A post by Maynard
Tammy linked this WSJ article, The Obama Economy. It is a must-read if you want to understand where Obama is taking us.
Americans have welcomed the Obama era in the same spirit of hope the President campaigned on. But after five weeks in office, it’s become clear that Mr. Obama’s policies are slowing, if not stopping, what would otherwise be the normal process of economic recovery. From punishing business to squandering scarce national public resources, Team Obama is creating more uncertainty and less confidence — and thus a longer period of recession or subpar growth.
These are vital economic points that must be understood:
- Recovery and growth requires private investment. Private investment happens only when investors feel they’ve got a fair shot at turning a profit. The recession creates a sense of an uphill battle, and that’s not Obama’s fault. But Obama’s professed intention is to limit the upside with more taxes and more government. So the investor sees high risk of failure on one hand and punishment for success on the other. This adds up to a huge disincentive, and Obama has worsened the problem. Perhaps he considers this a good thing: Once private investors have fled, he’ll have an excellent excuse to further consolidate power in Washington.
- Financial resources are finite. As with every other resources, dollars cannot be endlessly printed and borrowed. Money is nothing more than a claim upon existing physical resources. Wealth must be nurtured with care. Obama has done the opposite: His “stimulus” package is perhaps the greatest squandering of wealth in history. At this critical moment, the magnitude of Obama’s suicidal idiocy boggles the mind.
The financial mess is not of Obama’s creation. But he is blatantly using it as an opportunity to pursue a leftist agenda, at the cost of American power and prosperity. We will struggle more and suffer more because of his idiot policies, and he will use our suffering as an excuse to dish out more of the same. This defines the vicious circle of the left. And at the end of the road, we will be a poorer and less free people.
P.S. One final caveat. Yes, the Dow has dropped like a stone on lack of investor confidence, and yes, this is Obama’s fault. But in making this argument, I wouldn’t rest my entire case on the Dow. It will not continue endlessly downwards during Obama’s years. (That’s not possible: At this pace, it will reach zero before the 2010 elections.) At some point the Dow will bottom out and move upwards. And of course Obama will claim credit when that happens. So when you point to the stock market, keep in mind that the trend-of-the-moment is not a complete indication of the health of the economy. The key point isn’t that the Dow is up or down, it’s that Obama’s “help” is fundamentally worsening our plight. It didn’t have to be this bad. That’s the vital point of the WSJ article, and it needs to be understood by a greater percentage of the American people.
I have a future retirement (winter) home I purchased in Florida three years ago. Today I looked at a foreclosure property that was nicer than my house, and for half the price, in the same community.
I HAD a Sharebuilder account where I played with a few thousand. Nothing serious, but I lost it all.
I managed to save most of my 457 retirement account, as well as my wife’s 403B, but only because I pulled it all out to a fixed annuity and money market.
I manage a trust for my uncle. He lost about half of his life savings before I got involved and saved the rest, into an annuity.
I am taking my liquid capital and buying gold and silver. I am retrenching all my positions.
All the above, and yet today Obama said that it was a good idea to invest in the stock market. “We have shovels in the ground”. Please excuse me while I throw up.
Oh yeah, Honest to Goodness, forgot to mention that we ran into a very good friend today at the bank… WITH A SUITCASE. He was pulling ALL of his assets out of the bank.
Yup, I would say people are getting a little nervous. I’m nearly there.
Anybody want to guess how much money is invested in the Thrift Savings Plan? No, I don’t know how much either, but after the initial crash in September, most of the Postal Employees I know moved their money over to the G Fund (Government Securities Index). I’m willing to bet on a serious turnaround when people are more confident about investing in the market. But the President keeps making things worse, which continues to undermine confidence, which is an excuse for Washington to continue to expand their powers.
N_Campbell:
We have trillions of debt already, and spending trillions more. Notes to the Saudi’s and China, and a plan to tax the producers.
