With Obama, It’s Another Day, Another Dolor
PJM readers will be fully aware by now that I harbor deep suspicions about Barack Obama. I began following his career when he was still the junior senator from Illinois, regarding him not as an interesting human being but as a fascinating political specimen, a phenomenon of sorts. I didn’t trust him from the start. His dubious voting record in the Senate only exacerbated my suspicions, as did the thickening dossier of files and reports I compiled on his speeches, declarations, political antecedents, friends, and mentors, past activities as a “community organizer,” business deals, conjoint nepotism, and, most crucially, his deliberate suppression of much of his curriculum vitae. Despite the magic spell that he cast on a majority of the electorate, I considered him as a man who was all wrong for America and whose ideas were simply not a fit. He was, it seemed evident to me, out of step with the tenor of American history and the general orientation of the American heartland.
By the time he entered the Democratic nomination race I knew three things for a certainty: that he would trounce Hillary, that he would win the presidency, and that he would be an unmitigated disaster for the nation he purports to govern. It didn’t take extraordinary prescience to arrive at these conclusions, merely an immunity to populist hype, a degree of paying attention, and a bit of common sense. And had I any lingering doubts, they would have been quickly put to rest by Michelle Malkin’s meticulous exposé, Culture of Corruption.
Almost every decision, both foreign and domestic, Obama has made since assuming the presidency has been, to put it mildly, a mistake, leading to the reduction of American stature and power projection in the international arena, mounting social tension, and a looming economic implosion on the home front. The president’s most significant talent, so far as I can see, is a penchant for soaring rhetoric delivered in metrical cadences, an emphatic stress falling regularly at the end of his sentences like a kind of iambic clincher. This gift should have qualified him not for the presidency but for the post of White House press secretary. Properly speaking, he should be where the flippant and unctuous Robert Gibbs is now.
The president’s most recent faux pas is very much in keeping with his repertoire of false steps and fiscal blunders, namely the intention to impose a tax on the financial industry to recoup his own misapplied bailout money. In his usual manner, Obama has gussied over this piratical sortie with impressive terminology, calling it a Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee. But there is, first of all, no indication whatsoever of how these recuperated funds will find their way back into the pockets of American taxpayers — it’s a safe bet they will never see their money again — and secondly, the predictable effect of the proposal once implemented will be to hamper the restoration of American banks to financial health.
For this “recovery strategy” furnishes a perfect disincentive to continue investing in bank stocks, which are now beginning to look distinctly menopausal, breaking out in hot flushes and feeling jittery. Financial Post editor Terence Corcoran has no doubt that Obama persists in bungling his mandate: “The tax looks like a good clean populist swing at bankers. What it really is is a strike against U.S. economic recovery prospects.” Moreover, as Peter Sorrentino of Huntington Asset Advisors points out, “The reality is that most or all of this tax will be borne by customers. … This is fundamentally a punitive endeavor.”
Foreign banks would be hit as well, including the leading Canadian banking institution, Toronto Dominion, where I have snuggled away my own small investment portfolio. It is estimated that this tax will cost TD $1 billion over the next decade. “Small change in bank circles,” Corcoran observes, “but punitive and discriminatory nonetheless — especially since TD had nothing to do with the U.S. financial meltdown.” The result of this latest levy should be obvious. Foreign banks will become increasingly wary as players in the American banking sector, reassessing the viability of their bank acquisitions and further diminishing the prospect of economic recovery in the U.S., at least for the foreseeable future.
Writing in a National Post op-ed, Conrad Black lays it down that “economics is half psychology and half grade three arithmetic.” I am neither a psychologist nor an economist, but I’m quite competent in grade three arithmetic and have taken a sufficient number of psychology and economics classes in university on which to ground a commonsense judgment. And it is simply this: the new bank tax would be nothing more than a form of legal extortion, masquerading as a feel-good economic policy designed to enhance the president’s standing as someone who has the people’s best interests at heart.
