Here's The Real Reason Obama Is All Of The Sudden Going "Pro Business"

[harvey007]

Larry Kudlow-style Republicans are seemingly over the moon about the new "pro-business" attitude at the White House, and the apparent morphing of Obamanomics into Reaganomics.


http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-the-real-reason-obama-is-all-of-the-sudden-going-pro-business-2011-1

[tridim]

1. Obama has been pro-business his entire career.

That is not a bad thing BTW.

I wouldn't vote for a president who wasn't pro business.

[Laelth]

3. I don't know Obama's history well enought to speak to his entire career.

But he is definitely pro-business now, and he has been for the past two years.

And I do not celebrate that fact. Being pro-business means being anti-worker, as I can tell you from years of experiene dealing with the legal matters of injured workers who have little or no recourse against their employers because Georgia is a "pro-business" state, and our laws reflect that. Here, corporations are protected and workers are screwed. It's a "pro-business" paradise.

It is antithetical to the left to be "pro-business" if that also means being "anti-labor," and that's exactly the environment that most "pro-business" laws create.

But you're right. Obama certainly IS pro-business. He is also antithetical to the left, as are you, apparently.

-Laelth

[Aleric]

2. What do you mean "all of sudden"? When HASN'T he been pro business. n/t

[Laelth]

4. I think he's been pro-business for two years because he wants to be re-elected.

I think he made the decision that his base doesn't matter and that liberal values don't matter. All he needs to do is to appease the rich and powerful and he can be a two-term President, or so he seems to believe.

As I argued here: http://laelth.blogspot.com/2010/12/kissing-butt-and-taking-names-obamas.html

-Laelth

[ladjf]

5. It didn't work for Reagan and it won't work for Obama. The President

has chosen a terrible role model in Reagan.

[KoKo]

6. Perhaps Obama believes it did work for Reagan.

He seems to look on him kindly. Probably Reagan was a model for him when he was a kid? Maybe his Grandparents liked him. Reagan had that cheerful personality...not bothered by much and leaving things to others to do for him while he and Nancy lived their lives going back and forth to the ranch and having nights with their Hollywood friends at gala's at the WH. Obama seems to like to leave things for others to do rather than get his hands dirty. He even brought in Bill Clinton to put the pressure on the Congress to pass his Tax Cuts extension. Bill Clinton was sent out while Bernie Sanders was speaking on the Senate Floor against the tax cuts while Obama checked out to have dinner with Michelle and left the Presidential Podium to Bill Clinton.

Obama is fond of creating "Blue Ribbon/Bi-Partisan Commissions" and "Study Groups." He really is a bit like Reagan in that he seems like a "laid back" CEO who delegates to others for their expertise. He seems to be distanced from us out here these days. Even when he was doing his Back Yard Town Meetings, he didn't seem to be anything but a campaigner in the clips I saw on the news.

[ladjf]

7. Perhaps the President should have been reading the papers.

"Absent, of course, from Gregg's recollection for PBS was the inconvenient truth that the U.S. national debt tripled under Ronald Reagan, only to double again under George W. Bush."


http://www.bing.com/search?q=debt+tripled+reagan&form=MSNH14&qs=n&sk=&x=79&y=16

[KoKo]

8. Exactly....more research and background for fact was needed..

I don't know how he missed that in his education. But, we all miss some things, I guess.

[bhikkhu]

9. When "Jobs" are the big national issue, its natural and necessary

Its hard to imagine any other approach which would not lead to immediate failure.

[txlibdem]

16. But businesses aren't creating jobs here in the USA --even after 2 years of pro-biz Obama

American companies are sitting on a pile of cash, Two Trillion Dollars high. Can you guess how good the economy would be if they used that cash to actually hire American workers? It would immediately end the recession. That is enough cash to hire 20 million workers and pay them $50k a year each (even if they paid workers to stay home it would immediately end the recession due to consumer spending).

But businesses are not doing that.

What could Pres. Obama have done differently? Instead of giving away tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires he could have used that money to directly hire people, just like FDR did with the WPA. The stimulus bill included only about $80bn for jobs. The rest went to tax breaks for businesses, the rich and to prop up failing state budgets. What a waste.

[bhikkhu]

18. If you recall back during the "credit crunch"

when suddenly banks were unwilling or unable to give short term loans to businesses due to their own liquidity problems. businesses announced that they were desperately and immediately unable to function without that credit, as they couldn't meet payroll obligations without borrowing money. Of course all that payed out as it played out...but the one thing that stuck out as patently absurd is that an otherwise sound and functioning corporation should have to borrow money to pay its employees. As it turns out, the "capital optimizing" business model of the time did just that as a rule, and was so fundamentally leveraged into debt that there was virtually nothing of substance to many very substantial-appearing US employers; essentially they were smoke-and-mirrors operations like Enron.

