Paul Krugman must read White House chat room

UPDATE July 22, 2010
So far I have not heard from the publisher of the New York Times and doubt I will. It is just astonishing to think that a brilliant man like Krugman, so informed on the economy and the workings of government, would suddenly think it was important to share the fact the budget is done a year ahead of time and raise the fact TARP was done before Obama became President, a day after I did. Now I seriously doubt that Krugman would need take anything off a chat room, so I'm thinking it was more a case of someone giving him the idea to do it. The question is, where did the "idea" come from? Who would have said, "Hey Paul here's a subject that needs to be raised." and then gave him the information? Was it a friend of his? Was it a White House Staffer? I doubt we'll ever know.

This happens all the time when bloggers spend hours on end thinking, reading and searching, putting it all together and then have someone read what they say, then take it as their own. Bloggers have no power because we have no one watching out for us. Our rights to intellectual property cannot be protected unless we track every single piece of reporting done, including other blogs. We have no way of knowing what someone else just took away from us and even when we do know, we just can't do anything about it. It's really depressing to be a blogger sometimes.

I was shocked when I clicked the link from Raw Story on

Republicans 'think we're idiots' NYT columnist takes Republicans to task for blatant economic lie.

Why? Because he copied what I wrote yesterday on the Linked in site. I find it really strange that no one was talking about this and now, well the New York Times has printed it the day after I wrote about it.

About an hour ago I went into the Linkedin White House site and posted this. I also emailed the publisher of the New York Times.

Looks like someone is reading this message thread,,,,suddenly someone is talking about the budget and TARP........I was asking about this since yesterday.

Kathie "Costos" DiCesare • I lost a post I just put up so it may show up later. I was looking over some figures and found something very telling. Look at the VA budget and notice the years.

Bush
2006 $68.4 billion
2007 $72.6 billion
2008 $39.4 billion
2009 $44.8 billion

Two wars going on and Bush had a huge jump in funding for 2007, but this was followed by a huge cut the next year. Still two wars going on and more wounded, but he cut it almost in half. The key is the year. The budget for 2007 was done in 2006, which he ran for re-election. We were reading about more and more wounded, less care for them and the media didn't bother to mention any of this.

(**Ok, messed up on saying "he" ran for re-election and meant to write it was an election year.)




Obama
2010 $52.5 billion
2011 $57 billion

Builds on the Historic Past Increase in
Funding for VA. The Budget provides $57
billion
in funding for a 20 percent total increase
since 2009. This significant increase contributes
to the President’s pledge to increase funding for
the VA, providing a foundation to transform the
Department and better serve veterans and their
families today.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2011/assets/veterans.pdf

The other thing I noticed is that while this is Obama's second year in office, it is really the first year for his budget to be used. For 2009 it was done by Bush in 2008. This is something else we just don't talk about. TARP, the thing most people love to hate was not done by Obama, but Bush. Obama does not have clean hands in this either because he expanded on it. If you want to complain about this then remember it come election time and who did what when.

Troubled Asset Relief Program
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"TARP" redirects here. For other uses, see Tarp.
This article is about the Treasury fund. For the legislative bill and subsequent law, see Public Law 110-343. For the legislative history and the events leading to the law, see Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008.
The Troubled Asset Relief Program, commonly referred to as TARP or RCP, is a program of the United States government to purchase assets and equity from financial institutions to strengthen its financial sector which was signed into law by U.S. President George W. Bush on October 3, 2008. It is the largest component of the government's measures in 2008 to address the subprime mortgage crisis.

Originally expected to cost the U.S. Government $356 billion, the most recent estimates of the cost, as of April 12, 2010, is down to $89 billion, which is 42% less than the taxpayers' cost of the Savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s.[1] The cost of that crisis amounted to 3.2% of GDP during the Reagan/Bush era, while the GDP percentage of the current crisis' cost is estimated at less than 1%.[2] While it was once feared the government would be holding companies like GM, AIG and Citigroup for several years, those companies are preparing to buy back the Treasury's stake and emerge from TARP within a year.[3] Of the $245 billion invested in U.S. banks, over $169 billion has been paid back, including $13.7 billion in dividends, interest and other income, along with $4 billion in warrant proceeds as of April 2010. AIG is considered "on track" to pay back $51 billion from divestitures of two units and another $32 billion in securities.[4] In March 2010, GM repaid more than $2 billion to the U.S. and Canadian governments and on April 21 GM announced the entire loan portion of the U.S. and Canadian governments' investments had been paid back in full, with interest, for a total of $8.1 billion. [5] This was however subject to contention because it was argued that the automaker simply shuffled federal bailout funds to pay back taxpayers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program

1 day ago

Kathie "Costos" DiCesare • Charles,
President Obama has been talking to Warren Buffet and President Clinton for ideas. Do you remember how Clinton got the economy ticking and how long it took to do it? I remember when Bush 41 ran for re-election and how much in denial he was over the state of the economy. I also remember it was pretty bad and that is what cost Bush the re-election. What did Clinton do?

Why is Obama being blamed for the TARP when it started before him?

9 hours ago

Kathie "Costos" DiCesare • Charles,
I agree but how does he get people to understand that we are now working with his first budget? The 2009 budget was done by Bush since they do them a year ahead of time. This gives congress the time to do what they have to.

He also has a problem with the veterans. While the service groups have praised him on what he has done for veterans, there are members of these groups refusing to give him any credit at all. How does he change their attitudes if even the commanders can't get their message across to them?

8 hours ago

This is by Paul Krugman today at 1:45......

The Bush Deficit Bamboozle
OK, even by contemporary standards, this is rich: the official Republican stance is now apparently that Bush left behind a budget that was in pretty good shape. Mitch McConnell:

The last year of the Bush administration, the deficit as a percentage of gross domestic product was 3.2 percent, well within the range of what most economists think is manageable. A year and a half later, it’s almost 10 percent.

They really do think that we’re idiots.

So, that 3.2 percent number comes from here (pdf). Where’s the bamboozle? Let me count the ways.

First, they’re hoping that you won’t know that standard budget data is presented for fiscal years, which start on October 1 of the previous calendar year. So this isn’t the “last year of the Bush administration” — they’ve conveniently lopped off everything that happened post-Lehman — TARP and all.

Second, they’re hoping you won’t look at what was happening quarter by quarter. Here’s net federal borrowing as a percentage of GDP, quarter by quarter, since 2007

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/19/the-bush-deficit-bamboozle/

The day after I publicly connected the dots, Krugman follows them but never said a word about where the idea came from. Either he has been reading the chat or someone else gave it to him. I don't know but I do know that I am really tired of seeing my work being used by someone else. I'll let you know if the publisher emails me back but I really doubt that will happen.