While Wall Street was being pushed into a meat grinder again yesterday, Barack Obama finally stood up behind his teleprompter yesterday to tell us two things about the fiscal emergency that we otherwise wouldn't have realized. The first is that there is no emergency...and the second is that this isn't about money.
OHhhhhh! That's a relief!
Uh wait...come again?
There's no emergency because, in the president's words, the United States "remains a Triple A country" even if the credit rating agencies who determine Triple A ratings don't agree. And this isn't about money or the staggering debt because the president says that the S&P downgrade was solely about the confrontational political climate in Washington "and that's what we need to change." Because, you know, bringing people together and avoiding partisanship is Obama's very special gift.
The president had more reassuring news, too! He says that something we can do immediately to strengthen our economy is extend unemployment benefits! According to his reasoning, giving people free money makes them consumers... and consumers allow businesses to keep doing business. But he warns that failure to extend unemployment benefits could cost one million jobs over the next year, presumably as businesses lay off employees who aren't servicing the cash-infused unemployed.
Obviously this is economic nonsense...but it makes it clear that Obama fully expects the jobless rate to keep getting worse, and he's trying to lay the (preposterous) early groundwork to blame it on the Republicans.
Meanwhile, the president didn't mention the fact that Standard & Poors has now also downgraded Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, because he couldn't blame the Tea Party for the insane manner in which those agencies have been run.
The president concluded his remarks by jutting out his chin and adopting his smug professorial tone, and saying that he still had complete faith in America's financial stability, as do the "world's investors", and "we know what we have to do."
And what he had to do was this: hurry off to attend two more fundraising events (which were, we're sure, entirely non-partisan) including a $15,000 per family gala for the Obama Victory Fund.
Which may explain why, after the president's unconvincing financial speech, those "world investors" then dragged the market down another 634 points, pushing and shoving to get out of our dying Obamaconomy as quickly as possible.
Talking up your faith in America's financial stability only works on those who still have faith in you. Those numbers appear to be dwindling rapidly and will soon consist of marxist fellow travelers, black racists, white self-haters and the very, very stupid. Granted, that's a lot of people, but is it enough to get Turdboy reelected? One hopes not, but as long as his media fluffers have an endless supply of government-subsidized knee pads, who knows.
ReplyDeleteHey that's what Fannie May did too.....claimed good credit ratings to people who couldn't afford a mortgage..... guess its going around these days. (Funny comic today!!!)
ReplyDeleteDo notice that minutes after Obama spoke yesterday, the DOW immediately plunged another 200 points. (I love when that happens)
ReplyDeleteI can understand why Obama is confused about the whole unemployment thing. He reads Nobel Prize-winning Paul Krugman, who has been arguing the same thing. Of course, this is contrary to what most economists believe, especially those who write econ textbooks, like Paul Krugman!
The biggest problem American business faces today is uncertainty about everything. Of course, if this is the case, then why not extend unemployment benefits indefinitely? While we're at it, let's raise the minimum wage to $50k/year so burger flippers can afford electric cars built by blue-state union labor. Makes no less sense than anything else coming from the minds of Progressive economists these days.
This has been the most disgusting aspect of the Democratic political/economic agenda for the last 30 years; they literally depend upon economic suffering to justify their existence. The worse off people think they are, the more the Democrats argue you need them to "fix" things. If things were actually ever to be great again, there would be no need for them at all.
In the meantime, I hope you all are taking advantage of the buying opportunity the Democrats are providing you. The stock market is on sale! It's a shame that it's easier to make money this way that actually working anymore.
Alright, John the Econ... We know that you're being facetious when you talk about $50 per hour burger flippers, but PLEASE stop giving Obama ideas, for crying out loud! I have an unfortunate "addiction" to Micky-D's that I would rather not give up, thank you.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, you really nailed it with the liberal's need to "fix" the problems that THEY created for the sheeple, just to insure re-election. I just have this strange feeling that some of the sheeple might be actually waking up. Not the hard core welfare abusers, but some of those "mild abusers" on the fringes that might be actually motivated to pull themselves out of the muck and mire and send a message by voting (gasp) for the other guy (or gal) for a real change.
I hope BO continues shooting himself in the foot. His advisors are giving his some bad advice; may they continue.... And, let's pray that his house of cards begins coming down more quickly. I would dearly love to see the ass-wipe have to resign in shame, and go off with his tail between his legs.