Very nicely put, David.
The left has a penchant for dragging out their boxes of ornamental sympathies to dress up their “populism” tree and declare a holiday of “good will” toward the great unwashed at their whim.
The Massachusetts Mashup of Tea Party resistance fighters, awakened Reagan Democrats and suddenly incentivized independents…threw a bucket of water on the steaming leftists, who were rolling through a laundry list of statist implementations like a Panzer division in the French countryside.
Ambush legislation, rushed to vote without debate or even a serious reading, pushing a midnight wheelbarrow around at various liberal/Blue Dog holdout hideouts… those Democrat trough stops where bagmen unloaded some pirate’s booty, to ensure swift and safe passage.
The Massachusetts Mashup stirred some of those old time tinsel feelings, yet again. The ornamental sympathy box was dragged from the attics and cellars…and out popped the tinsel of populist outrage. “Those bankers” were to be flogged with yet another “fee”.
“Republicans, our dear and worthy “other voice”…need to be part of the process. My stars and little garters…how shy they have been up until now. Speak up, lads…I’m hear to listen…as I ALWAYS have been.”
Ornamental sympathies, just a moment ago they were so frivolous and unnecessary. Sigh…but, I suppose one must do what one must do, to educate the poor slobs…they know nothing of how to care for themselves.
They do like the tough talk with enemies and the soft whispering as if we were really friends. Laughable, they actually believe the “educated class” might truly befriend them, but…they ARE made of such easy virtue, merely a whisper in the ear from one of us…and they swoon and throw off their knickers. Fear not, comrades…I have retrieved the boxes of ornamental sympathies…and while YOU may not convince them, forget not…you got me.
I…am the greatest tinsel hanger in American history.
” Mr. Solway this is about me and my transformative dream for an egalitarian Amerika. Please stop your hate or you will be reported to the Human Rights Commission of Canada. I have friends there”.
Sincerely,
Barack ( last name withheld)
What a load of bs. Just quoting malkin proves that you are psychologically damaged Go to a shrink.
There is an old saying that a people are worthy of their leaders. It seems that in a democracy it may be all the more true.
When one looks at Obamas career, it should not surprise that he’s attempting to destroy in order to ontroduce -statism.
In his homestate, Annenberg challenge ended in failure (100 million loss, with Ayers help).
Teaching his stromtroopers, by defending them in court, agitating, and causing havoc on banks (extortion), was part of the fall of the ‘fiancial bubble’.
Learning from his history, and what he’s capable of, his intentions are pure evil. As he stated in audi ‘white greed runs the world’, questioning his motives should be clear to anyone, who’s not a koolaid drinker.
There is NO doubt that two twin devils are at work in Obama’s bag of tricks-to bring US supremacy to its knees, AND to ensure that he gets re-elected under a nefarious populist agenda, the results of which will be mostly felt AFTER, heaven forbid, he gets re-elected.
A diabolical plot which reaches stratospheric heights.
the thought came to mind the big O as wimpy asking for a hamburger today and we will have to pay on Tuesday. beware of Greeks bearing gifts? his state of the Onion address, had a lot of layers and i didn’t know whether to laugh, sh@t or go blind. i worked with some ex cons who would throw a bunch of BS out there and wait for someone to respond to it and then refine their BS to focus on what resonated with the person. when i first heard our illustrious con in chief speak i thought to myself, what flavor of snake oil is this guy selling? so far i haven’t heard him say anything to change my mind about him.
good writting
Obama’s vision of himself is as Savior of All Things, thus he is seen to be constantly devising policies to “save the day”, this day, that day, some day.
We must always be in some form of crisis, so he and sundry policy wonks can ride in on the white horses and appear to ameliorate the situation.
Basically, he serves his own megalomania.
“The tax looks like a good clean populist swing at bankers. What it really is is a strike against U.S. economic recovery prospects…This is fundamentally a punitive endeavor.”
