Opening the doors of the "Floodgate"

[SHRED]

On hindsight, were the signing of these two Acts the major players in allowing W and his Republican Congress to put us where we are today?

Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_Futures_Modernization_Act_of_2000

North American Free Trade Agreement
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nafta



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[dkf]

1. Are you about to trash Bill Clinton?

[leftstreet]

2. I hope so. He sucked n/t

[SHRED]

3. Not necessarily

But I do find that the DU trends towards party and cult-of-personality loyalty rather than liberal/left ideological loyalty.

[dkf]

4. Wow well I can't argue with that one.

I like Bill and he got more things right than he got wrong if only we stayed on the path.

With the permanent Bush tax cuts I'm not sure what is left any more. If I think they should be removed am I to the left of DU?

[GeorgeGist]

6. Is the recession over?

[dkf]

7. Actually yes.

We are not in a recession. We have a weak economy and weak growth. A recession is 2 or more quarters of negative growth as in below zero.



Real gross domestic product -- the output of goods and services produced by labor and property
located in the United States -- increased at an annual rate of 3.1 percent in the third quarter of 2012 (that is, from the second quarter to the third quarter), according to the "third" estimate released by the Bureau
of Economic Analysis. In the second quarter, real GDP increased 1.3 percent.

The GDP estimate released today is based on more complete source data than were available for the "second" estimate issued last month. In the second estimate, the increase in real GDP was 2.7
percent (see "Revisions" on page 3). The third estimate has not greatly changed the general picture of the economy for the third quarter except that personal consumption expenditures (PCE) is now showing
a modest pickup, and imports is now showing a downturn.

The increase in real GDP in the third quarter primarily reflected positive contributions from PCE, private inventory investment, federal government spending, residential fixed investment, and exports that were partly offset by a negative contribution from nonresidential fixed investment. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, decreased.

http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/gdpnewsrelease.htm

[GeorgeGist]

5. What do you think?

[SHRED]

8. I think they were huge factors