Firstly, did Barack Obama just say that America invented the automobile?
In case anyone was wondering, Karl Benz invented it in 1878. In Germany.
Besides that, my opinions - generally starting negative and becoming more positive as he moves from economic opinions to other ones:
1. "Creating or saving 3.5 million jobs" is a complete copout way of saying "I want a target that sounds measurable but actually isn't". Anyone know how to measure 'saved jobs'?
2. My opinions on the stimulus are pretty well documented here. I won't go into it further except to say that most of his economic goals probably won't be met by this stimulus.
2a. I don't understand why he talks about the "specter of protectionism" when the bill includes protectionism.
2b. "Shovel-ready" projects are typically NOT long-term thinking projects, because the fact that they're ready and haven't been undertaken yet generally means they're less important.
3. Nice explanation of why the credit crisis is so important. I know most people don't actually bother to follow what's going on and hate the banks because they have money and most people don't, but hopefully the people who listened will understand why it's so important to get the banks working again.
4. The "fund to help 'responsible' homeowners lower their monthly payments" doesn't actually exclude irresponsible speculators and people who took out mortgages they knew they wouldn't be able to afford. That's a lot of rhetoric.
5. Criticizing TARP was strange. Despite anecdotes of bad uses of the money, TARP actually does seem to be freeing up capital.
6. His energy goals are good ones. Cap-and-trade has the advantage that by increasing the cost of carbon and generating switches to non-carbon energy, we decrease the cost of non-carbon energy as our manufacturing gets more efficient. It's a "learning by doing" sort of model.
7. I agree with the little he's revealed of his healthcare stance. I don't know that the stimulus bill was the right place to address it, because healthcare takes a very long time to realize benefits (and often, healthcare investments don't recoup the money invested at all), and I think the stimulus bill ignored the difficulties inherent in hiring enough skilled people to implement the healthcare changes. But his desire for healthcare reform isn't a bad one. I just wish he would give us an idea of what it will entail other than computerizing health records, which certainly isn't the problem.
8. Like the goal for the highest proportion of college graduates in the world again by 2020. Again, I'd love to hear how he intends to do it
9. That tax policy is redistributive. It's well documented how bad I think pure redistribution tends to be.
He's got a populist streak which drives me nuts, but other than that, the focuses of his speech seem to be the right ones. Turning the stimulus over to Congress to become bloated is, I hope, a mark of inexperience, not ideology. Next step is TARP 2.0.
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