Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Domestic Policy, Economy, Energy, Taxes, The United States | Tags: Mitt Romney, Bain Capital's Record, Obama's Failed Investments
The Obama Campaign, noted for its brilliance, oddly seems to want to have a debate about which of the two candidates is more qualified to run the world’s largest economy. Obama’s economic policies vs.Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital? Um, you might want to rethink that.
Obama has made it clear that he really doesn’t understand the concept of profit. Liberals are often taught that profit is a bad thing that the rich sometimes do to line their disgusting pockets and pay for their yachts.
It is obvious that the administration is a little unclear about just how jobs are created. Today’s dismal jobs report makes that very obvious. Three and a half years later is really too late to keep blaming George W. Bush. At what point does the economy become Obama’s? When the recession is over? That happened in June of 2009, officially, from the agency that makes those decisions.
The Obama team does understand hiring, and have done a lot of it, creating new government departments and issuing new regulations; but they miss the detail about who pays for what. Government jobs are just another bill for the taxpayers to pay. From the president on down to the lowliest janitor, taxpayers pay their salaries and benefits. Government has no money of its own, a fact that liberals forget until they need more revenue, at which point they expect taxpayers to pony up without complaint funds which, when received, will become ‘government money.’
Bain Capital buys failing companies that they hope to revive, with private money from themselves and from investors. They look at the books carefully before they invest, and determine what is needed— money, better management, eliminating a sector that is losing money, a new business plan — and consider what they can successfully provide. If the business still fails, Bain and their investors will lose money, and have a harder time raising investment money the next time. Not every business can be made to succeed, but under Mitt Romney more than 70 percent of their businesses did succeed, many dramatically so. It’s a very good record.
The Obama Administration has picked businesses to fulfill their ideological interest in green energy. They have listened to promoters’ talk of capacity and potential, and had the benefit of having supporters or campaign bundlers in charge or as investors so there were some familiar faces.
They did not ‘invest” their own money, but invested billions of taxpayer funds in speculative businesses that had no track record nor no evidence of expertise or professionalism. When one of those businesses goes bankrupt, it is just another total loss for the taxpayers. The administration’s goals are policy driven — intended to fulfill green ideology, not return on investment driven. We’re still looking for one clean energy success. Just one.
Mitt Romney showed up at Solyndra’s empty building to make the point that when the administration invested in Solyndra, it wasn’t the administration that lost money, it was the taxpayers. The Obama campaign is trying to claim that Romney’s policies in Massachusetts were an economic failure because during his tenure, Massachusetts unemployment rate was 4.7%. Um, 5% unemployment is usually considered full employment.
Obama has big problems arising from his inexperience. He has made universally bad bets. Attempting to invest in “green” energy in spite of the abundant evidence from Spain and other European countries is folly. You would need extensive investigation from trained professionals in the technology and business prospects. Making investments with politically connected business ventures has led to charges of corruption and cronyism. The largest bets went to friends and contributors to Mr. Obama. The biggest losses went to the taxpayers.
Filed under: Capitalism, Economy, Election 2012, Politics, Taxes, The United States | Tags: Fear Of The Future, Fist Quarter Revised Downward, Unemployment Up
The economic news is all bad. First quarter economic growth has been revised downward to 1.9% growth, which is downright anemic. Now the preliminary May jobs report shows the unemployment rate (U3) rising to 8.2 with only 69,000 new jobs. All momentum is gone. This is the third subpar tally, with downward revisions for the two prior months.
The U6 unemployment rate which tracks the marginally employed or completely discouraged — increased to 14.8% from 14.5%. Labor earnings are almost, but not quite, keeping in line with the growth in inflation.
Obama doesn’t seem to understand that businesses create jobs. If businesses don’t make profits and expand, they don’t create jobs — yet here is Obama out on the campaign trail criticizing Mitt Romney for making profits.
