Reuters calls the economic situation “grim”. How grim exactly? Reuters cites depressing economic indicators, but Obama cited small victories. He says that his plan needs “time and it will take patience” to work.
Obama has shrugged off the critics and refused to bow to pressures from Wall Street, saying he is not concerned with the gyrations of the stock market.
He announced a White House conference next Thursday with officials from all 50 states to come up with the most effective ways to spend the stimulus money.
In Ohio, he again urged Americans to keep their eye on the big picture and give his recovery plan, which he says will save and create at least 3.5 million jobs over the next two years, time to work.
“Because of this plan, stories like the one we are celebrating here in Columbus will soon take place all over this nation,” he said on Friday. “All of this takes time and it will take patience.”
The 25 officers had been expected to be laid off before Columbus received about $4 million in stimulus money, but can now graduate. The city does not have the money for another graduating police class.
Obama said such small victories were being repeated around the country, but admitted “we’ve got big challenges ahead of us.”
“We inherited a big mess,” he said.
How can one tell, from an objective point of view, whether or not the government “stimulus” package is working when many of its components won’t kick in until many months and even years have passed? The answer is that you can’t infer the effect of things that haven’t happened yet. This is the fundamental problem with applying long term, linear solutions to complex systems which react on much shorter time scales. This is why President Obama can’t trot out a chart of figures and say “look here, we’re winning”. Instead he has to rely on anecdotal evidence; on “small victories” which may indicate a trend, but then again might not.
The political problem for President Obama is that the economic monster gets to delivery flurry after flurry of punches to American pocket book while they await his stimulus haymaker. There’s a mismatch in time scales between the effects of the economic crisis, on the one hand, and the policy responses to it on the other. It is as if one were watching two movies. One filmed at 15 frames per second and the other at 300 frames per second. When the reel rolls, its superspeed versus slow motion. The real danger for the administration is that they can only counsel patience for so long. Eventually the mismatch will lead many members of the public to conclude that a delayed response is equivalent to no response.
A no-response strategy wouldn’t be so bad if the President had adopted the strategy of letting the markets work, or to giving them their head until there was a compelling public case for intervention. Because in that case both problem and solution would be operating in the same space. That would have allowed macroeconomists to use the standard metrics for measuring the depth of the recession and look for signs of recovery in the same old way. Then, by restricting intervention to places where the market had failed or there was a discontinuity, the administration could have proposed key indicators as ways to measure whether or not its policies were working in the way that an explorer entering unknown territory puts down survey stakes. One of the best indicators you are actually solving a problem is that the questions “converge”; on the other hand one sign that you aren’t solving a problem is when your theories fly up into the sky and never show any sign of returning to earth.
Unfortunately by a combination of vaulting ambition, as exemplified by loose talk about “global bargains”, “green jobs”, the “end of capitalism” and secretive activity, as illustrated by the AIG bailout, handouts to Detroit, and a huge but delayed fiscal package, the administration has made it look like they’ve invented a whole new economic machine to save us. This new machine, if it exists, may have new metrics that allow us to ignore the “gyrations of the stock market”. But instead of giving us a glimpse into his new instrument panel, President Obama shows us a mock-up, with painted dials. Where are we Mr. President? Does it take time and patience to work or time and patience to find out where we are? Until then, the stock exchanges are the best indicator of the expected value of the economy. Absent any other data that President Obama can present, then a bear market is a bear market is a bear market.
hey
what really blows my mind are the bold statements made by zero (Z)and Lady Macbeth(LM) that stuck to my brain in a very unusual way during the campaign.
-LM constant harping on”he will ask you to change…you will change”
-Z with lame excuses for wealth distribution…”gona spread it around ” ”…tightening the rungs of the ladder”
like it was all planned a long time ago. just had to get in gear.
and people are now shocked he cares a wit about massive losses in the market. naaaa, markets aren’t part of the takeover.
I am so vexed by Obama’s strategy to date, that I don’t even really know where to begin.
On the one hand you have to assume that he’s at least intelligent enough to realize that the American people are not going to put up with the hemorrhaging market and rampant, monthly, job loss forever. As a guess, I’d put an expiration date on that sort of patience around the beginning of the 3rd quarter, best-case and, if the market continues its head-long plunge into abject insolvency, April, when all those millions of people around the country check out their decimated (x9) 401(k)s–the collectve teeth-gnashing setting off a run on pitchfork and torch futures that finally routes any lingering “Bush’s fault; Obama is the One” drone-like behavior amongst the intellectualy-spartan moderates. The loons on the left, however will give him to the 3rd quarter, however–even if Obama starts drinking the blood of virgins as a way to slow the market slide. (And I’m certain a segment of those that voted for him in November would applaud such a reasonable move.)
