posted March 17, 2009 02:04 PM            

For years, going back to 2003, demoscats and their willing accomplices in the butt boy press have been badmouthing the US economy. It made no difference to them that the economy was booming during most of those years, good in others and that the US economy was better under Bush..low inflation, low unemployment, high home ownership, rising wages, rising stock market and all the rest of the economic indicators. They were making political statements attempting to drive Bush job approval ratings down by convincing Americans the economy was in poor shape. They made statements like...the poor economy, the slow economy, the slowing economy, the uncertain economy, the bad economy, economic recession, the failing economy and one nut at one of the propaganda arms of the demoscat party talked about the depression..in present tense..in 2004 or 2005.

The facts were that the economy was better than the averages of the 1960's, 1970's, 1980's and 1990's with great economic growth and more tax revenues flowing into federal coffers from business and individuals than at any time in history. Those tax revenues were produced by a booming economy, not economic depression or a down trending economy.

Still, those comments from demoscats and their press butt boys were not made for the truth of the matter but for political purposes.

Like the Chinese water torture, one drop at a time, those statements were intended to convince Americans the economy was failing and became a self fulfilling scheme. They finally alarmed Americans who began to cut back on purchases and save more. Businesses heard the new demoscat Congress loud and clear from 2006 onward. What they heard was higher taxes, less business deductions, higher capital gains taxes, rescinding the Bush tax cuts and generally punishing business for being successful in creating jobs, expanding operations, higher sales numbers and all the other job destroying tactics demoscats employ to get themselves elected.

Business owners and corporate CEOs aren't stupid people and because they aren't stupid people as none could be and survive in a highly competitive business climate in a capitalist nation, they reacted, cut back on hiring, cut back on planned expansions, slowed down on borrowing and all the other things people do when they expect hard times.

On top of that, there is a normal business cycle in the American economy which can be tracked all the way back to the 1800s. There was a time when Congressional Democrats were Capitalists and understood the US economy and the normal business cycles. Not today however. Now, we have a group of nutty putty Marxist Socialists who have never produced a single thing of value, who have spent their entire lives in government and who think they are in command of the economy. Indeed, they are striving for a statist command economy, a Marxist Socialist economy. So, they don't understand what's happening. They also don't have a clue about the business cycle. The 5 stages of the business cycle are...Growth/Expansion...Peak...
Recession/Contraction...Trough/Bottom and Recovery..in that order. From Peak to Peak or from Trough/Bottom to Trough/Bottom averages about 55 months. There are reasons the business cycle lasts about 55 months average but that's another story.

Now, when you contemplate the normal business cycle and add the badmouthing of the economy by demoscats..for years, including O'Bomber..into the mix, bad things stack up and eventually turn what would have been a normal downturn/recession into a deep recession, or worse.

But, there was more, much more. demoscats also meddled in the housing markets, one of the biggest sectors of the economy. They insisted loans be made to those who had no chance of making mortgage payments, protected Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from any regulatory oversight and fought off attempts by Bush and other Republicans going back to 2003 to get these 2 creations of Congress under proper oversight and control. The result was predictable and was in fact predicted..by Republicans and economists as well as lenders who had to alter their lending guidelines at the insistence of demoscats in Congress who threatened them with phony investigations and other harassment.

So now, we have the usual and normal business cycle, demoscats talking down the economy for most of 5 years and demoscat meddling in the housing sector.

How unfortunate for demoscats that everything came to a head at the same time.
demoscats finally convinced Americans the economy was going south, convinced businesses they were going to raise business taxes, convinced Americans the Bush tax cuts were going to be rescinded AND the meltdown of the housing markets occurred when the government was forced to intervene and take over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. That lead to a meltdown in the financial sector. But, demoscats were far from finished with their badmouthing. As late as last week, O'Bomber and demoscats in Congress were still talking about a financial crisis rivaling the Great Depression. This was done to get the O'Bomber Marxist Socialist economic plans through Congress and all the follow on Socialist spending as well...to stave off catastrophe, so they said.

What's funny about all of this is that Socialist demoscats thought they could just "Declare" the crisis over and it would be "over". Indeed, O'Bomber trotted out an administration official a few days ago to say.."the fundamentals of the economy are strong". What's funnier is that a few months ago, McCain said the exact same thing and there was howling, screeching and shrieking by O'Bomber and other Socialist demoscats.