Well, today, faced with such dismal news, Obama hopped on Air Force One, at your expense, to fly to Minneapolis for “official business” at an event at a Honeywell factory in a Minneapolis suburb (which excuses putting the trip on the taxpayer bill. That there just happen to be six fundraisers on the schedule is just a coincidence. At the first, the president will address a group of 100 guests ($5,000 a plate), followed by two small roundtables of deep-pocket supporters ($40,000 a plate) and ($50,000 a person).
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan noted that businesses are holding back on investing for the future because, “In short, there is a fear of the future.”Tax Armageddon still awaits us on January 1. and a new survey shows that uncertainty in the tax code is causing businesses to sit on the sidelines. Most financial officers, according to the tax firm Alvarez & Marsal Taxand, rate eliminating uncertainty in the tax code as their top issue. “Confidence in knowing precisely what the tax code will require has become more important than how much it will cost them.” They are operating in holding patterns.
President Obama has been notably silent on the prospect of keeping the United States from heading over a fiscal cliff. Speaker John Boehner has announced that the House will vote in July to prevent tax rates from rising. The Senate should so the same. There is time for Washington to take action, but the fiscal cliff is not all that far away. Where is the Corporate tax reform? Ours is still the highest in the world. And, unsurprisingly, corporate profits rose at the slowest pace in more than three years.
The White House has fallen once again back on its old theme (foregone briefly yesterday) it’s all George W. Bush’s fault. Nearly four years and the man cannot take responsibility for anything slightly negative, and makes up everything slightly positive out of whole cloth.
I wish I believed that the president was deeply concerned about the economy because of the misery it is causing the American people, but I don’t. It’s all about the election.
Filed under: Art, History, The United States | Tags: Barack Obama and Michelle, George W. Bush and Laura, The Official Portraits
Today, the Obamas invited President George W. Bush and Laura Bush to the White House for the unveiling of the official presidential portraits. The ceremony was warm and friendly, more so on the video, which is here, than in the transcript, which is here. You will enjoy watching the video. George W. is charming, funny, and very gracious. I really miss that man.
The photos of the portraits below, are cropped, but you can get an idea. Mrs. Bush’s portrait is full length, and from the pictures, her dress may have been navy blue, or black, or possibly something else. The portraits are skilled, and it was charming of Mrs. Bush to thank the artist and mention his family.
These ceremonies are always more awkward when the portraits are of a previous president of a different party who you’ve just been blaming for everything for three years. But they mind their manners and do it nicely. Jonathan Horn at Ricochet dug up the speech that President Bush gave when unveiling the portraits of the Clintons. It’s short, but gracious, and a model to follow.
These portraits will be there for the ages, barring some awful incident, and Michelle has promised to save George W’s portrait, as Dolley Madison saved the other George W.’s.
Filed under: Foreign Policy, History, The United States | Tags: Poland, Presidential Medal of Freedom, White House Gaffe
America’s highest civilian award is the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In the ceremony last Tuesday, while presenting World War II Polish resistance hero Jan Karski with a posthumous medal, President Obama made a reference to” Polish death camps.” It was Jan Karski who brought evidence of the existence of Nazi Death Camps to America.
You can’t go stumbling along in foreign relations without an understanding of history. Europeans have long memories, and Poland was a Nazi-occupied country, and a great many Poles were executed at Auschwitz and Birkenau. The presence of the Nazi concentration camps in Poland was a deep affront. To suggest that the camps were Polish when awarding a medal, posthumously, to a resistance hero is more than tasteless. To assign the task — not of apologizing — but of saying oh, the President just misspoke, is a greater insult.
But then Obama is the one who notified the Poles with a midnight phone call on September 17, 2009, the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland, that we were pulling the plug on our missile defense base they had stuck out their necks to host.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk responded: “I am certain that our American friends are capable of a more explicit reaction than issuing a correction and the spokesperson of the White House expressing regret. When someone says “Polish death camps,” it’s as if there was no Hitler. That is why our Polish sensitivity in these situations is so much more than just simply a feeling of national pride.”
