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Americans more hopeful
A NYT/CBS poll says Americans think things are looking up. When Obama took office, 54 percent said the economy was getting worse, but that number has declined to 34 percent. Now 20 percent think the economy is getting better as compared to 7 percent in January. Obama got a 66 percent approval rating and 56 percent approved of the way he was handling the economy, although not as many seem to approve his economic philosophy: 63 percent were very concerned about the national debt, 48 percent would prefer a smaller government with fewer services, and respondents were almost evenly divided between spending money to stimulate the economy (45 percent) and focusing on reducing the national deficit (46 percent).
Of course if you look at the actual numbers, unemployment has risen to 8.5 percent (the worst in 25 years) and nearly two million jobs have disappeared in 2009. So is there cause for optimism? My thought is that things are so bad they can only get better from here. How about you? Feeling optimistic?
back to top19 Comments to “Americans more hopeful”
I agree that things are so bad, they have to get better.
I always look through the paper for jobs, and this past week there were two in my favorite little area of law. Haven’t seen that in two years.
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As a patroness of the economy, I’m resigned to spending most of my savings to work on the house. I might as well spread the wealth before the Obama and Schwartznegger administrations make good on absconding with it, er, taxing it away.
So, we’ll have two contractors in, and then painters, to replace the siding on the south side of the house where mushrooms are actually growing out of the wood. A guy is coming over next week to erect a needed fence. I’ve got a desultory kid who “needs” work but doesn’t appear to want to work, pulling weeds. My usual now-20-year-old, housekeeper will continue to push the swifter around toys and maybe get the bathrooms wiped down until she gets the hoped for “better job” at a bank.
Am I optimistic?
No–a friend who really needs his job lost it yesterday after 20 years and given a host of reasons, it’s doubtful he’ll work again. He’s an Eyeore type on the best days, and this has struck extremely hard. He won’t be able to help the siding guys, painters or fence erector and can’t pull weeds. The only thing I can do for him, and may other like him, is pray. And that’s why I’m not optimistic.
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Not optimistic. Not pessimistic either. With something I have no control over (i.e. how the economy as a whole goes), I just take each day as it comes and don’t try to guess how it will go. (With things where I feel more responsible for the outcome, I am much more likely to worry.)
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I’m optimistic that the economy will begin recovery in a year or so.
Meanwhile I keep trying to make money for the boss.
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As njl said, it is so bad it has to get better. That is most likely the -20% change in the “getting worse” category. I do not think it has anything to do with policies.
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Then again, maybe the change in the polling numbers is that more and more people just don’t know what to think of it all.
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Well, the real estate market around here is barely showing a weak and thready pulse. Which is better than the flatline of a couple of months ago. It will take at least a year and a half to absorb the foreclosures and then maybe we’ll see an uptick. I’m already looking at a couple of really nice big homes that some folks have recently bought and thinking, “wow, the deal they got is going to look fantastic in a couple of years”. It will just be impossible to build anything that nice and that large for anything close to the price they paid.
As for the rest of the economy, who knows? The business people I know are mostly still hanging in there by their fingernails, I know a couple of entrepreneurs doing start-ups, one related to electronic medical records, the other to wind power, and the government is getting a couple of local roads projects really ramped up. But the major private employers are still laying off.
Local governments are in bad shape, likely to get worse as the wave of property devaluations crashes their taxes. They are going to need more help than anyone is yet letting on.
It’s a mixed bag, but at least the economic apocalypse does not seem as likely as it did last year.
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As re. the economy, I think things are going to get much worse before they get better.
The dollar has one foot in the grave, and the other on a banana peel.
When all is said and done, they may very well have to rename the Great Depression.
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I’m cautiously optimistic. If we can keep the Republicans from derailing the President’s economic recovery plan, I think we’ll be alright eventually. It’s gonna take awhile though.
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Louisiana is in relatively good shape, thanks to massive federal spending for all kinds of Katrina recovery, currently and on into the future, especially in construction.
