Right ...

Thats why I'm upset with my federal Conservative government for running the first deficit in well over a decade , and the provincial Conservative government for running the first deficit in well over a decade ...

It was Lord Acton who said this: http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/288200.html 

Anyway, mafoo, what did you expect?  It's patriotic to pay more taxes after all

@Squirrel. 

Yes that is disgusting.  Its hard to believe that it only took about 10 years of irresponsibility and greed to rack up that much bad debt.  The only mitigating factor is that alot of that bad debt will be recouped.  At a loss, for sure, but they will get some of it back... assuming things get better within the next five years anyways.

The U.S. (Canada too) has been overspending for far too long.  Its like the family with 5 credit cards and a mortgage who make $150,000/year, and have to go get debt consolidation because even thought they make alot of money, they have managed to dig themselves a huge hole.  No matter what the situation, constantly having a budget deficit is never sustainable in the long run, no matter how good your credit is. 

There is a larger problem that could possibly occur as well.  What if Russia and China and Iran are able to convince part of the world to use a different currency as the standard?  Then the value of the Dollar drops further, putting the U.S. in a weaker position to ever recover, making more countries abandon their currency and inflation spiking out of control.  Not a pretty idea, and one that has stayed out of the media so far as I doubt it is terribly likely for progressive nations to side with China/Russia.

Lets just hope all this spending has the intended effect and boosts GDP and business growth.

It may be Obama is spending too much, the problem is you guys don't have an answer either. I'll take my chances with some one who actually looks for average people instead of the previous president who took care of his rich friends.

While this is good rhetoric its not really accurate ...

What I mean is that there are things that you could look at and say that Bush was helping out a particular individual or group while "Screwing" the average people, but Obama is on the path where the same kinds of arguments will probably be made about him.

A couple of examples of this are:

1. Banks that were bailed out through TARP have applied to buy the (potentially government subsidized) Toxic assets at a major discount, repackage them and sell them to investors for massive profit. All of these banks have donated millions of dollars to high ranking democrats (including Obama) and most of Obama's cabinet have close ties to executives in these banks ...
2. The federal government has taken on the role of both judge and receiver in the imaginary-bankrupcy of the automobile industry ... Realistically, if these companies filed for Chapter 11 they would probably be able to survive (and potentially thrive) after contracts between their lenders and the unions were restructured and everyone would take a hit; under Obama's "restructuring" it is plausable that the Unions will be left alone which (being that they heavily supported him) would leave it open to interpretation that he was helping his friends again.

Whether you want to admit it or not, the "Average People" will not benefit from these two moves and will end up paying the bill for them.

I say let them all fail. Have we ignored the system of capitalism and let competition arise? Yes, we have. No amount of TARP or bailouts will fix the underlying problem of incompetent management, union blackmailing of companies, and utter waste. In the end we have seen a drastic paradigm shift from free market capitalism to government intervention/socialism in just an election period. Anyone for possible hyperinflation while we're at it?

I agree with you, but the overspending has been going on for far more than 10 years (probably closer to 50) and just passed a dangerous threshold sometime in the mid 1990s ...

In hindsight, I don't think people realized how much of the success of the United States (and Canada) after World War II was because they were the largest economic block that was unharmed. The entire world needed goods and (regardless of the tax rate or cost of labour) they were forced to buy a large portion of it from North America. We missed the signs and "built our house on sand" focusing on a consumer driven market in the United States ...

Now, the real scary thing with this economic crisis is just how little it would take to push the world close to the worse case scenerio ... A couple of countries losing faith in the American dollar, a major terrorist strike anywhere in the western world, a major natural disaster, disease, famine, or (just about) anything that is major and negative could push us over the edge.

^ Fear is not a good thing.

Halogamer:

Allowing some of the largest American banking companies in the U.S. to fail would be an open invitation for foreign interests to come in and seize marketshare, not to mention the mess that would be made trying to figure out who owns what debt.  Not a necessarily a good thing for Americans.  But something should be done about the horrific inefficiencies associated with bureaucracies.

Squirrel:

Its a scary situation when you consider how much U.S. debt China owns.  I think if they were a little less dependant upon Americans buying their cheaply made goods, they may find it advantageous to just dump that dept at a loss and trigger further monetary collapse.  The world economic market is complex and we as North Americans have built ourselves quite the house of cards based upon foreign powers investing trillions in our currency like its a stock.  And what happens when a stock takes a major hit?  Do you ride it out and wait for it to get better?  Or do you sell and take the loss, reinvesting elsewhere?

The Gini coeeficent which is the current accepted statistical indicator of the divison of wealth showed that Bush was the best president for this since like WW2.

Under Bush the Rich did not get richer.  The gap between the rich and poor grew much slower then among any other president.

The biggest culprits of this?

Reagan and Clinton.

Moral of the story.  Republicans and Democrats both just look out for their rich friends.

Bush was different because he didn't look out for anybody.