On the other, I’m really starting to believe he is absolutely, irredeemably, insane/stupid/in so far over his head that Stretch Armstrong couldn’t pull the One’s head out of his ass at this point.
I think BHO is finally running out of room. The Australian is starting to realize the unthinkable. The Emperor has no clothes. BHO hasn’t got a clue.
This is a very dangerous moment, one which nobody, not even those who dislike President Obama, should relish. This is the equivalent of being in a 747 at 41,000 feet and realizing there’s an imposter or someone who doesn’t know how to fly the airplane at the controls. Once the news starts to spread in the cabin, it will cause a destructive panic, which won’t solve the basic problem of flying the plane. Whatever gratification anyone gets from having had doubts from the outset are secondary to the need to keep the airplane in a stable flight envelope.
What needs to be done is to very calmly get the guys at the wheel to ask for help. Maybe they can pretend to keep flying the plane. That’s OK. Keep talking to him. Everything’s going to be OK. But all this stuff about carbon trading, green jobs, and redesigning healthcare and education is so much malarkey in a situation like this and maybe we can talk about it later, but right now, tell the tower which of the dials you don’t understand. We can solve this together. I know you’re the Messiah, but humor us and pretend you don’t know all the answers. Easy does it.
Unfortunately, given the one’s emotional limitations/sickness, that would be the LAST thing to expect from BHO, so the terror of amateur hour will continue.
Krauthammer gets to the nub of the issue:
Charles Krauthammer – Obama’s Radical Agenda –
The Great Non Sequitur
The Sleight of Hand Behind Obama’s Agenda
By Charles Krauthammer
“Forget the pork. Forget the waste. Forget the 8,570 earmarks in a bill supported by a president who poses as the scourge of earmarks. Forget the “2 trillion dollars in savings” that “we have already identified,” $1.6 trillion of which President Obama’s budget director later admits is the “savings” of not continuing the surge in Iraq until 2019 — 11 years after George Bush ended it, and eight years after even Bush would have had us out of Iraq completely.
Forget all of this. This is run-of-the-mill budget trickery. True, Obama’s tricks come festooned with strings of zeros tacked onto the end. But that’s a matter of scale, not principle.
All presidents do that. But few undertake the kind of brazen deception at the heart of Obama’s radically transformative economic plan, a rhetorical sleight of hand so smoothly offered that few noticed.
Four months after winning the election, six weeks after his swearing-in, Obama has yet to unveil a plan to deal with the banking crisis.
What’s going on? “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” said chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. “This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before.”
Clever politics, but intellectually dishonest to the core.
Health, education and energy — worthy and weighty as they may be — are not the cause of our financial collapse. And they are not the cure. The fraudulent claim that they are both cause and cure is the rhetorical device by which an ambitious president intends to enact the most radical agenda of social transformation seen in our lifetime.
—
—
– Michael Boskin Says Barack Obama Is Moving Us Toward a European-Style Social Welfare State and Long-Run Economic Stagnation -
Obama’s Radicalism Is Killing the Dow
A financial crisis is the worst time to change the foundations of American capitalism.
It’s hard not to see the continued sell-off on Wall Street and the growing fear on Main Street as a product, at least in part, of the realization that our new president’s policies are designed to radically re-engineer the market-based U.S. economy, not just mitigate the recession and financial crisis.
“Four months after winning the election, six weeks after his swearing-in, Obama has yet to unveil a plan to deal with the banking crisis.”
—
Meanwhile Geithner after first announcing that he had a plan for coming up with plan, continues to look less and less able to competently take on the job at hand:
Don’t Worry, Be Happy
“The Obama administration’s remarkable inability to say or do the right things to aid our sinking economy, stay the collapse of our equities markets, or even build a competent cabinet is now the stuff of cartoons, talk-show fodder and late-night comedy.
Who hasn’t heard the one about how “this year’s IRS 1040 allows every taxpayer to claim one Geithner or a Daschle depending on how much tax you don’t want to pay?”
—
- Treasury secretary’s choice for deputy withdraws –
Treasury Secretary Geithner’s choice for deputy withdraws; department still lacks senior staff.
WASHINGTON (AP)
– The person Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner wanted as his chief deputy has withdrawn from consideration, dealing a setback to the understaffed agency as it struggles to address the worst financial crisis in decades.
Five weeks into his tenure, he has yet to name a single top deputy or assistant secretary. This has left Treasury with too few people authorized to make decisions or represent the department in meetings with stakeholders.
At a Senate hearing Thursday about failed insurance giant American International Group Inc. — which has received four separate bailouts totaling more than $170 billion — Sen. Chris Dodd said he had asked Treasury for someone to appear, but that no one was available.