Embarrassing incidents can be smoothed with a real apology.
ADDENDUM:Lo and behold. “The issue hasn’t gone away just because he wants it to,” and, as Jim Treacher at the Daily Caller reports, “in an undoubtedly ego-bruising development, he’s been forced to publicly apologize.” The Hill reported:
President Obama has penned a letter of apology expressing “regret” over using the phrase “Polish death camps” in a ceremony earlier this week, which has drawn heavy criticism from Polish officials.
“In referring to ‘a Polish death camp’ rather than ‘a Nazi death camp in German-occupied Poland,’ I inadvertently used a phrase that has caused many Poles anguish over the years and that Poland has rightly campaigned to eliminate from public discourse around the world,” Obama wrote in a letter released by the Polish government. “I regret the error and agree that this moment is an opportunity to ensure that this and future generations know the truth.”
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Energy, Environment, National Security, Politics | Tags: "Beyond Natural Gas", American Energy Abundance, Greens Target Fossil Fuels
America has undergone a monumental change, and the major media are just waking up to it. The administration has apparently not heard. America is awash in fossil fuels. We have lots. All that bit about being dependent on foreign oil — nevermind. America has a boom in shale natural gas, and even Fortune magazine admitted it in a cover story.
So, naturally, as night follows day, the Sierra Club has announced a new battle plan called “Beyond Natural Gas.” This is a companion piece to “Beyond Coal,” in which the Sierra Club has been lobbying for rules to force the shutdown of America’s coal-fired power plants, the closure of coal mines, an end to the use of coal — which supplies just a little less than half the electricity in the country.
The theme was previously that coal was dirty, disgusting, dangerous, and we should rely instead on clean natural gas. Now that they have the closure of coal-fired power plants well underway, they are turning to eliminating natural gas. Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune announced their goal this month.”We’re going to be preventing new gas plants from being built wherever we can.” They have rolled out a new website that says:
The natural gas industry is dirty, dangerous and running amok. The closer we look at natural gas, the dirtier it appears, and the less of it we burn, the better off we will be.
Sounds vaguely familiar. But this is no idle threat. The Sierra Club has deep pockets, with 1.4 million members, generous funding from liberal foundations, and the knowledge of just how to work the media and the politicians. The lobby has successfully helped to block new nuclear plants for more than 30 years, the “Beyond Oil” campaign helped to keep much of America off-limits to oil drilling, and its “Beyond Coal” campaign has all but shut down new coal plants, and is working on shutting down the old ones.
The Sierra Club was once a modest affair, founded by John Muir in 1892, to “make the mountains glad.”It is the oldest and arguably the most powerful environmental group in the nation. But it is no longer my father’s Sierra Club. It used to offer summer horse packing trips into the high Sierra, featured Ansell Adams’ beautiful photographs of Yosemite, and grew into photography books, animal books and all those nice things that make us love nature — that we can put on our coffee tables to show how ecologically with it we are. It has grown into a radical environmentalist organization of 1.4 million members with leadership positions held by activists with radical ties. It has managed to maintain a “mainstream” image, but its goals are hardly mainstream.
The radicalism of radical environmentalism is way out there, and makes little sense. They essentially oppose modern civilization, and all its peoples. They are attempting to shut down the power plants that power the wind farms and solar arrays that they, for now, favor. How long will wind energy be acceptable when Congress offer special waivers to the wind farms for the eagles they chop up? The green energy bubble is bursting everywhere. The Energy Tribune notes:
The EU’s ideologically-driven Energy Road Map prioritized ‘green’ renewable energy, diverting away from Russian natural gas dependency and harmonizing energy and environmental needs. The result: a devastatingly inept screw up that threatens continent-wide power outages even, as Die Welt recently reported, in Germany as early as next winter.
