Where is the US economy headed?

Is that a prediction, or do you have some foreknowledge?

What did you thing of the speech. Georgeob? Was I close re the content and the tone?

You were very accurate. The speect was, in my view, well-delivered and, if it was a campaigh speech I would call it very good. However, as a speech to the Congress, I fault it for its excessive vague rhetoric, populism, lack of detail, and complete failure to address how any of this should be paid for, or how that aspect of the several proposals he said, with such emphasis, "should be passedright now" would be dealt with relative to the actions of the select Congressional Committee to which he has already agreed.

In short more political theater from a President who increasingly appears to think of nothing else.

The real issue we face and any solution to it must focus on the nexus between the gathering crisis of our public debt, due almost entirely to fast growing entitlement spending, and the appropriate government actions (or cessation of them) to correct our very unusual "recovery" from the recent cyclic recession. Very clearly this requires some reductions in entitlement expenditures to get us more time and space with which to indulge in some increased short-term expenditures and other measures to get us over the current unemployment - and to reassure legislators and a public, properly concerned about our financial future, that we will not mindlessly follow the the path that is causing so much pain now in Europe.

Unfortunately the President has punted on his obvious responsibilities in this area, and has instead chosen to play a game of political demagogery with a still very real looming entitlement crisis. The result is the impasse over tax increases, with one side appealing to class warfare and deceitfully implying that taxing and spending can alone solve this composite problem; and the other side refusing the short term taxing and spending proposals being offered, and looking only at the long term issue.

Completely absent from the Administration side of the current political dialogue, or even tonight's speech, was any acknowledgment of the effects of Administration policies with respect to domestic petroleum and energy production, or of side effects from its recently enacted health care and regulatory "reforms" to the current jobs crisis that the President was addressing and the vanishingly slow economic recovery that is friving it. The fact is there are many such adverse side effects that have become evident since these laws and Presidential decisions were enacted and he had a responsibility tonght to at least acknowledge that he would address them.

It was back to the well with his used car salesman sales tactic. We should not lower ourselves to his standards of contemplation and debate, his demand that we carry out his will with little evaluation or consideration of other ideas. Obama has showed little interest in jobs or fixing the jobs problem his entire time in office and now he shows up at Congress giving campaign speech and demanding we pass his bill NOW!...it is too ridiculous of an incongruity to take seriously.

You speak as if you have a political science and an economic degree is this true? Just curious!

Did you attend the same political and economic school as georgeob1?

No, we rarely agree though It might be here that we agree that Obama showed up with a nice sounding speech but no plan for fixing a serious known American problem. The closest Obama has ever come to being a doctor to seriously ailing America is to be head honcho Band-aid applicator and smooooth talker.

Talk is cheap however, and band-aids are not going to solve our problem.

Please share with us what we should do to help the world's economic problem!

I will settle for an empirical answer to the US economic problem if you have one!

True; he's not trying to correct what's been ailing this country for some thirty years. Wealth moving to the top 10% with the divide getting bigger every year.

At several points the takeway I felt was that Obama was being an apologist for failed policies, that he was giving lists of reasons why we can not take the cure, that he was walking the time worn path of assuring Americans that there is no reason to worry because harsh medicine never need pass our lips.

Did anyone else get this??

**** fix it...
HE IS NOT EVEN WILLING TO TALK ABOUT IT!!

I have heard that it is closer to forty years but I think this has be going on form the beginning of man {animal} Greed!

Do you think he wants to end up like J F Kennedy?

You mean dead? NO, but he seems to be in the mold of JFK with big talk but small governing skills. We used to think that Obama had political skills but that is in doubt now...

True greed motivates socialists as much or more than it does capitalists acting for their own self interest. Capitalism is largely responsible for the prosperity of all Americans and for the world for that matter.

I personally do not think that there is a true answer to our problems under the establish frame of reverence that we understand as government and consider to be true like a God!
The world has more faith in our money than what the world has in a God but we have even more faith in our understanding of realty than we do in our money!

I do not look for things to change anytime soon.

I think that we all want to fly but there is only so much we can do with a high performance car! I wonder if things could be different if we redesigned!

You seem to be addressing well fair but it seems as we all want it, the rich and poor alike and to be blind to it as well!

I think it was Churchill that said something like capitalism is the worst eonomic system on the face of the earth except for all the rest of them.

I see you didn't pay attention in school okie.

I think that several of us have already done that.

1. Major entitlement reform including raising the age for SS & Mediucare eligibility and possibly some benefit reductiond for the very wealthy.
2. The elimination of wasteful & duplicative government programs (many as recommended by the co chairmen of the Bolles Simson investigation which Obama himself launched)
3. That done we can consider short term spending increases to boost economic activity. This time these should involve real specific projects, permitted and ready to start, to avoid the waste and folly of the last "stimulus".
4. Tax reform to significantly reduce the tax on repatriation of offshore profits (the added capital inflows will surely stimulate investments here, and added inducements for that could easily be included). Additional simplifications should be sought, and in that context, if the reductions in projected entitlement costs were sufficient I would also consider some "revenue increasing measures".
5. Serious efforts to end the obvious hostility of the current administration to private sector economic activity and to simplify and eliminate as much unenforcable and indeed often incomprehensible regulation as possible. Obama has already called for significant regulatory reform, but even if he achieved all that he so vaguely promised he has still added enormously to the dead hand of the regulatory burden on our economy.

It appears very likely that the first step in getting such a coherent plan into operation would be;

1. Get a new President