Mar 05 2009
Obama Is No Reagan
DJ Drummond makes an excellent point today regarding Presidents who have had to deal with inherited recessions:
Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama each inherited a recession when they came to office. That’s not unusual, though – Presidents Kennedy, Ford, and Bush also inherited recessions when they arrived at the White House, and in fact Presidents Taft, Cleveland, Buchanan, Van Buren, and Washington were also greeted with recessions upon their arrival.
…
The recession which greeted Barack Obama was caused by three forces – the burst of the housing bubble, the credit crunch brought about by bank speculation, and the liquidity crisis in the domestic auto industry. The initial symptoms were an unemployment of7.2% in December 2008 (7.6% in January 2009) and a3.85% inflation rate.Â
When Ronald Reagan took office, the recession he faced was more profound, because of the heretofore unimagined combination of unemployment and inflation rising at the same time. The chief causes of that recession were the rising price of oil and instability in the Middle East. The initial symptoms were an unemployment rate of 7.2% in December 1980 (7.5% in January 1981)and a 15.81% inflation rate.
But unlike Reagan, Obama is fumbling badly. His far left policies are as detrimental to recovery as FDRs were (which is one reason things were so bad for so long during and after the Great Depression). Obama has been trash talking the economy (how many times can one person cry ‘Crisis’?). He has taken to hamstringing the engines of growth who are the only path of this mess. He has put us in massive historical debt, racking up enough debt in one year to equal all the debt racked up by any 2 term president over 8 years. I liked this commentary:
Obama’s “stimulus†package spent almost eight hundred billion dollars – before interest – without creating even one private-sector job, without addressing even one home foreclosure in process, and without even addressing consumer confidence. This is the government version of trying to justify spending mortgage money on a hooker.Â
Obama is no Reagan. He has had to falsify his financial numbers to make it look like he has found some federal savings – which were really tax hikes and a mythical Iraqi Surge lasting a decade more. One wonders is he more charlatan than fool, or visa versa? But what is clear is this – most presidents have successfully navigated this challenge. The only question is whether this president is up to the job.
I’ve posted it before, on a number of sites. Hussein does not WANT the financial mess to be resolved. Every “crisis” which has occured during the past year or more has been deliberate, planned and staged for the benefit of the radical left…that is, the democratic party. From Schumers letter which destroyed Indybank, to the financial failures at Freddie and Fannie, all has been neatly arranged to create panic and despair. WHY? Because happy, profitable, secure people/businesses do not easily lend themselves to a forced takeover by Marxist dictators. Things will get much, much worse, all by design. Then Big Brother will magically ride in on his white horse of compassion and rescue, declaring martial law for the “greater good.” We will lose far more than money on that particular day. So stick around and watch the “fun.” Meantime, load up on the staples, become as independent of Big Brother as possible and make sure the ammunition stores are in order.
OLDPUPPYMAX —
How well will that work if we all KNOW it was Obama and the Democrats in Congress who made things immeasurably worse? A lot of fools still have faith in Obama, but a lot of other people are already getting fed up with Mr. Hopey-Changey and his “a trillion here, a trillion there” governing style.
The only way I see this actually working is if Obama and the rest are clearing the way for somebody else who isn’t even on people’s radar yet.
They know they only have until the 2010 election to do their damage, because having a free election, obambi’s admin will go lame duck then. So the big moves have to be soon. They were successful in engineering the market collapse, so watch out.
Obama is not even as good as Carter. It took Carter months to trash the economy. Obama did it in two weeks.
Obama has trashed everybody who makes money, saved money, created jobs, he has put each one of us in the collective garbage can with the crooks in high places, those who ran AIG, GM, Country Wide, and all the rest.
His message of Hope and Change are “ideas”. When the rubber hits the road, sweat ideas mean nothing if you can’t feed your children, or you loose your home, or job, or life savings, and you’re taxed to boot to help those who have never saved, never graduated from high school, never produced a thing. “Ideas” are at the top of Maslow’s pyramid, the bottom must be in place to appreciate “ideas”. Obama couldn’t look at the republican ideas because he had, just had to do the non-Bush thing. So it was a political choice, not a choice for people.
The latest, reported on Fox news, is that states, many states, have a web page asking the public to give ideas on how the states should spend their share of the $800 billion. So much for shovel ready. So much for jobs, and the cycle keeps going. No job, loose your house, insurance can’t cover the debt loses by the banks, AIG collapses, the stock market collapses further because all 401k hold AIG stock and we sink further.
Do you think bin Laden is sitting in a cave planning the total destruction of America, or is he not sophisticated enough to see the writing on the wall. Don’t bank on it.
You’re right, Obama is definitely not Reagan. According to Fox News, the country is happy about that:
“What do you think the nation’s economy needs more of right now — the economic policies of Ronald Reagan or the economic policies of Barack Obama?”
The answer: Obama 49%, Reagan 40%.
Heh. Now THAT is funny.
Guy:
I can remember when Bush had an approval rating of 90%. Not only thought he was popular enough to win a second term. And yet to hear Democrats tell it, the country never even liked the guy.
It has only been a few weeks. The American people want to give Obama a chance, they really do. But that does not change the fact that the markets have no faith in him. Right now China is their only bright spot.
He has not actually done anything but trash Bush and spend money. Sooner or later it will take more than that to keep those numbers up.
so I would not be heheing just yet.
Obama’s biggest asset is the press. They covered for the Democrats when it came to Iraq and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. No doubt they will cover for Obama to a large extent as long as they can.
I can remember when the unemployment rate was 10.2%, and inflation and interest rates were both double digits. Somehow we got out of that without putting several generations of Americans into hopeless debt.
As for polls, Rasmussen has a poll that says 59% of Americans think that Reagan was right when he said government was the problem, not the solution.
And btw, even if we took that poll to heart you mentioned, Barack Obama can not get a majority to support his policies?
And btw, if Obama pushes his cap and trade plan through in a couple of years and everyone has to pay more for energy, what will that do to his poll numbers?
And when a lot of the people who voted for him find out that $13 a week is all they will be getting in the way of a stimulus, what will that do?
I know people who think Obama is going to send them big checks in the mail and pay their mortgage and all kinds of stuff.
The other day some young guy whose girlfriend is getting welfare was saying they were going to get more money and this guy has never worked a day in his life. People are going to start to resent some of this stuff over time.
“I know people who think Obama is going to send them big checks in the mail and pay their mortgage and all kinds of stuff.”
You know dumb people.
GayFellow:
“I know people who think Obama is going to send them big checks in the mail and pay their mortgage and all kinds of stuff.â€
You know dumb people.
that’s what they were told.
Redteam:
“that’s what they were told.”
You think that because you are one of the dumb people.