“I am not pleased that we don’t have someone here from Treasury to explain what their role in this is,” Dodd said.
Geithner’s choice for undersecretary of international affairs, Caroline Atkinson, also withdrew from consideration, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
Geithner told a Senate panel Wednesday that he hoped “to come up for the committee soon with a full slate of very strong people.”
“We’re doing this carefully, as you would expect, and … trying to make sure we have the best talent in the country,” he said.
Geithner’s lack of a senior staff has raised concerns on Wall Street.
“This doesn’t help confidence,” said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor’s in New York. “Geithner is stuck there all by himself trying to do everything. They don’t have anybody confirmed, and Treasury is a big shop to try to run with one person, especially right now.”
Wyss, who previously worked at the Federal Reserve, said the administration needed to have made a much bigger push before taking office to get people cleared to take over the top jobs at Treasury so that Geithner could assemble his team quickly.
David Jones, head of Denver-based economic consulting firm DMJ Advisors, said that Geithner’s missteps in putting together a financial rescue program and his inability to assemble a team at Treasury were raising concerns about whether the new administration’s economic team is up to the challenges confronting them.
“There is no question that Wall Street is losing patience,” said Jones, who for more than three decades served as a top economist at a major bond trading firm. “If there was ever a time when we need an effective and strong Treasury secretary, it is now.”
Jones said that investors had initially viewed the economic team that Obama was assembling favorably because it included experienced hands such as Summers and Volcker.
“There were high expectations for this team, but at this time of crisis, it doesn’t seem to be functioning effectively,” Jones said.
Ed Lasky at Pajamas Media has an interesting article on Chas Freeman’s possible withdrawal because of conflicts of interest and recently discovered emails broadly suggesting that Washington was for sale and that any foreign government which wanted a piece of the action should step right up and put cash down on the barrel. I’m not sure I disagree with Freeman’s assessment, but I think Ed is right in saying that “Congress will not be mocked”.
If Freeman gets thrown under the bus the broader implication, I think, is that the Obama administration itself will come one step closer to going over the precipice. It’s starting to come apart. And if it does things may unravel at a frightening speed. Now BHO is slated to leave for Europe in a few weeks. But he may have a crisis before then.
“I’m not sure I disagree with Freeman’s assessment”
Sadly, that is a game our man from Chigago is manifestly capable of playing, the rules being the same back home.
@PJ
6. Oscar the Grump:
Seeing Chas Freeman get the boot is a good thing. His replacement may be worse than Freeman himself. While Obama is at it he should also replace Samatha Powers, she’s another jewel. We still don’t know what others of that ilk he’s snuck in.
7. fred:
Mr. Freeman was a toady of the Arab world and a Jew hater who fit right in with Samantha Powers’ views. Pretty much all of the Jews involved in the Obama campaign and administration are not practicing Jews.
They’ve rejected their religion and their identity, and their allegiance is to cultural Marxism or some kind of socialism within its orbit.
Graph: Predicting the Future of a Housing Crisis
A Gloomy Outlook for Home Sales’ Big Season
Despite signs of recovery in hard-hit areas, the broader market is far from its nadir, economists say.
“The leverage is being squeezed out of the economy.”
wretchard says:
This is a very dangerous moment, one which nobody, not even those who dislike President Obama, should relish.
Anybody that relishes his impending chastening (assuming someone rises to the occasion and manages to put the plane down on a runway and not in a mountain beforehand) when reality as we’ve known it since at least post-WWII is on the line, is out of their mind. (Though I’ll still manage a few ‘I told you sos’–if we live–as petty as that may be.)
Play’n Americans like the suckers they are and we can’t do a thing, Welcome aboard the S.S. Impotent! “Impeach “0″ (Zero=Obama) Peelouse (Pelosi) and Greedy (Reid). Impeach “0″ Peelouse and Greedy. Impeach “0″ Peelouse and Greedy.”
Well, this certainly cheers me up on a beautiful Saturday morning in NC!
The current situation in the USA is what happens when pre-schoolers are allowed to run the school.
Great idea, jjmurphy!
Ivy leaguers deserve the same chance at the helm:
We can Audit the next 8 years for no credit, just to “experience” them.
Have all conflicts with foreign entities be non-competitive, with no scores kept.
wretchard @3:
This is not really a comment about your post, per se. But I continue to be struck by the apocalyptic language being used to describe what is, really, just another in a long series of fiat money system collapses. Money systems come, and they go. This one is LONG past it’s sell-by date. The problems that the “leaders” have (which they are remarkably open about) are principally realted to how to keep up the lies.
Of course, they will fail, the banks will be insolvent, the savings will be destroyed, and the People will be mightily aggravated. But we’ve seen this all before, many times.
