The Upcoming Debates -- Obama

In the upcoming debates, there are ten questions I would like to be asked of Barack Obama:

1) It's been speculated that you have a borrowed Social Security number since it was issued in Connecticut, a state in which you never have resided, and at a time when you were a child in Hawaii.  How do you explain away this enigma?

2) You have played golf nearly 120 times during your White House tenure ... about once every 10 days. Add this to your many vacations, your pick-up basketball games, your recent constant fund-raising trips, your frequent White House celebrations, and your many other distractions.  Do you believe that you have paid sufficient attention to your job-one during these difficult times?

3) Do you still believe that Israel should return to its 1948 borders ... and is Jerusalem Israel's capital?

4) Since your well-over one trillion dollars of government pump-priming spending has not caused an economic recovery in the United States ... do you still believe in Keynesian economics?

5) Seeing that the U.S. Supreme Court has decreed that the penalties specified under Obamacare are a tax, do you still claim that you have not raised taxes on the middle class?  Or, to the contrary, if you endorse the Court's decision, are you then willing to reform this legislation to remove this tax?

6) You formed the Simpson-Bowles commission to help solve our burgeoning national debt crisis.  You then ignored their recommendations and have instead proposed raising taxes on those earning more than $250,000 as your only solution.  Have you any other suggestions ... such as some specifics for reforming the U.S. federal entitlement programs?

7) You have been widely quoted as saying "you didn't build that" and accused of being a statist.  Did you, in fact, write your two books by yourself ... or did you have ghostwriter help?

8) In order to move toward a balanced federal budget, would you pare back spending in the discretionary portion of the federal budget … if so, where ... and how far will you still go with Defense Department cuts?

9) The Consumer Protection Agency was created by Congress and Elizabeth Warren over two years ago to eliminate the risks to our financial systems like those created by the sub-prime mortgage crisis.  Recently, two new financial shocks have occurred -- J.P. Morgan’s over five billion dollar trading loss and the Libor interest rate fixing scandal.  Is more regulation really the answer to such shenanigans?

10) Two of your foreign policy initiatives that have not succeeded have been your and Hillary Clinton’s “reset’ attempt with Russia ... and reestablishing diplomatic relations with Syria … only weeks before the current savagery began there.  What foreign policy initiatives then are you most proud of?

What Are the Chances ...

that the Federal Reserve Bank will initiate a third round of Quantitative Easing (QE3) anytime soon?  The New York Times weighs the pluses and minuses in a thoughtful analysis (see: NY Times Article).  Basically quantitative easing consists of the Fed issuing more debt and, simultaneously, buying it up so that more money is placed in circulation.  This makes the stock market go up, drives down interest rates even further, and weakens the dollar.(which seems acceptable since the dollar has been kicking the Euro's backside of late.)

However, the Fed is just one horse in an economic troika team that includes the fiscal side of the federal government and U.S. industry.  These other two horses are clearly not pulling their weight ... the administration and Congress because they are locked in a cage-match fight over whether Keynesian economics will ever work (it won't) ... and U.S. industry because it sees the new-taxes cliff looming in January and a much smaller chance that Obamacare will vanish (also add a hostile-to-business Obama administration).

My guess is that there is a strong possibility that the Fed will pull the lever on QE3 no later than its September Open Market meeting for no other reason than it too is a political animal (as we recently discovered the Supreme Court to be).  Fed Chairman Bernanke (and his sidekick, Little Timmy Geithner at Treasury) want to keep their sinecures and there is almost no chance that they will if Romney is elected.  Therefore, despite QE1 and QE2 not really pulling the U.S. out of the financial doldrums, Bernanke will force through QE3 to at least give Obama a fighting chance for four more years.  This is all The Barry will need to pulverize fully the U.S. economy.

Data Drives Out Speculation

The Barry took off the gloves last night and pretty much gave the speech that two days ago I predicted he would make (see: Laser-like Focus).  He kicked off his 2012 campaign with the proposal to "spend" $447 billion of money our government doesn't have to create jobs.  But as one can see from the above chart I "borrowed" from the Powerline blog (see: Powerline) there appears to be a clear inverse relationship between such Keynesian economics and job creation.  I even think Obama's proposal to continue the cuts in the FICA tax is more a political move than an economic one.  Can one seriously say that the extra few dollars a week in everyone's paycheck is going to cure our economic malaise?  Or will the long-term damage that this does to the Social Security System negate any short-term "stimulus effect." And, for that matter, has the FICA tax cut last December helped one bit in creating jobs?  I don't see any evidence to support this notion.

The more I reflect on the United States jobs problem, the more I am convinced it is a policy issue and not a process issue.  Our current government unfortunately has continually exhibited an anti-business bias in its day-to-day actions -- from trying to stop Boeing from building the Superliner in South Carolina ... to its recent rapping of Gibson Guitar's knuckles in Tennessee over the wood that it uses ... to the stopping of oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico.  And, if one takes a serious look at the tax increases that The Barry has or plans to impose on U.S. businesses (if you doubt me, please take a gander at: Obama Tax Hikes), one can understand their reticence to invest in the future and thus grow jobs.

I'm sorry President Obama, even though you "hope" it will get you re-elected, more of the same just doesn't cut it in my book.

Further Thought:  One might add to the list of Obama's anti-business actions ... the recently-passed health care law.  Again, to see exactly how this act works against U.S. companies, refer back to the link above referring to Obama Tax Hikes and see how oppressive this unilateral action has/will become to capitalism.

Ditch the Republicans?

Yesterday at a Democrat fundraiser, our august prexy, Barack Obama, gave his partisan argument as to why a Democrat Congress deserves to win the elections in November. Basically, he said that Bush and the rest of the Republicans drove our economy into the ditch in 2008. Obama was subsequently elected and thus he [sigh] was required to patch up this accident. With that sly grin of his, he went on to say that the Democrats have gotten the car (our economy) out of the ditch and back on the asphalt. And he added with a snide guffaw … now the Republicans want the keys back. In his best sophomoric manner, he said, “No! You can’t drive. We don’t want to have to go back into the ditch. We just got the car out.”

Perhaps what he said has a modicum of metaphoric truth to it, however please allow me to modify and extend his remarks with the following observations:

- The Republicans were not alone in driving our economy into the ditch. Clearly, by insisting on the irrational expansion of sub-prime mortgages, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd and their cronies in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did their share of reckless driving. The major sin that Bush and his Republican compatriots in Congress can be accused of is not pushing back hard enough.

- Yes, the Democrats have stopped our economy from sliding further into the ditch. But to say that we are back on the asphalt is, at best, political hyperbole. At worst, it is demagoguery. Economic growth is clearly anemic and unemployment still hovers around 10%. In fact, we are in serious jeopardy of slipping back into negative GNP growth. And this is occurring after monstrous government deficit spending that cannot be sustained. Such a Keynesian economic experiment has once again been proven misguided … and if the Bush tax cuts are left to expire this coming January, it is quite likely that Obama’s stretch limo will also end up back in the economic ditch.

- Even public opinion has now decided that it is Obama’s recession. See: Obama's Fault. After 18 months in office, Obama needs to stop pushing his ultra-liberal agenda at the expense of job seekers and economic growth. He is rapidly losing Bush as a scapegoat and would be advised to start accepting responsibility for our economic malaise. Perhaps, as Obama was decrying at the fundraiser, the Republicans might make an equivalent mess of things if they win back majorities in Congress this fall, but then we would still have some hope that things will finally change. I kind of suspect that if the tea partiers have anything to say about it, things will.