In short order, EU energy policies have created an unsustainable, publicly-subsidized, market-skewing ‘green’ energy bubble, eschewed a cheap fossil fuels policy and realistic alternatives to Russian gas imports. Together those failed policies have resulted in the double double-whammy of soaring of energy prices and, as is now being reported, diminishing European industrial competitiveness.
The Sierra Club gets no awards for consistency. They were all for natural gas when the price was $8 or more per million BTUs and the supply seemed to be limited. But gas prices have fallen to $2.50, and natural gas may come to dominate U.S. energy production. Wind and solar and biofuel power may never be competitive. If the subsidies are removed, there will be no profit in wind and solar anyway. It’s ordinary people who will benefit if there is a plentiful supply of cheap natural gas. It will benefit industry and the economy, and there are somewhere around 600,000 jobs in the natural gas industry alone, not to mention the jobs provided by a thriving economy fueled by cheap, abundant energy from natural gas and coal.
Filed under: Energy, Foreign Policy, Military, National Security, The United States | Tags: Armed Services Committee Says No, Military Green Energy Experiment, No Subsidies - No Fuel
The House Armed Services Committee’s proposed Pentagon Budget contains a provision that could bring a screeching halt to the U.S. military’s ambitious experimentation with biofuels. This is a very good thing.
Actually, it was probably the president’s ambitious idea. President Obama seems to be a true believer in anthropogenic global warming, whether from conviction on his own part or from conviction urged by the support of Big Green is unknown.
The Army has been developing alternative fuel technologies for ground vehicles, such as a high-tech steam engine that can run on a variety of fuels, including biofuels. The Army is contracting with Cyclone Power Technologies developer of the all-fuel, clean-tech Cyclone Engine, and Advent Power have been awarded a contract to develop a compact 10kW auxiliary power unit designed to increase operating efficiencies and decrease fuel usage of ground combat vehicles.
The committee sensibly voted to ban the Department of Defense from purchasing alternative fuels that cost more than traditional fossil fuels.
The Air Force has been test-flying a 50-50 blend of camelina and jet fuel in public displays of its high-performance Thunderbirds demonstration team. Camelina is a weedy plant in the mustard family.
The Navy has been testing a variety of biofuels in ships and aircraft, including its Blue Angels demonstration team. Along with camelina, the Navy’s tests include algae and waste grease. The Navy has spent a whole year in an all-out effort to launch a Green Strike Group by mid-June, in time to participate in the multinational Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) maritime exercise. Every member of the Green Strike Group, including both ships and aircraft, must run on green fuel.
When the Commander-in-Chief supports clean green fuels, the military salutes and says yes sir. But the world has changed, or rather our knowledge of the energy situation in the world has changed. America is awash in accessible fossil fuels. The Navy attended a “Sustainable Maritime Fuels Forum in Australia earlier this Spring, and toured local biofuel facilities. Yet Australia has become a fossil fuel powerhouse, with plentiful resources for hundreds of years.
Governments are picking winners and losers with their usual wisdom. One after another of President Obama’s “green investments” is going broke. Europe is backing away from wind and solar as fast as they can— even sunny countries like Spain. Both wind and solar rely on fossil fuel energy as the required 24/7 backup. The math doesn’t work. Without subsidies and mandates for fleets or utilities to purchase biofuels, there would be no market.
The House Armed Services Committee has it right. If all this alternative energy costs way more than our own traditional fossil fuel; subsidies and mandates from the government to attempt to force their bright ideas on an unwilling military, that don’t, as yet work, is folly. Our military has enough problems with ill-advised downsizing, presidential leaks, and failure to understand the military’s mission. They don’t need to be messing around with alternative fuels as well.
It is very odd that at the same time the military is being forced to downsize, and desperately needed replacement of needed equipment is cancelled, we are indulging in wispy ideas that small experiments in alternative fuels can be expanded to supply massive quantities of fuel to run the military. The math doesn’t work. Growing crops to compete with fossil fuel takes vast acreages of land needed for food; and is only conceivable if the price of fossil fuel is extraordinarily high. The president is trying to make that happen, but the people aren’t going to go along.