You can read headlines every day now saying that the “fall of Poland” is imminent.
Now, I don’t know about you, but when I think about the fall of Poland, I think about Walther von Reichenau, tanks in the streets, and execution pits on the edge of town. The closure of the Dolce and Gabbana store on Aleje Jerozolimskie just doesn’t measure up, IMO.
That people speak about another in a long line of banking panics in the language of apocalypse and genocide just shows how far we’ve fallen.
“Congress will not be mocked”.
If “pro” is the opposite of “con”, what is the opposite of “progress”?
Oh goody…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/06/AR2009030602285.html?hpid%3Dtopnews&sub=AR
A little OT, I know, but still. Why do this sort of thing now?
The economy is in a death spiral and they newd to throw some meat to the hard left fringe? It shows how underhanded and how lacking in seriousness they are.
newd=need
Mr Fernanadez said: “The political problem for President Obama is that the economic monster gets to delivery flurry after flurry of punches to American pocket book while they await his stimulus haymaker.”
Is that a bug or a feature?
If the One is viewed as a savior, doing his damnedest to save us from Capitalism thru Govt intervention, a long lead to recovery is in the interest of the agenda. If he destroys the middle class’ wealth (mostly mutual funds and home values), the middle class (family incomes from $60K to 200K positive net worth over $200K [or at least was before fall '08]) has nowhere to turn but the govt. The problem with that plan is that wealth transfer assumes that there is wealth to transfer. Part of the genius of the American Economy is that the wealth is not really so concentrated in the upper 2%. There is a bunch there, but there are so many of us in the rest of the upper half that that upper pile is dwarfed.
Now the only way he can get at that is not thru an income tax but thru a wealth tax, which he would be “forced” to impose because of the demands of trying to save an imploding economy. This also has the rhetorical advantage of “going after the wealth these people have hidden away or secreted in ‘Wealth Accounts ™’” They’ll go for the wealth they can find: mutual funds, certificates of deposit, brokerage accounts, etc. They’ll not want much, just 5%. One time. Just to get us over the crisis (now in its fifth year).
Maggie was right: socialism is fine ’til you run out of other people’s money.
My general sentiments probably align with those of gokart-mozart. I’ve been checking out the weather charts, and it still is looking safe outside.
But there are other long-term problems that raise the possibility that there is something more at work here:
Demographics. European birth rates are below replacement, China will get old before it gets rich, Russia is imploding, and 40% of births in the US are out of wedlock.
Education. PK-12 education in the US is a shambles. 50% of 9th graders in urban areas will not earn a high school diploma, those that do graduate read (on average) at an 8th grade level, and less than 10% of low-income children will earn a college degree. In addition, universities have largely morphed into socialist tumors that have metastasized, infecting other major organs of US society: government, Wall Street, the justice system, and (completing the cycle) PK-12 education.
Government. The concentration of power – particularly at the Federal level – has grown inexorably over the past 50 years. And with this increasing influence has come increasing corruption, a natural result of man’s nature. Politics is increasingly partisan due to the gerrymander, and the combination of power and partisanship is a toxic brew, tempting the party in power to solidify its political position through the liberal application of patronage. Money to get the power, power to protect the money.
Secularization of the elite. Whatever one thinks of its truth claims, religion serves a very practical purpose of creating a self-imposed limitation on the exercise of power by those entrusted with control over decision-making, whether in the public or private realm. Without the “shadow of the future” created by religious institutions, the temptation to cheat becomes overwhelming for our leaders, and widespread cheating undermines the foundations of liberty – freedom relies on systemic trust to function efficiently.
Unfunded pension and entitlement liabilities. By some estimates, the US Social Security and Medicare system has an unfunded liability of $100 trillion, or about 7 times our GDP. In addition, there are large liabilities in both public and private defined-benefit pension plans, and even the defined-contribution plans like 401(k)s have taken a severe hit from the current financial mess.
Asymmetrical security threats. Jihadism is the most well-known such threat, but there are others, ranging from drug cartels to white supremacists groups that are largely untracked by our authorities (think Timothy McVeigh). These threats impose a substantial psychological and physical cost to our society, and we are forced into a defensive position and waste countless (otherwise productive) hours waiting in lines and taking off our shoes.
Each of these challenges is non-trivial, and the concern is that their collective weight may be more than our society can bear.
But all that being said, I believe that there is a large American core which is solid: fertile, wise, freedom-loving, religious, thrifty, and peaceful. These folks are like the structure of a skyscraper: strong, but largely hidden from view, having been covered with a wide variety of finish materials. The fact that we have recently chosen to paint our office chartreuse, hang SI swimsuit issue covers next to a framed Velvet Elvis, and sit on contemporary (i.e. cool and uncomfortable) furnishings doesn’t mean the structure is weakened. It just means we’re overdo for a redecoration, replacing these things with items of more lasting value. Like, say, a bust of Winston Churchill.