No one knows what the hedge funds are doing, but we do know that AIG whizzed away 80 billion in months, and now will get 30 billion more. One company, 110 billion dollars. You couldn’t count to a billion in a lifetime.
When Wall Street sells out, and that hasn’t happened completely yet, this thing is going to come apart. That’s what the smart money says.
You would think that Obama would excercise some caution and discernment, but he is proving Dick Morris to be correct… “he doesn’t care… he’s willing to trade one-term to get his agenda through”.
Optimists, avert thine eyes…
Unfortunately, I believe the stock market is going to hit a wall before long. With investors running from the market as fast as humanly possible, there’s going to be a point where there are just too many people trying to unload and not enough capital to buy at the current prices.
Unable to get a decent price, people will panic and the bottom will just drop out.
Maybe I’m just too paranoid or too realistic, but this honestly feels like the perfect storm. It’s like watching a master chess game where all the pieces are almost fully developed and the battle is about to rage. All I’m waiting for is the first fork to fall.
What I think is going to make this unbelievable is the speed of the fall. With current information technology and the entire world “watching with pie plates.” It’ll be fast, furious, and fatal.
…I’m not sure why but today’s post was apparently brought to you by the letter F.
Has anyone been wondering about perhaps another motive Obama has for dishing out all these hundreds of billions of dollars to corporations? Is he hoping these CEOs don’t forget what he has done for them when Campaign 2012 rolls around? He’s buying his next election too.
The financial mess is not entirely Obama’s fault, but he and his liberal Democratic Socialist comrades ARE ENTIRELY at fault for the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac fiasco, who’s bailout began the descent of the already traumatized economy into a steady downward spiral along with B. Hussein Obama’s “ascension†to the presidential “throne†– too bad it wasn’t the porcelain kind that we can readily flush.
Republicans, including John McCain (and I’m no fan of his), called for more oversight yet it was liberal Democratic obstructionists that wouldn’t do a thing about it and when it collapsed as had been predicted by Republicans, not one Democrat has been demonized and punished in the same manner as Enron executives. I’m also suspicious of the timing of the collapse, the September right before the presidential election. In the words of Rahm Emanuel, “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste.â€
If I’m not mistaken, it was B. Hussein Obama that was the second largest recipient of funds from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Liberal Democrats that were involved with Fannie and Freddie deliberately looked the other way and ran interference for what was going on with the mortgage loans. There is not ONE Republican involved with the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac nonsense or they would have been blamed and demolished by now along with the entire Republican Party simply by affiliation – yet we weren’t supposed to look at B. Hussein Obama’s affiliations prior to his election.
What B. Hussein Obama and his comrades ARE responsible for is the downward spiral of the economy collapsing into a freefall because Obama can’t keep his doom and gloom mouth shut.
I remember during the Reagan years, all liberal Democrats were doing was incessantly whining about “the deficit! the deficit! the deficit!†when Reagan was increasing the deficit by modernizing and expanding a failing military due to the Carter years. What B. Hussein Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and the rest of the liberal Democratic Socialists have done to the deficit in just 5 weeks and are going to continue to do – there is no comparison. And just where are the screams of those Reagan/GWBush deficit-panicked liberals today? Absolutely deaf, dumb and blind.
This whole fiasco reeks of B. Hussein Obama and his liberal Democratic Socialist comrades grabbing and securing as much power as they can over government, business and the every day lives of America’s citizens except their own privileged class.
Let’s see we have this knight riding in on a trojan horse.
Inside his suit of armor there’s nothing of note. Name one item from his days “present” in the Illinois Senate and since.
And inside the Trojan horse what has he brought?
All the elements that were used to destroy the original Troy; deceipt, sophistry, compromise and contempt.
I believe this man is the personification of evil. Oh, should you wonder; I don’t like him. Beyond his politics, I don’t even like the type of person he is. Four-flushers just don’t make my legs tingle.