What did you expect from a thin-skinned authoritarian who attempts to control the world through the exercise of pissant power ? From a community organizer whose orientation is towards orchestrating “punitive” strikes against perceived miscreants ?
No matter. In the president’s attempt to buff his tarnished image, which took another hit after the Democratic loss in the Massachusetts Senate election, he has chosen to impose a fiscal operating tariff on the very institutions whose effective functioning and increased liquidity are essential to their rejuvenation.
It’s hard not to see Obama’s flurry of banking initiatives as “reactive” against another democrat loss in MA.
“…but the twist is that it is passed off as a public boon.”
Destruction couched as salvation.
…as Obama — apart from printing money like crazy — acts to restrain the potential vigor of the economy by placing it under swelling burdens of tribute and tying it up in knots of regulation…And he may well succeed in his objective. But its effect will be to add another nail to the coffin that the undertaker-in-chief is preparing for his country.
The economy, under the tutelage of a ideologue who said during the campaign that we could solve the oil crisis through proper tire inflation. And the rubes went for him anyway. And continue to defend him.
Where are the checks and balances that would return Executive power to its Constitutional parameters ?
The most cynical of cynics see Obama’s attempts to strangle the economy as intentional.
The Cloward-Piven strategy is essentially a phrase that summarizes David Solway’s brilliant piece.
The problem is that the same strategy for capital destruction is being recognized umpteen times by different very smart people and then is left out of the greater policy formulation by those opposing Mr. Obama. If this process continues, everyone will understand exactly how we came to our sorry state after our sorry state becomes our mundane way of life.
3. sid.
“What a load of bs. Just quoting malkin proves that you are psychologically damaged Go to a shrink.”
Hi moho. You know sid too?
We must all be punished. That’s Obama in a nutshell. The why of it is beside the point. The race is on between how much damage he can do and November 2010. Not that that election, God willing, will shut him down; there will still be his czars doing God knows what to us till he is ousted in 2012. Only that the worst will be over after November 2010. On the other hand, should Obama and his henchmen/handlers invent a major crisis that can only be contained by the institution of emergency measures before November 2010 — we are finished. It is that serious.
Obama found “populism” after he had already spend a year permitting the banksters to keep their off-balance sheet losses off balance, rewrite accounting rules to avoid real market losses (and simultaneously create a huge shadow inventory in houses that keeps inflationary prices artificially high), borrow money at near 0% interest, receive huge infusions of TARP money, and ratchet rates to consumers to pay for their losses. The banksters he supported also created a carry trade with their discount cash, and had the federal government take responsibility for a huge part of their toxic assets. Obama refuses to cut any part of federal spending that will risk votes, so entitlements and pensions and social spending continue to grow unabated while the real economy shrinks. Meanwhile, the independent-my-ass Fed monetizes the debt and debases the currency to bail out the regime and their profligate spending. He nominated a treasury secretary who gave some of the largest banks a full 100% payout from a bankrupt company at taxpayer expense, and then did everything in his power to conceal what occurred. Everything Obama did in his first term was to the benefit of Wall St. because he is in way over his head and the Wall St. scared him into giving them whatever they wanted (“We can save the market, just give us interest free cash and let us work our financial magic”). Now he’s aware that there will be a political fallout from the last year, and he’s going to play bad cop with the bankers for a while.
The tax on the banksters is just for show, and shows just what a coward Obama actually is; he doesn’t have the stomach to take the sort of risk to get down into the trenches and fight the banksters, so he tries to tack on a tax; like throwing a snowball at the back of the bully’s head as he walks away. They will easily find a way around that lazy backdoor tax, and though Volker’s plan to restrict proprietary trading is a solid step in the right direction, I can’t imagine it will actually happen; you don’t run with the banksters this far and then turn on them when things get rough, they will cut him to pieces. BTW, if Peter Wallison actually believes those strong firewalls actually work, I have a bridge for sale he should take a look at.