The unknown in all this, it seems to me, is what Generation Y will do. They are the largest cohort in our nation – bigger than the Baby Boomers – and they are just starting to influence electoral politics. The fact that 68% of voters under 30 punched their card for Barack Obama is not a good sign, IMHO, as he was unaccomplished, young, and statist in his sentiments. True, he cleverly disguised these facts through a masterful campaign, but these traits are emerging into plain view at surprising speed.
How will Gen Yers react to losing their job? Or turning over increasing shares of their hard-earned money? Or discovering that bad urban teachers are protected by a powerful union? Or that raising a family is a 1.5 person job, meaning single parents spend their most productive years exhausted and lonely? Or that, in a flash, their friends can be killed by a lunatic for no rational reason?
In short, what will happen when Gen Y grows up?
I remain optimistic that they will rediscover what most of us have already learned:
- There is no free lunch
- There is evil in the world
- We must each save for our own future
- Consumption does not create happiness
- There is a God
If they don’t learn these things, the future looks bleak – after all, they are the future, like it or not.
But if they do learn, if they do grow up, if they do become adults, our future will be very, very bright.
Either way, change will come quickly. Gen Ys are connected like no other generation in history (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.). It takes years to build a new building, but offices can be redecorated over a weekend. And collapses can happen in seconds.
That is why here at Belmont Club we talk often of inflection points, sometimes in apocalyptic language, sometimes in the language of reform. But at its core, I believe there is a deep and abiding love and appreciation for what we have, and a fear it may be lost. Sometimes fear can be crippling, other times motivating.
The choice is ours. And that, at least, is a cause for hope.
L3
#13 – Gokart-Mozart:
“Owners of capital will stimulate the working class to buy more and more
expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing them to take more and
more expensive credits, until debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt
will lead to the bankruptcy of banks, which will have to be
nationalized, and the State will have to take the road which will
eventually lead to Communism. ”
Karl Marx, 1867
F
Interesting,
Bush was widely chastised and possibly experienced the tipping point of his Presidency when he took a few days to start the aid spigot flowing into New Orleans after Katrina. Now much of that crisis was caused by inept state and city government sitting on their hands as the levee was breached. As well, underclass poor folks in the city were totally unprepared to take any measure of self preservation themselves because they were so conditioned to rely on the crumbs from the government table. I made a number of pre-Katrina trips to the city and was impressed what a dirty, impoverished crime ridden hovel it was. The police cordoned off the Quarter for a Mardi Gras playground, but the rest of the city was Detroit South.
Now Obama wants to punt solutions to our financial morass two years down the road and no one is screaming “Oh the injustice, oh the lack of compassion” Where is Kanye West with an angry hip hop manifesto?
Obama in dealing with this meltdown doesn’t so much resemble FDR (which is probably a good thing) as Herbert Hoover. Hoover was the wonder boy , the big idea guy who was clueless as to how to stop the deluge.
Or maybe he resembles Nero or Caligua.
We’re in deep crap.
Dispatch from the border,
Last night at midnight, my dogs started barking and I heard gates rattling. I crept to the back door to see a cop in my back yard looking for a “tall Mexican fugitive”. He was probably just looking for an opportunity to do the work Americans wouldn’t do.
#18 Leo – Very well stated. Formidable obstacles, pretty depressing, but well stated nonetheless. I don’t know if I have the faith in Gen Y that you might. They have been pretty heavily indoctrinated in the public schools, as well as universities. Some may grow up into adults, but how many. Soon 50% of the populace will no longer pay federal taxes. The other factors you mention also loom before us.
I honestly don’t know what is down the road for us. I guess we keep fighting as best we can.
Right after BHO was elected, he set up the “Office of President Elect” complete with seals, and there were calls in the papers for then-President Bush to step down and yield the management of the country to the President Elect. Obama was going to be ready on Day One. He was going to be waiting for that Three O’Clock phone call. His followers awaited the magic touch. Now, after two months of magic, with Cabinet positions unfilled and with his administration less than ship-shape, a week has suddenly become a long time. Nobody knows where the market, or indeed the world will be in seven days. In other words, a lot of instability has crept into the system. It was never linear, but it is now far more unpredictable than it was, say two years ago.
While not all of that is President Obama’s doing, I think some of the instability is directly attributable to his attempts ‘not to let a crisis go to waste’. At at time when you would want to simplify in order to focus on key variables, he turned an already complex problem into a knotted ball of string. While it is true that he inherited problems, it is also true that some new problems are of his own making. And they were wholly unnecessary. So why were they undertaken? A deficit of modesty, I think which comes from confusing the ability to impose opinion with the ability to express a correct opinion.