Filed under: Freedom, History, Military, The Constitution, The United States | Tags: Photographic Essays, The American Civil War, The Origins of Memorial Day
It was after the worst war in our history that we began to officially celebrate Decoration Day, when the graves of the fallen were decorated with flowers, and ceremonies of remembrance were held. It was three years after the Civil War ended on May 5, 1868 that Major General John A. Logan, head of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), declared that Decoration Day should be Observed, and the last Monday in May was chosen because flowers would be in bloom all across the country.
The first national observance was held that year at Arlington National Cemetery, just across the Potomac River from Washington D.C.. The Arlington Mansion, the former home of General Robert E. Lee, was draped in mourning. Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant presided over the ceremonies, and after the speeches, children from the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Orphan Home and members of the GAR made their way through the cemetery strewing flowers on both Union and Confederate graves, reciting prayers and singing hymns.
There were so many fallen, the traditional numbers were 618,222 — 360,000 from the North, 258,000 from the South. Demographic historian J.David Hacker combed through newly digitized census data from the 19th century, and recalculated the death toll and increased it by more than 20 percent — to 750,000. At that, Dr.Hacker made assumptions and the numbers are only an educated estimate. The data suggested that 650,000 to 850,000 died as a result of the war. He chose 750,00 as the midpoint. That meant 37,000 more widows and 90,000 more orphans.
Here is a fascinating photographic essay about the places of the Civil War 150 years ago, with 48 images. Photography was still in its infancy, but war correspondents produced thousands of images bringing the harsh realities of the frontlines to those at home in a new way. Remember that the United States was only 85 years old at the time. Here are some of the people of the War, the generals and the ordinary soldiers, the slaves, the President, the heroes and the dead.
I lost four great, great uncles in the Civil War, two on each side. One in the battle around Richmond where he was badly wounded and died from his wounds. His older brother and brother-in-law drove a wagon up from South Carolina, near the Georgia border, across South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia to bring his body home. His brother was killed at Snickers’ Gap, the only Confederate to die in that exchange. Their younger brother was in the South Carolina Calvary and survived the war.
On the Union side, the Ohio soldiers fought in the war down the Mississippi valley. One, I know only as “Uncle Frank who was killed in the war” for I have a tintype portrait. The other, I believe from the dates, was wounded at Chickamauga and died from his wounds.
War is terrible, and none was ever more terrible than the War between the States. but the nation healed slowly, and remained a strong union. “As we here highly resolve, these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Economy, Politics, The United States | Tags: Death of Hope, Election 2012, Obama's Economy
Filed under: Capitalism, Economy, Freedom, History, The Constitution, The United States | Tags: "Profit" is Not a Dirty Word, Job Retraining, Misunderstanding
Forgive me, but this is so embarrassing. Barack Obama has just carefully explained that he has no understanding whatsoever of business. Like many leftists, he regards profit as something rather distasteful. The good things are when government retrains all those who have lost jobs due to private enterprise laying people off. Government investing money to encourage investment, encourage innovation, those are good things, aren’t they?
The only reason for a business to exist is to earn a profit, whether for the sole businessman or for huge groups of investors. If there is no profit, the business cannot operate. You have to earn enough to pay expenses, and have a little left over to live on, and to keep the business going until the next day when the process begins again.
Without a profit, a business cannot pay the wages of the workers. Without wages, the workers cannot pay taxes. Without taxes, there in nothing with which to enable a government to exist.
All those wise bureaucrats in government are there because of the profit in private business. Their comfortable offices, fancy buildings, government cars and hefty salaries come from business profits distributed in wages to workers who pay taxes to support the government. The government has no money of its own. The whole caboodle is supported by a vast array of taxes and fees and payments and charges, regulations and mandates that come from the profits of ordinary people making voluntary exchanges in the hopes of making a profit. Profit is not a dirty word. It is the essential driving force.