The Katrina spending is a test of what government spending does to economic activity, and many economists think the results are a hopeful predictor of good effects from Obama’s stimulus.
Quite a few progressives are in despair over Obama’s Wall-Street-centric financial bailout because it delivers huge advantages to bankers and investors at the expense of the public.
The only thing that can stop a $1 trillion dollar rip-off is nationalization or some form of radical restructuring of the banks by the government, a course that Obama’s people think is politically impossible. For now, anyway. There’s a chance that Geithner’s bank stress tests return the dread diagnosis of insolvency. In that case, the cure will demand more than liquidity. Obama might proceed from there to a more people-centric solution.
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The Republicans have walked out on Obama’s economic plans, but international financiers still look to him and say, “Lord, to whom shall we go?”
Obama has done a wonderful job of persuading the world once again to care about and invest in us.
Japan has launched a bigger stimulus than ours, about 4% of GNP.
Ten-year T-bills are still below 3%, last time I checked, and 30-year fixed mortgages rates extremely low.
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Anlir,
There is nothing the right can do to derail the left’s (not Obama’s since Nancy Pelosi crafted it) economic plan. The right does not have any power at all to do anything and haven’t for over 2 years now. The economic plan of the left passed congress without any support on the right. It is the left’s baby now and there is nothing the right can do to help or hurt it.
Quit trying to blame the totally and completely innocent right for this huge spend too much, borrow too much and tax too much economic plan’s failure – before it even fails. Can’t you people take responsibility for anything you do?
We will blame the left for doubling the debt of the country in 3 years though and making sure our children are the socialist government’s slaves.
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Re #8: I just read that the Austrian banks are not doing well, are worse than expected because they lend to Eastern Europe, and if Austria goes, so will a few other countries. Also there is a prediction that the housing market which has gone down 19% will bottom out at 50%, which means there’s a long way to go.
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I wouldn’t get your hopes up. We have seen that hopes lead to change and messiah’s we cannot believe in.
A cat bounces off the ground several times if thrown from a 20 story building but, it still ends up dead after the first bounce.
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Things are scary. With the .com and housing bubbles, we haven’t had a real solid economy in a decade. Kind of hard to get back to it.
Rich people aren’t nearly as rich, retirements are thrashed, and the people who started out the recession with no homes or assets are most likely to be among the new unemployed. This will crush tax revenue, and makes returning companies to profitability and getting people to spend like they used to a slow process.
Watching CNBC, I never hear anybody talk about a “soft landing”. Just a bottom, which assumes that things will rebound. On whose buck? The government’s? Don’t tell anyone, but they don’t have any assets either. Maybe we could sell Kansas or something.
I think I read in a book that in the end, it all burns.
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I think I read in a book that in the end, it all burns.
That’s what I’ve been saying all along. Conservative Christians are standing on the sidelines of America chanting “Burn, baby burn!”. They don’t care about saving America – they want the judgment of God to fall on this country, and fall hard, because that means Jesus is coming back!
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Anlir,
You remind me of that old song “Twist and Shout”….
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Does it matter that this poll was biased by a sample that was 39% Democrat versus 23% Republican (page 23)? Even though the number of people willing to call themselves Democrats has dropped in the past few months? Probably not, to the statistically illiterate.
Apparently you get what you ask for, among folks most likely to give you the answers you want. Polls schmolls, indeed.
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Well, a lot of the conservative financial experts have been saying that it will be good for a year or two (because pumping money into the economy will help in the short run), and then we’ll have high inflation. I keep hoping that this will be a good year of income for me (it hasn’t started well, but this is about the time things usually pick up), and I can get some money in the bank. I’m not optimistic for the long run, but I keep hoping things will somehow stay good long enough for me to pay off my mortgage and thus get totally out of debt.
And I keep consciously reminding myself that my bread has always come from God, and He can take care of me even if things fall apart, and even if I lose everything else. (For those of us who know Him, even loss of life isn’t ultimate loss.)
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