Oops! Sorry; that was $50k per year burger flippers....
ReplyDelete@Colby,
ReplyDeleteRemember, Barack Hussein couldn't possibly resign in SHAME. The Demo_rats no longer subscribe to the very concept of SHAME! Shame makes self-esteem impossible!
@Colby, it's our only hope that the middle class wakes up to what is happening to them. They will be the biggest losers in all of this. The hard-core-poor for the most part are lost. They are helpless slaves on the liberal plantation that will only accept emancipation once it's forced upon them by the economic collapse of the plantation. And even then, most of them won't. Just look at London today to witness their slave revolt.
ReplyDeleteYou are correct that a greater percentage of the middle class is waking up, and starting to realize that their progressive professors have misled them; they're starting to do the math and are realizing that there is absolutely no way that "the rich" can ever be taxed enough to pay for the goodies the progressive state has promised them. They've figured out that taxes supposedly only on the rich sooner or later hit them one way or another; either as direct taxation itself (remember, originally the income tax only applied to the top percent) or in the form of inflation, stagnation, or lost jobs.
@Readers- After the president said he "knew what to do" yesterday, the stock market plunged. Today, Bernanke clarified that he won't be doing ANYTHING to interfere with Wall Street...and the stock market shot up like a 4th of July skyrocket.
ReplyDeleteCould the message be any freakin' clearer?!
@stilt--No the message couldn't be any clearer, unfortunately I'm sure as soon as the Obama administration gets the message he will decide he needs to mess with something to cause the market to crash even farther, faster, and harder.
ReplyDeleteI did scoop up some bargains yesterday. Just like the 2008-2009 debacle, preferreds were being dumped and I bought truckloads then and a few bucketfulls yesterday. MLPs were on the list as well at 20% off - a real "blue light" special!
ReplyDelete@ThisOldMan: You're the smart one. When people panic, those who think win. I too looked at this weeks market episode as an opportunity, just as I did in '08 & '09. (Although, I have to wonder how many liberals within the Administration and Congress think the same thing)
ReplyDeleteHow to solve this problem immediately: A law prohibiting Congress from making any more laws to "fix" the economy for at least 3 years.
@This Old Man and John the Econ- Looks like your "blue light" is still flashing! After a brief rally, the market is dropping like a rock again (as of Wednesday morning). I'm buying every share of "Pitchforks R Us" that I can!
ReplyDelete< expletive deleted >!
ReplyDeleteI can't believe what I've been hearing in the last 24 hours!
Practically everything the government has done has been at best wrong, and at worst prolonging and increasing the collateral damage. Now they're starting to seriously talk about another "stimulus" and an QE3, and perhaps even a QE4?!?!?!?
STOP!!!
What kind of stake to we need to drive through the heart of these neo-Keynesian fools?!?!?!? 10 years of complete failure isn't enough? What is it going to take to put a stop to this madness?
Yeah, if this keeps up, Obama is almost certainly on his way out. (lest the GOP go with another "squishy") There's practically no way he can survive +10% unemployment, real inflation, and a stock market with 1/3rd of it's former equity destroyed. (Even the non-taxpaying "poor" can be counted on in that environment) And the more the Obamatons hype the evilness of the Tea Party, they grow more powerful and legitimate.
But dammit! The fed is going to keep near-free money for another 2 years? We can purge Obama and the remaining spendthrifts in Congress. But until we get the Fed out of the "fixing unemployment" business, we're still doomed.
Unless these wiz-kids are stopped from trying to fix what they clearly don't get, when the history of this age is written, this summer may be regarded as the point where we went from the "Bush-Obama Recession" into the "Obama Depression".
@John the Econ- Yes, it's all jaw-dropping isn't it? The guarantee of "nearly free" money boosted the stock market for, oh, about an hour...and now those gains are already gone (at not quite noon on Weds 8/10). And we've got two more years to live with the failed policy announcement.
ReplyDeleteHaving the Fed - or ANY branch of this administration - try to "fix" unemployment is like turning the Three Stooges loose on a leaky pipe with their toolkits.
Correction: What kind of stake to we need to drive through the heart of these neo-Keynesian vampires?!?!?!? They are literally sucking what life is left out of what was once the greatest economy ever in the world.
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