Mr. Obama also misunderstands the job of a president. It is not his job to figure out how to retrain people who lose their jobs. Most of the job losses have been caused by government in the first place. The government does not care to admit it, but this recession was caused by government’s good intentions to get everybody into owning their own homes — whether they could afford it or not. That was the vast gasbag that puffed-up a vast housing bubble that the banks and mortgage industry and Wall Street tried to swallow, but in the end, couldn’t.
The government is remarkably unsuccessful at job training. There are currently 47 duplicative, or overlapping job programs that are mot particularly successful. It is not a president’s job to retrain people, nor to pick companies to favor with taxpayer money, nor is it his job to pick winners and losers among businesses. It is not the president’s job to decide what form of energy the country needs or should have. The market will decide. If the marketplace will not willingly pay for a newer or cleaner form of energy, then its time has not come. It is not a president’s job to decide what kind of cars we should drive nor if we should abandon our cars for some other form of transportation.
Our government is divided into three equal branches, for good and historically careful reasons. The powers of each branch are delineated in the Constitution. There are limits to the expansion of government allowed under the commerce clause. The Supreme Court is going to be kept very busy. It would be wise to read the fusty old document. that will be 275 years old this September. I know that the left believes that it should be a “living document” so they can adjust it to their very own tastes, but it is meant for all generations — not just the current temporary one. It has survived good generations and less good ones as well, and it will, with our help, survive this one.
Filed under: Freedom, Health Care, Law, Politics, The Constitution, The United States | Tags: Cardinals Speak Out, Catholic Institutions, Obama Administration
Twelve legal challenges have been filed today by 43 plaintiffs against the ObamaCare regulation that requires health care plans to include abortion-inducing drugs, contraceptives, and sterilization procedures. The University of Notre Dame was prominent among the challengers. Many religious institutions object on religious or moral grounds to providing, paying for and facilitating coverage for such procedures.
In addition there are several other institutions that have already filed lawsuits, with the Becket Fund for religious Liberty: Belmont Abbey College, Colorado Christian University, Eternal Word Television Network and Ave Maria University. Hercules Industries has filed suit as a family owned business that would be forced to violate its religious beliefs in February in Newland v. Sebelius in the U.S. District Court for Colorado.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has called the ObamaCare mandate an “unprecedented” violation of religious freedom by the federal government.
The case seems very strong that the mandate is in direct conflict with the freedom of religion guaranteed by the First Amendment.
Aside from that ObamaCare does grant religious exemptions to the mandate to Muslims, the Amish, American Indians and Christian Scientists. Then there is the famous Supreme Court decision in Youngstown Steel &Tube v. Sawyer in 1952. The Court held that “the president may not rule by decree, conscripting private industry to carry out his commands. The chief executive may only execute laws passed by Congress, according to their terms. He may not make up laws of his own and then enforce them.” That would seem to squash this particular mandate, and Obama’s personal revision of it, quite thoroughly.
The plaintiffs have a lot to complain about. Freedom to practice one’s own religion is one of America’s most cherished freedoms. It is not about contraception, abortion-inducing drugs , or sterilization. These services are widely available in the United States, and nothing prevents the government from making them available. But Barack Obama may not decree that religious institutions must violate their beliefs. The first phrase of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, reads “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” And only Congress gets to make laws. That is not a power of the Executive Branch.
The administration clearly thought that this fit right into their silly “War on Women” theme. They assumed that the Catholics would fall in line, and claims that conservatives were trying to deny women the right to contraceptives because they objected to taxpayers being forced to pay for something that women should pay for themselves at $9 a month or less, would emphasize how conservatives were against women’s health.