@ 7. john from cinncinatti: J. wellington Wimpy
was based on real life acquaintances of the
cartoonist who penned Popeye, and illustrates
multiple (negative) qualities of human nature
which apply to the One; In the case of HCR
it would be “Lets you and him fight.” While
_I_ stand safely on the sidelines.
P.S.
There was a radio talk show
_way_ back in the Day, which
offered a prize for using a
set of clues to guess the
name of a city:
‘Gunshot’ “Gunshot’
“Gee, Boss you sure dress sharp.”
Sin Sin Natty
everything Bojangles touches turns to crap. some by design and some because he is “in” WAAAAY over his paygrade. I think Press Secretary would have been his perfect job. It requires someone, at least for a Dem prez, who can lie all the time and not blink. IF we can begin to turn the tide in November we can survive him. But a second term would be terminal for our contry I fear. I pray there are enough of us to turn this thing around.
Awwww…poor little bank earns a billion or two billion dollars and has to pay some taxes….
We should be crying about that?
Wish I was a bank…
I have to work for money .. and .. pay taxes.
What a concept eh?
Poor Citizen (#16):
Would you like some government to make a special tax (on top of all the other taxes) that applied only to YOUR industry?
16. Did you bother to read the article, or even study common sense economics? Banks, like all corporations, are completely pass-through entities, so any fee or tax assessed on them will be recouped either by raising fees and interest rates on loans, or by cutting interest rates on CDs and savings accounts.
Oblahblah’s bank control-and-tax scheme is just a micro example of leftists’ macro ambitions.
Step 1: interfere with free markets and wait for the failure.
Step 2: blame the failure on freedom and “reluctantly” intervene still more to deal with the problems caused by the interference in the first place.
Step 3: use the asserted necessity for the unnecessary intervention as the excuse to usurp control over the market through pervasive regulation, and also usurp the profits through taxation, while spouting “populist” rhetoric; i.e. retain the illusion of private ownership but usurp for the state all of the incidents of ownership under the guise of protecting the folks from the corrupt capitalists who are really the statists.
Step 4: if you are in the political class, enjoy spoils that would make Ceasar feel like a serf; if you are not, get off the internet and get back to work slave.
If they can’t swallow the entire economy whole, as they are also trying, they’ll just keep nibbling away one industry at a time.
si …da mi dolor de cabeza. gracias Obama AKA segundo culo
“Wish I was a bank…
I have to work for money .. and .. pay taxes.”
This individual truly believes that bankers don’t do any actual work. Banks are supposedly run by scam artists who sit round all day drinking shots of whiskey and smoking long Cuban cigars. In short, bankers are parasites and therefore deserve to have it stuck to them good and hard.
David Thomson – This is just too much. You know all those Ivy League types, the ones you rail against because they don’t know squat because they let minorities in?
Well guess where they work? Guess who buys all the BS’s and BA’s from these schools?
Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs and Citibank and everyone else on the Street are run by Ivy League graduates. So if we take you at your word good sir, these men are hardly fit to walk and chew bubblegum and given their stellar performance at driving the economy into the ground I’d have to say you make a compelling argument.
I’ll be the first to admit that Wall Street has worked very hard to line their pockets in these uncertain times. Jamie Dimon at Chase can thank US taxpayers for subsidizing 41% of his 3.6 billion dollar 2009 profits through subsidized below market lending. Bank of America made 47% of it’s profits that way too.
So, if we, the American people are outright subsidizing their profits – not just keeping them afloat but earning them 34 billion dollars last year – through these practices, what the hell is wrong with at least slapping them with a tax?
#22 Lefty – Allowing that all you say is true, you ask, “What is wrong with at least slapping them with a tax?”