Peter Robinson attempted to understand why the cream of the Washington punditry, including its more conservative members, so completely failed to understand Obama while the rubes pegged him. I think this failure exemplifies the insular view of the world which has led to such unwonted overconfidence and almost hubris among a certain group of people. They are intelligent but operate with filters they’re not even aware of. Robinson writes:
But Robinson doesn’t explain why. I don’t know why either, but I can guess. Gergen, Brooks and Buckley couldn’t help but see Obama as being ‘one of them’ broadly speaking; a man with the right education, the proper manners, the certain air with which one member of the club recognizes the other. And that blinded them to his obvious faults. Limbaugh and Sowell, though intelligent men themselves, lacked that filter. And therefore they saw. It was a classic contrast between the Old School Boy and the Good ‘Ol Boy. That’s why we need diverse points of view. Sometimes you don’t learn everything in the best of places.
f @ 19:
Marx could see some things clearly.
But he did not understand that his followers would kill for socialism – but they wouldn’t die for it.
As we shall see, again.
I’m afraid the reason Obama’s “response” to the crisis doesn’t track with the crisis is because he’s not responding to the crisis. Never intended to. He’s implementing his pre-existing agenda and simply using the crisis as cover for his odious policies.
Not that he wouldn’t have gone ahead with these plans anyway, crisis or no. He’s just being opportunistic, but if there had been no financial crisis he would have found other justifications. Consider that he’s willing to paint his Health Care Nationalization and Crapification plan as part of the solution to a banking and credit crisis.
In some sense, this crisis may be a blessing (though a dubious sort). It may provoke a backlash in time to derail The One (Termer’s) agenda. The crisis may be a blessing like getting into a car crash on the way to the airport when the flight you were supposed to be on crashes. Laying in your hospital bed with several broken bones and other serious injuries, you can watch news coverage of the crash and think how lucky you are.
What I am concerned about is what happens when this is all over (assuming the outcome has some semblance of familiarity).
What I mean by this is we watched for a brief period where the Republicans had all 3 branches, but the Democrats fought tooth and nail to prevent them from addressing issues such as school choice, the ticking time bomb of entitlements, restricting Fannie-Mae, ankle biting every step of the way in the GWOT. They threatened filibustering at every turn and were effective at it.
They fought to have dirtbags maintain seats on committees – Dodd and Frank.
The media covered for them, and we heard cries of ‘be fair,’ the ‘GOP does not have a mandate.’
Now the democrats have all 3 branches the Obama/Pelosi/Reid agenda is pushed right through with nearly 100% backing from the democratic party. Where are the moderates?
Barney Frank and Chris Dodd want criminal investigations on banks involved in the sub-prime mess (absent from this is government officials such as themselves).
If and when this all blows up, will the Republicans finally learn to play for keeps and not to trust the Democrats (not one) or Media on anything?
I’d add a little bit to what Wretchard was saying about membership in the club. It’s not just existing members who are unable to see the faults in other members of the club. There are also those who aren’t members, but long greatly to be. They’re blinded by the aura and wish to bask in the reflected glow of greatness.
I also think the institutions themselves work very hard to foster the Club attitude, and that it has become the one thing they really excel at these days. A friend who went to an elite institution on the banks of the Charles once told me that he never really got into the hyperactive networking that went on there and didn’t have a single friend from college that he stayed in regular touch with. He figured he’d wasted 9/10th of the value of his degree by not participating in The Club. But he was good enough not to need to. At least when it came to engineering. When he tried climbing the management ladder, the obsessive Club Networkers caused him (and me) all sorts of frustration. They were, as Wretchard points out, unable to see failings in other members of their club. There was a point where the company became too infested with these people to continue functioning. One of the interesteing things is they started forming new clubs within the company, covering for one another and dodging from one failure to another, always given another chance because of their connections. It was part of their education, what they had been trained to do, and they mentored others in it as well. That company is undergoing it’s own financial crisis now, it’s stock has fallen nearly 80% from it’s high and its revenue chart looks like the ballistic trajectory of a rather substantial rock flung into the air at sub-orbital velocity. It’s going to leave a hell of a crater.
I think any sort of system of elites eventually degenerates this way. At some point, the Elites become more interestng in protecting their priviliges and policing their membership than in doing whatever it was that got them recognized as elites in the first place. William the Conqueror’s butt-kicking Normans became the inbred fops P.G. Woodehouse skewered, even if they were still capable of producing a Churchill on occasion. Going by my experience, Ivy League universities graduate three or four Al Gores for every Richard Fernandez.
