect of a man gaining the presidency that does not believe wholeheartedly in capitalism has had a profound dampening of the market, from the time he was beating Hillary, progressively through the election, the inauguration, and now. There was absolutely no confidence in Obama and his policies. The market is alot driven by future prospects, optimism or the lack thereof, along with whatever economic news is happening right now.

Now, Obama has been president for 3 months, and regardless of how people feel about him, there sets in a comfort zone, a feeling that we will perservere or figure out how to deal with his policies, good or bad. Even if you are not pro-Obama, which I obviously am not, better the devil you know than the one you don't know. Any sign that Republicans can defeat his worst initiatives are enough to encourage me. Thus the unknown factor begins to diminish slightly, only slightly, but thats enough to give a little push to the market. Face it, all people need is a little encouragement, as I think people are waiting and wanting encouragement, any sign that the country can go forward, business can resume, we will get through this, and people will once again invest and be guardedly optimistic.

With that said, I believe we are far from out of the woods, and the stock market is not going to bounce back soon, but could go to 9,000 before years end, or it could hit the skids again, I wish I had a crystal ball. We have been resilient before, and I want to believe we always will be, but nothing lasts forever.

Last note, if McCain had been elected, I believe that although McCain is not brilliant, he did believe in America, and did not want to drastically change it into who knows what, and the economy and the markets would be distinctly better than they are now. Still problems, but we would be better off.

Boy you certainly are partisan. After 8 years of ******* up, we finally have an administration that can walk and chew gum at the same time.

When the recession is over and things are back on track and the only problem will be bto pay back all the money we borrowed from ourselves to fund these bail outs that began last September uner Bush's watch, you will be whining about how slow the recovery proceeded and how, if we followed the secret GOP plan we would have been out of it earlier.
PS, what is the GOP plan to getr us out of a fix that was mostly their doing.

True. Last week sometime economists were heartened to see that inventories at retailers and wholesalers dropped a bunch. Bad news? No, good news, according to the economists. That would mean that the retailers and wholesalers would have to replace that inventory, causing the factories to start humming again.
Not true. Inventories fell because retailers are going out of business, and those of us who are positioned to survive are shedding excess inventory and buying new stuff very cautiously.
May I tell you a story? Years ago, before computers, I was a CPA doing audits. One of them was a regional drug store chain of 15 or so stores supplied by a central warehouse. They weren't making much money. We sent in a consultant.
He found that the stores would request stuff and the warehouse people were very proud of the fact that they could fill 100% of the requests for merchandise. 100%, all of the time.
The consultant stunned everyone by saying that fill rate was too high. 90% would be better. 100% meant they had far too much inventory in the warehouse.
Counterintuitive, isn't it?

farmer, how about having confidence in business, American ingenuity, how about that for a novel idea? Tax policies and other policies that help all people economically, how would that strike you?

You talk about 8 years of bad policy, we would be in debt alot further and alot worse off now if Obama had been president the last 8 years. Actually, most of those 8 years were years of economic growth. And even the Iraq war that everybody condemned Bush for, even Obama now admits success.

Where have you been, living in a vacuum?

And yes, fm, energy policy is affected by partisan policies, which affect jobs bigtime.

So essentially the stock market tanked when it became clear that somebody who people feared would be a Stalinist dictator had a good chance of becoming President of the United States, and the market stabilized when people saw that the same guy didn't immediately round up people into Gulags once he got into office, right? Good.

You know, I was reading through your diatribe, waiting for the words "global financial crisis" to show up, but in the end I wasn't really surprised when you rather decided to stick to a paranoid conspiracy theory.