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Ip's point about the actions of previous president's in promoting a recovery long after they are in office has to be qualified by the uncertain economic outlook for 2013, with a slowdown in the eurozone, China and India, and the efforts to control the deficit in the U.S. also affecting the economic outlook. The process of deleveraging has still to work itself out and the economy is still being supported by the Fed's continual easing of monetary policy.

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Brooks says President Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, was about incremental improvement, about continuity and defensive in nature, and lacked creativity to tackle the many hurdles and lacked most of all the audacity needed to set the country on the right track.

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Former U.S. president Bill Clinton's address at the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N. Carolina. He endorsed President Obama for reelection in an impassioned speech.

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Jay Powell, a former US Treasury official, now a scholar at the Bipartisan Policy Center, says the fears of budget problems in US states are survivable, even though they will be difficult and painful. He does not see widespread defaults, the way Meredith Whitney has predicted. Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard University, says a major default would cause serious macro-economic dislocations. It would have impact beyond the US, in the European economies with serious budget problems such as Greece, Portugal and Spain. Analysts cite the following reasons why a widespread debt default by states and local governments is unlikely. Municipal bonds are held mostly by individuals, who own about two thirds of US municipal bonds, directly or through mutual funds. Most state and local government debt is long term, and does not rely on short term borrowing the way a Lehman Brothers did in the recent financial crisis. The states can raise revenues, as Illinois did recently. With the economy improving state tax revenues were up 6.9% in the fourth quarter of 2010, compared to a year earlier, according to preliminary data from the Nelson Rockefeller Institute of Government, Albany, New York. That said, the following reasons show that life will be difficult and painful for states and local governments. State budget gaps total at least $125 billion, as they look to the coming fiscal year, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. And no federal help is in the works, as it was in 2009. Far less of newly issued muni-bonds are insured today - 6% compared to 57% in 2005- according to the Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Insurers are still recovering from losses in the recent financial crisis. A massive supply of new bonds has depressed the market just as Dec 31 expiration of a federal program, Build America Bonds, which provided help to states that were borrowing. Investors withdrew $23.6 billion from muni-bonds mutual funds since November, 2010. Moody's Investor's service has listed the states that will need to issue bonds to fund current operations. California will borrow billions to cover cash flow needs, and Illinois is considering an $8.75 billion 'debt restructuring bond' to pay past due bills, and a $3.75 billon bond for contributions to its pension system. Because banks have only 1.3% of assets in muni-bonds any defaults will not affect their ability to lend. But the impact will be felt in the US economy and overseas. In the event there was a default, some analysts believe the federal government would find it hard to say no when the federal government said yes to AIG....

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David Stockman, director of the Office of Management and Budget under Reagan, is interviewed by Tom Keene. Stockman says the US has $52 trillion of debt on a $14.5 trillion economy, a ratio of 3.6 times GDP. Historically, before 1980, it has been around 1.6. This debtification of the US, he says, is the major problem facing the US today. Stockman sees little or no economic growth in the next 5 to 10 years, as debt reduction progresses.

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Ian Talley provides this excellent account of how this drop in oil prices is likely to add to economic growth in major world economies, removing any ambiguity about the positive effect on the global economy. West Texas Intermediate crude dropped to about $65 from $105 between June and December 2014. The IMF estimates growth in 2015 will increase from 3.1% to 3.5% largely because of the lowering in energy costs. JP Morgan Chase economists see an addition of 0.7% points in global growth in the first half of 2015. ECB president Draghi sees the lower oil prices as an unambiguous positive. Estimates from Rhodium Group show major oil importing countries seeing import bills cut by $500 billion if prices remain low for 6-8 months, with $90 billion going into the U.S. economy. IMF estimate is that only 20% of the drop in oil prices is from lower demand, about 80% from higher fuel efficiency, increased supply using new technologies, decisions by OPEC to lower oil price, increases in supply. Based on estimates by the Rhodium Group, IEA and the IMF, the extra money flowing into the economies of the U.S., Asia and Western Europe from reduced oil import bills, as measured in percentage of GDP is: the U.S. 0.5%, Germany 0.8%, Japan 1.2%, China 0.8%, India 1.8%, South Korea 2.4%. Italy and France and other oil importing countries benefit. The impact comes at a time when Japan, China, India and eurozone economies badly needed a boost after significant slowdown in growth in 2014. It could not have come at a better time and because it is technologically driven as in the case of highly fuel efficient automobiles and new oil exploration technologies, a self sustaining process. The corresponding impact for oil exporters is: Russia -4.7%, Nigeria -5.4%, Venezuela -10.2%....

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The racial polarization in the U.S. before the presidential elections of 2012 between Romney and Obama. During the 2008 elections Obama did as well as Clinton by getting 43% of the white vote, it now appears headed into the 30's. This situation is reminiscent of the one facing Mondale in the 1980 election with Reagan, when Mondale received only 35% of the white vote. Fully 91% of the support for Romney comes from white voters as he passes 50% among overall voters in a late Oct. 2012 ABC/Washington Post poll. One irony in this situation is that Obama contested the 2008 election as a person who could bridge the racial divide.