#18 wretchard
I’m reminded of the Democratic and “elite” response to Bill Clinton -the best politician of his age, wonderful communicator, man from Hope, yadda yadda.
It was obvious after listening to the guy for 10 minutes that he was the prototypical amoral used car salesman – willing to say anything to make the sale. He seemed to lie on the spur of the moment, whether he needed to or not. Nothing he did after that was really surprising.
Obama is either a con artist, or worse, a true believer. Perhaps a little of both. In either case, I think his lies are less ad hoc and more systematic than Clinton’s, and will be much more damaging.
It seems that odds that this ending really, really badly go up almost every day, with yet another almost unbelieveably counter-productive policy.
I had been doing a little bottom fishing in the market. He’s convinced me to stop.
The House is lost for 2 years. I think our best chance is a revolt in the Senate that stalls all his proposals. That seemed unlikely a month ago, but who knows what things might be like in another month.
Its a recession if your neighbor loses his job. Its a depression when you lose yours. For our family, its a depression. My husband was just laid off. Worked for the same company for 20 years. 20 years of continuous employment, no layoffs, even during rough economic times. It is a well run manufacturing company. They are just finishing up their last project from 2008. There are no projects for 2009. Nothing.
That loud screeching sound you hear? That’s the brakes being slammed on our economy. The giant sucking sound? The wealth of the middle class being sucked into the ether. The low level humming? The musings of a discontented populace. It may grow into a roar.
It must be recognized that on current trends the classic media barons will be bankrupt before the 2010 election cycle.
The NY Times is already on the hook for $250,000,000 at 14% interest to Italian lenders.
Repeating 14%… ! … OVERSEAS lenders…
But the Times is headquartered in the financial capital of the world…
McClatchy is going to the wall. The ad pages in the Sacramento Bee have absolutely collapsed.
At every newspaper real estate and automobile ads have always been the breadwinners.
GM was the largest ad buyer in the nation. No way will it be allowed to spend so much as we go forward.
Thus this key bastion of Leftism is being utterly destroyed. The editorial room is being hollowed out across the land with an entire generation of younger writers already being given the boot.
Press unions are being wiped out: more and more periodicals are going straight to the web… not the web press.
California’s tax hell is pushing Hollywood towards break-up. After all, that was the real driver for creating a full scope studio in New Zealand for Lord of the Rings et. seq.
The single most effective thing that can be done to thwart Leftism is to drive these media franchises into the ditch. Do all that can be done to take their incomes away and drive the players into getting real jobs in the real world.
Lobby all advertisers to stop purchasing ad space.
Call anyone with a classified ad and steer them towards CraigsList. Explain how to do it. Set up a help line/ sideline business posting to CraigsList such things as job openings, stuff to sell.
Absolutely starve the beast.
Protest the use of TARP funds being wasted on newspaper advertising.
Establish concerted boycotts of leftist newswrap.
I think Leo is correct, and I think Gen Y — having raised 3 and inherited 2 more — are well up to the task at hand once they realize that putting all that energy into building up their musculature is a waste of good energy. Not all we Boomers are still stuck in the ’60s, and we know we need to make up for our sins of the past, so we can help a lot.
At the same time, it is very much the case that the best way for us and them to get down to the business of rebuilding, this Great Disruption having started at least a decade ago, is for Obama to fail.
Rush is absolutely right. If, to use Wretchard’s analogy, the plane is in trouble, the last thing we want is for Obama and his band of merry nutjobs to regain the controls.
Better to crash land in the Hudson than to fly all the way to Cuba.
elby,
Sorry to hear about your husband’s layoff. I’m sure it’s very stressful. I hope you don’t mind if I share a prayer I say when I’m under a lot of stress (I think I’ve posted it before here at the BC):
Cheers.
L3
I’ve been wishing for some time that someone – anyone – in the media would ask Mr. Obama the question the relished asking Mr. Bush regarding Iraq: “What does victory look like?” We know now Mr. Obama’s definition of economic victory cannot include a recovered Dow Jones – just a tracking poll, that. What would it look like to Mr. Obama? I’ll not hold my breath waiting for someone to ask; Jake Tapper can only ask so many questions before he’s either out of time or out of a job.
This is actually much worse than realizing that the captain doesn’t know how to fly the plane. This is more like discovering that he has also locked the cockpit door and, while emitting a stream of ‘happy talk’, switched off his incoming intercom link.
I think we need to understand though that, given their own set of choices, the Obama team have little alternative but to push hard left now.
Consider first that for several decades the standard of living for ordinary people in the US has been about 30% higher than for ordinary people in Europe. That’s the sort of difference it can be difficult to conceal, but the task can still be achieved with the help of an almost uniformly supportive media.