If you have a problem with us giving them all this largesse, then STOP giving them the largesse! Do not compound the problem by slapping them with a tax that eventually gets paid, not by them, but rather, by their customers. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
This is what we keep saying about them creating a problem in the first place, then offering themselves as the solution.
Am I getting through here, Lefty? Can you see the illogic of your question? x+y=0? No. x-x=0.
“David Thomson – This is just too much. You know all those Ivy League types, the ones you rail against because they don’t know squat because they let minorities in?
Well guess where they work? Guess who buys all the BS’s and BA’s from these schools?”
You are confusing apples and oranges. I am very well aware that roughly eighty percent of the Wall Street types supported Barack Obama. This does not mean these individuals are either lazy or stupid. No, they are just greedy and wish to game the system. The answer to their nonsense is more public awareness and ridicule—and not taxes that only further damage our national economy.
The Ivy League students who are usually hired by the major investment firms are among the cream of the crop. The minimal numbers of affirmative action employees are hired only to make it look good. The rest are very bright people who earned business degrees. These folks rarely majored in English, political science, or ethnic studies. Their problems have more to do with plain greed. Never forget that Adam Smith in his seminal work, The Wealth of Nations, warned about the tendency of capitalists to con the general public. You do not have to be a raving left-winger to recognizing the frailty of human nature of those pursuing their economic goals.
Marc Malone – I’ve got a simple solution as to what to do when these things get passed on to customers.
Leave.
It’s a free market, the taxes are being placed on TBTF institutions. You don’t want big government controlling your life and wasting your money? Why should you finance big banking’s extravagances?
Close your account and do business with a company that isn’t going to gouge you. Sounds like a pretty American solution to me and there are plenty of smaller banks and credit unions who will be willing to do business with you.
23. Marc Malone:
give it up. they are not capable of honest discourse.
regards
David Thomson – While you’re sorting out the minorities from the “cream of the crop” be sure to add some legacies, will you? Just to be fair. Wouldn’t want anyone to accuse you of being discriminatory.
But on the whole we don’t particularly disagree. I’ve most pleasantly agreed that these are extraordinary people who have worked very hard indeed.
But what they have done amounts to nothing more than an elaborate scam. It matters not one whit whether they smoke Cuban cigars or drink one drop of whiskey.
At lease Marc has the sense to try and stem the flow of money to these banks. You seem forever enamored of their superiority to you. After all, tis only human frailty that drives them and are we all not human?
“David Thomson – While you’re sorting out the minorities from the “cream of the crop” be sure to add some legacies, will you?”
I completely agree! The legacy admissions nonsense has been going on for decades, if not even centuries. This is probably why the Ivy League schools were so easily guilt tripped into allowing mediocre minority candidates in the mid to late 1960s. But this is where the proverbial crap really hit the fan. These minority students were even less prepared to handle the curriculum. Professors were therefore encouraged to inflate their grades. This was apparently never done previously for the legacy students. A few years later the typical white kid got a piece of the action—and the situation has only worsened considerably over the last thirty-five years in the softer academic disciplines.
“At lease Marc has the sense to try and stem the flow of money to these banks.”
Knowledgeable investors may very take seriously your suggestion. However, the government should not make this decision for them. That’s all I am saying. I suspect Marc agrees with me, but he can speak for himself.
Well said. Like I’ve posted many times at my website, Obama is about European statism. However, it is leaving a bad taste in the mouth of many people AND many former allies in the corporate world. They thought he was going to let them in on the robbery taking place in our national treasury. Now the corporations realize they were not sitting at the table, they were standing in line to be placed on the table after Obama’s cronies ate the first group of victims.
More and more people and companies realize the group Obama supports only a thin strata of people who he desires to rule with him and his ilk. Hopefully, that realization will alienate him from more and more citizens. Already, the democrats are seeing the poisonous traps he and his small group are leaving behind. Some unfortunates didn’t see them until too late and ended up getting trapped. Oh well, I have no sympathy for those in bed with Obama. They deserve their punishment.