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This New York Times editorial says a smaller Wall Street and growing jobs in other fields will be good for New York as well as good for the country. It says New York politicians should focus on finding new ways for New York to broaden its tax base and get new businesses and new opportunites in fields such as media, advertising, entertainment, health care and tourism. Especially welcome are initiatives such as the science and tech campus of Cornell University promoted by Mayor Bloomberg. Tighter financial rules and higher capital requirements are good for the country and for New York the editorial emphasizes, because they help control reckless banking practices that destroy capital and opportunities for growth elsewhere in the economy. It points to Kevin Rose's Nov. 21, 2011 account in the Times showing a healthy culture shift in New York and the country with the status jobs being seen not at Goldman Sachs but at Google, Apple and Facebook. Rose's account shows that in the last 3 years the number of Wall Street employees of ages 20-34 declined by 25%....

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Fomer Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says America needs to take up a vigorous foreign policy in his book "Worthy Fights." Both Panetta and Hillary Clinton, and Gen. Dempsey of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Petraeus of the CIA, supported U.S. taking a strong stand in Syria by supporting Syrian opposition forces in the summer of 2011 and were overruled by president Obama and his election advisers because of the approaching 2012 election. Here Mark Landler provides more insights into Hillary Clinton's deeply held belief shared with Panetta that the U.S. had to take strong action where necessary to deter foes, to get into the ring to use Panetta's expression. The U.S. support for action in Libya to support Britain and France comes from the efforts of Clinton, and any lack of followup one of president Obama's errors in foreign policy. In April 2016 president Obama said that he considered his failure to followup in Libya to help the new Libyan government his biggest mistake in his presidency. Here Mark Landler looks at Hillary Clinton's entire career as showing a conviction and belief on the need for action where necessary in the U.S. global engagement. Compared to the bluster of the candidates Trump, Cruz and Sanders, with little experience to back this up in their careers in real estate, law or the Senate , Landler says Clinton is the last remaining hawk. Here he describes Hillary Clinton's contact and empathy for the troops from her trip to the American base in Tuzla, Bosnia, in March 1996. In fact many have forgotten that Yugoslavia is what it is today after the Milosevic years and the ethnic wars with Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, members of the EU and Serbia negotiating to enter EU, because of the bombing campaign taken by Bill Clinton through NATO in 1999 to prevent ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, and peacemaking following the Bosnian War using diplomat Holbrooke to negotiate the 1995 Dayton Accords. Here Landler describes the meetings with Gen. Keane who pushed for the troop surge that worked in Iraq under president George W. Bush. Clinton supported Keane's proposal made in April 2015, for a no-fly-zone in Syria that would help opposition forces till a settlement could be negotiated. Keane pointed out to Clinton that there was a flaw in Obama's policies- that negotiation would work only if the no-fly-zone was used to support opposition forces. By the end of 2015 Hillary Clinton publicly adopted this position. During a period when Americans are weary of foreign entanglements but understand the need to provide leadership where needed, Hillary Clinton, provides a balance between the pendulum swinging too sharply in one direction in the Bush years and in another direction in the Obama years, says Landler. A view also articulated by Leon Panetta, who was chief of staff for President Clinton during the Bosnian conflict and the Dayton Accords, where the U.S. showed strength of purpose in war and also in negotiating the peace without major entanglements....

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 Donald trumps economic plan would worsen the country's economy through extravagant borrowing and lower economic growth in the long run. Because it lowers taxes by 15 percent without any paired cuts Trump's plan would worsen the deficit, so that large debt would hurt the economy in the long run. Clinton's plan would increase taxes by 4  percent largely on high incomes so as not to hurt consumer spending, with paired spending to help lower income households. Because Trump's tax cuts benefits go disproportionately to higher incomes the benefits in terms of consumer spending are slight or insignificant. In the current state of weak income gains of the last ten years it would take some time for the middle and working class to recover. Clinton's plan carefully nudges that recovery forward without aggravating the debt, so that as incomes and net worth recovers across broad parts of the population, the U.S. is poised to go forward with strong growth as in the postwar years. Trump's plan frontloads tax benefits to higher incomes at the expense of worsening debt and enlarging future debt. In the process it worsens income disparities already aggravated by the 2008 financial crisis. Reducing the chances of a broad based recovery for all parts of the population, necessary for a strong recovery.                       ...

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The unemployment rate in the U.S. state of Ohio drops to 7.2% in June 2012 from 10.6% in the second half of 2009. But polls show two thirds of the respondents see the economy as being worse or the same as in 2011. Because of lower wages in some industries such as auto manufacturing which are reviving there appears to be a lowering of incomes and expectations.

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Parallels between the Taft, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson election campaigns of 1910 and 1912, and the campaigns of 2010 and 2012, drawn by a T.R. biographer. He points to a tumultuous period ahead as lobbyists, outside interests, and the political parties and their supporters battle it out to set the direction of the country.

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The role of lobbyist Mike Toomey in Texas politics and the support he has given Governor Rick Perry.

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A health care practitioner says the real problem is the high cost of medical care in the U.S. when compared to other countries. She points out that the Obama bill in 2008 did not take effective steps to bring down the cost of health care before enacting legislation to cover the uninsured, leading to higher premiums for the middle class. The link between healthcare and profits is seen as the main problem. 

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The Clinton campaign based on incremental cautious change does not resonate as well with younger people including unmarried women. Sanders lead with unmarried women was 10 points in Iowa's caucuses. This is a worrisome trend for the Clinton campaign, as well as the pace of fundraising of the Sanders campaign which raised $20 million in Jan. 2016, and is picking up pace after Sanders virtual tie with Clinton in Iowa.