The remedy for the ridiculously risky leveraging was simply to keep more cash on hand; same remedy for businesses as for banks. One PR problem with this return to sane operation is that you hear claims such as "corporations are hoarding cash!", when really this is only true in comparison to prior bone-headed debt-dependent practices.

on edit: jobs creation is consistent with a slow recovery from a bad recession. I'm inclined to think that the underlying causes - global energy demand exceeding global energy supply, leading to high costs - are still there and basically unsolvable without drastic changes to our habits, and we'll be back in the recession-hole shortly, but at the moment jobs creation is officially on the right track.

[txlibdem]

20. Thank you for being the apologist for big business here on DU

Those poor businesses! If only we taxpayers hadn't let them down so... I'll try to hold back my tears of sympathy but you go ahead.

You said, "I'm inclined to think that the underlying causes - global energy demand exceeding global energy supply, leading to high costs - are still there and basically unsolvable without drastic changes to our habits..."

I'm inclined to reject your premise. The current economic problems we face was caused by one thing: greed. Period. The enabler was bad government in the Bush/Cheney era, who bred an environment that said businesses can write the regulations that they have to follow. Blaming consumer habits is an attempt to rewrite history.

On the topic of global energy demand exceeding supply, I say: Balderdash! There is no energy shortage. Free energy is falling all around you right now (if you're in the Western Hemisphere as I write this). We have no shortage of energy:
Solar
Wind
Tidal
Geothermal
Efficiency improvements
Thorium cycle nuclear power plants
Electric cars
Personal Rapid Transit
High Speed Rail

There is a shortage of energy. There is a shortage of political will and an excess of special interest power.

[bhikkhu]

21. Knowledge is power, in this area

all those that you list are more properly "potential power" or "potential conservation". I don't reject your premise at all, and neither do you seem to reject mine. Referring to the real-world economic occurrences of 2008 and what is expected later this year, potential power sources and potential energy conservation are, sadly, likely to be too little and too late.

[txlibdem]

22. Especially now, after the sheep and idiots of the country put the thieves and incompetents back in

I'm still shaking my head over that one. Who in the world would be stupid enough to vote for a Republican after they caused all the misery we're suffering. Just can't see how or why.

[jtuck004]

10. So if he is pro-business, who is going to stand for the people that

business takes advantage of?

We lost 8 1/2 milion jobs in 2008 and 2009, and most of the pro-business effort has gone to propping up the investment
banks and other ex-employers of people who have advised our presidents for the past 3 administrations, while most of
our employmers have been busy lowering the cost of their workforce, so now 2 in 3 jobs pays less than $20,000/yr.

Along with that we have increased the unemployed and underemployed to 30 million, the numbers on food stamps to 40 million, we are continuing to foreclose on 14 million homes. We had 35 million people without health care 2 years ago, now 50 million. China devalued its currency years ago so a third of their prices are subsidies from the government, which has resulted in the greatest shipment of jobs out of this country in its history. The last administration was so pro-business that the investment banks did more damage to our economy than 20 terrorists did with 3 airplanes.

Frankly, if Larry Kudlow likes it, we probably ought to all be very afraid.

[Enthusiast]

11. " if Larry Kudlow likes it, we probably ought to all be very afraid."

No shit!

[KoKo]

17. Agree...he was grinning like a Chesire Cat when the "Tax Cuts" passed..

and thrilled over Obama's new appointments.

[treestar]

12. Anyone who is "anti-business" then has no right to complain about

a lack of jobs.

[Warren Stupidity]

13. Faulty premise there: linked with Wall Street from day one. nt.

[4dsc]

14. Our current economic model is broken

and its not coming back any time soon. The current consumer based economic model of unlimited growth is broken, period. Get use to it. Its a shame that most people cannot or will not acknowledge that fact but its the truth. And the truth doesn't play well with people are desperately looking for work or worried about their jobs.

Anyone believing we will see the "good ole days, aka 1990's when millions of jobs were created, are only fooling themselves. And as long as President Obama wants to use job creation for the sake of consumerism he's going to lose to the GOP.

[bhikkhu]

19. I agree

...though it is pretty clear to me that Obama is only following the tried-and-true advice that any good economist would give for job creation. As for that, economists are only right until they are wrong - that is, until their presumptions no longer hold in the real world.

One fundamental change in the real world is a physical (geological) decline in the availability of cheap fossil fuels, which have been a driver of economic activity and growth for over 100 years. Lacking available cheap energy to drive economic activity and growth, the economic recovery will fail, in spite of the best laid plans of economists and politicians.

ed. - sp.

[MissDeeds]

15. "All of a sudden" going pro business?

Hardly.