So, after spending years attempting to convince Americans the sky was falling..for political reasons and threatening business with gigantic tax increases, Socialist demoscats thought they could restore confidence in the US economy and end the recession/contraction by "Proclamation".

Now, O'Bomber is giving Americans whiplash. Yesterday the economy was heading for another depression rivaling the Great Depression and today..."the fundamentals of the economy are strong".

Americans who have seen about 11 Trillion dollars of their net worth evaporate into thin air are pi$$ed. Normally, Americans don't pay too much attention to politics. They go to work, kick back on weekends and generally live their lives as they see fit.

Now, they're looking for answers. It's not lost on Americans the demoscat Congress has been in power since 2006. It's not lost on Americans this demoscat Congress and O'Bomber have already spent more than 1.5 Trillion bailing out banks, AIG, auto makers, have proposed an almost 4 Trillion dollar budget and promised to spend more..like $865 Billion on a "down payment" for a Socialist Health Care System.

This economy is quickly becoming the O'Bomber economy in Americans minds and O'Bomber's job approval ratings are free falling. I don't know how job approval ratings for Congress can fall much from where they already were...which was in the toilet for the last 18 months. Americans are skeptical and unconvinced the economy is improving or is going to improve over the course of 2009 and perhaps even in 2010.

demoscats got what they wanted. They got control of Congress and the White House by creating perceptions of doom.

Now, they've got a tiger by the tail and Americans are throwing O'Bomber tea parties all over America.

posted March 17, 2009 05:11 PM            

How the tables have turned. In September 2008, when GOP presidential nominee John McCain said "the fundamentals of our economy are strong," unemployment was 6.1 percent, the credit crunch had yet to reach the point that prompted President George W. Bush to propose a bailout, and Team Obama proclaimed that an out-of-touch McCain "just doesn't get it" on the economy.

Now with unemployment at 8.1 percent, the $700 billion-plus Bush bailout has been followed by the $787 billion Obama stimulus package, and some D.C. Democrats already are arguing for another stimulus package because the first Obama stimulus bill didn't do the trick. Yet top Obama economic adviser Christina Romer told "Meet the Press" on Sunday, "Of course, the fundamentals (of the U.S. economy) are sound in the sense that the American workers are sound, we have a good capital stock, we have good technology." (Those qualifying statements sound a lot like the McCain explanation for his positive diagnosis of the economy -- "that the workers of America are the fundamentals of the economy.")

President Obama himself said last week, "If we are keeping focused on all the fundamentally sound aspects of our economy ... then we're going to get through this."

If Obama is confident about the soundness of the U.S. economy, does that mean he "just doesn't get it?" No, it means that he is president. Now he has to pay the political price for incessant badmouthing of the U.S. economy. Now he has to prop up the very system at which he had been sniping for years.

And I do mean years. Of course Obama spent 2007 and 2008 talking down the economy -- he was running in a Democratic primary. But as far back as 2002, before he became a senator, Obama suggested that Bush was waging war against Saddam Hussein "to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression." Factually, Obama was incorrect. There had been four bigger one-month drops since the Depression -- but there was little downside to over-trashing the economy, albeit inaccurately, during the Bush years.

Now Obama owns the economy -- so the economy fear-mongering must end. As top White House economic adviser Larry Summers told the Brookings Institution, "We need to instill the trust that allows opportunity to overcome fear and enables families and businesses to again imagine a brighter future." In what he called "the central paradox of financial crisis," Summers observed "that while the problem was caused by excessive complacency and excessive optimism, what we need today is more optimism and more confidence."

That sounds like a column I wrote last September when I thought Democrats were being overly pessimistic about an economy that had been wounded by a government loan to AIG (then $85 billion), a $30 billion bailout in May for JP Morgan to buy Bear Stearns and the pricey shoring up of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Clearly, I was wrong about looming damage of overly swapped bad credit and Wall Street panic.

Six months later, two Washington administrations have thrown another $2 trillion into the pit -- and some Democrats are arguing that more spending is needed to stimulate the economy.

On the one hand, I think Summers is right. Fear and panic are stalling an engine that still has plenty of kick left -- but it won't start purring until the public believes again.

posted March 18, 2009 03:44 PM            

Aside from Americans, that tiger (along with actual real-time, fiscal irresponsibility) seems to be ruffling the feathers of a giant Chinese, security-breathing dragon.

I was eating some chinese food for lunch today, actually. When I got to the fortune from the cookie, it read "LAVISH SPENDING MAY BE DISASTROUS, BE CAREFUL."