Notre Dame’s president Fr. John Jenkins stated firmly:
Many of our faculty, staff and students — both Catholic and non-Catholic — have made conscientious decisions to use contraceptives. As we assert the right to follow our conscience, we respect their right to follow theirs. And we believe that, if the Government wishes to provide such services, means are available that do not compel religious organizations to serve as its agents. We do not seek to impose our religious beliefs on others; we simply ask that the Government not impose its values on the University when those values conflict with our religious teachings. We have engaged in conversations to find a resolution that respects the consciences of all and we will continue to do so.
This filing is about the freedom of a religious organization to live its mission, and its significance goes well beyond any debate about contraceptives. For if we concede that the Government can decide which religious organizations are sufficiently religious to be awarded the freedom to follow the principles that define their mission, then we have begun to walk down a path that ultimately leads to the undermining of those institutions. For if one Presidential Administration can override our religious purpose and use religious organizations to advance policies that undercut our values, then surely another Administration will do the same for another very different set of policies, each time invoking some concept of popular will or the public good, with the result these religious organizations become mere tools for the exercise of government power, morally subservient to the state, and not free from its infringements. If that happens, it will be the end of genuinely religious organizations in all but name.
If this case winds up before the Supreme Court, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli will have his hands full trying to defend this governmental usurpation of powers.
Filed under: Capitalism, Economy, Europe, Politics, The United States | Tags: Camp David Meeting, G8 Summit, Growth/ Jobs and Deficits
The Group of Eight met at Camp David on May 18 and 19 to be lectured by President Obama on how to solve their economic problems. just like he has. At least previously he had no compunctions about telling European heads of state how to manage. I’m sure he advised them to do more Keynesian stimulus — and to raise taxes, particularly on the wealthy. I don’t know any such thing, of course, but it’s a good bet.
Obama does not change his mind. His ideas are set in concrete. In spite of the failure of the previous stimulus, he still wants another. The Group of Eight issued “The Camp David Declaration” which says that “they need to take action to boost confidence and nurture recovery with reforms to raise productivity, growth and demand within a sustainable, credible and non-inflationary macroeconomic framework. We commit to fiscal responsibility and, in this context, we support sound and sustainable fiscal consolidation policies that take into account countries’ evolving economic conditions and underpin confidence and economic recovery.” There, doesn’t that give you a great burst of confidence.
There are 40 points of blather that essentially says that they’ll keep on trying to figure out what to do, and tried to hit all the hot points. They are opposed to the bad things, supportive of the good things, have deep concerns about Iran, the DPRK, and Syria and call on them to straighten out. They note that the people of North Africa have aspirations, and encourage them to have democratic and participatory government while under the sway of the Muslim Brotherhood. And, of course they want to promote growth and jobs, and their governments need to take action.
There was, Obama said, “a consensus for progress.”
We know it is possible — in part, based on our own experience here. In my earliest days in office, we took decisive steps to confront our own financial crisis — from making banks submit to stress tests to rebuilding their capital — and we put in place some of the strongest financial reforms since the Great Depression.
At the same time, we worked to get our own fiscal house in order in a responsible way. And through it all, even as we worked to stabilize the financial sector and bring down our deficits and debt over the longer term, we stayed focused on growing the economy and creating jobs in the immediate term.
Of course, we still have a lot of work to do. Too many of our people are still looking for jobs that pay the bills. Our deficits are still too high. But after shrinking by nearly 9 percent the quarter before I took office, America’s economy has now grown for almost three consecutive years. After losing hundreds of thousands of jobs a month, our businesses have created more than 4 million jobs over the past 26 months. Exports have surged and manufacturers are investing in America again.
There you go. Our economy is all recovered, we just have some tidying up to do. If the Europeans, whose situation is more complicated, will just do as Obama has done, all will be well.
Obama seems to have a separate film in which he is the hero, playing in his head, and he doesn’t understand that we’re watching the tragedy in an adjacent theater and it is building to a desperate climax. It’s not a good show, and a lot of the audience is already filing out.