Then take into account that Europe is going into this crisis in much, much worse financial shape than the US, and that the aftermath of the crisis, and the associated debt burden, will weigh on living standards for decades after this is over. Just about inevitably then, if nothing were done now to impact the relative standard of standard of living of ordinary people, the US would come out of this crisis with a living standard more like 60% higher than Europe’s, which would be far harder to obfuscate.
Just think about what that would do to the left’s political push to make the US economy more closely resemble Europe’s. Their entire economic program would become a public joke for at least a generation.
This is why the Obama team has to press hard now to get the US economy weighed down with all the burdens imposed by a socialized economy, even in the middle of a financial crisis, and it’s why they will not be diverted until the moment when they lose control of congress in 2010.
It’s like discovering that, in addition to everything else, the Captain in the pilot’s seat has his layoff notice in his pocket, and unless he can pull off a miraculous crash landing to make himself look like a hero then he’s going to be out of a job.
..Damn it Blert (#30), you stole my narrative ! But I think you are X-ring right about the implosion of the Media and all it entails. Into this gloomy Gus pity party I want to introduce a Ray of Sunshine….courtesy of Glenn Reynolds and Jeff Jarvis. The next big thing ain’t plastics, it’s Academia getting punked as Newspapers are and the Media is. Spend $40k a year so your kid can go to OutaStaytistan and sit in lecture while playing on his laptop. You’ve got to be Joe-Kin ? He can go to Hawvud from the basement and save the $200k indebtedness.
L3@18
“The choice is ours. And that, at least, is a cause for hope.”
Well, we’re enjoying a full serving of HOPE, so perhaps that’s counter-hope you’re referring to?
Richard,
RE: Flights and Captains
Also, we could be just like those unsuspecting passengers aboard the first 3 airliners that were hi-jacked, destined to become part of infamy, because we thought negotiations would save us.
Or, we might become more like those passengers on flight 93, upon realization of our true destination.
Unfortunately, in neither case did any passengers survived, even those in the right seat knew how to steer.
#$*&&^%$
survived = survive
even those = even though those
steer = stear
Elby – There’s no sugar-coating losing your job (or one’s spouse losing theirs). It is horrible. I’m sorry you are facing this. Just a few years back, I went through 20 months of being without a full-time job (scrounged by with part-time work, at one point 3 PT jobs at once), and I would not wish such an experience on my worst enemy. (Well, take that back. It would be nice if O lost *his* job.)
Two silver linings that I can think of in retrospect. One was that I was in my thirties and therefore in the position and disposition to take my job skills and career in another direction, which has turned out to be better than my previous career. Second, I can attest that I found Leo’s approach (prayer) most useful. For me it was the Nicence Creed (I’m a Presby now, but oh, some of those Catholic habits do hang on!). At some point I felt I ran out of things to say that I hadn’t said already hundreds of times … and so the Creed it was. Somehow, it was still necessary and good to declare “We believe ….” and to keep declaring it day in and day out.
I can’t properly articulate or quantify the benefits of making a habit of such an assertion; only that I know there were, and continue to be, benefits. (I guess it turns out that hanging on by your fingernails, day in & day out, makes your fingernails pretty darn strong …?)
Anyhoo. Just my modest contribution. Hang in there. There ARE ways through it.
Geoffgo:
Bringing up the 9/11 planes = brrrr (shudder).
But there may be at least one instructive point, with respect to current conditions, in a comparison of the first three planes vs. Flight 93:
Passivity ensures your doom. (NOT blaming the passengers here … they were “fighting the last war” of textbook hijack response)
While the passengers & crew on 93 did not succeed in implementing their goal, at least they scuttled the terrorists from reaching theirs. Significant moral victory AND prevention of much larger catastrophe.
One other thing. Flight 93′s lesson and legacy is that of citizen initiative … ordinary Americans spontaneously organizing in midst of crisis, overcoming the urge to panic or freeze, and instead coming up with a plan, marshaling every means and skill of every individual in the group, and then taking action.
Citizen initiative. Citizen action.
The government didn’t save individual Americans that day. Individual Americans saved the government. In the case of Flight 93, quite literally.
(Yet more reason for the self-serving weasels in Congress to be ashamed of themselves, but that’s a topic for another post ….)
Blert @30 – Right about the media! and good riddance of the Times et al.
Dave D @35 – Right about the Ivy Leagues, and good on ye.
Our enemies have nested in the bureaucracies, higher education, the elite media, entertainment and the K-12 schools – with the K-12 being the most consequential.
Remember how the Catholic schools used to say frankly, “Give us a child until he is 7, and we’ll always have him?” (Well, showing my age here – you might not remember!) But it is true. What a child learns and experiences before 6 or 7 is the deepest and most permanent.
We MUST focus on K-12, and get our kids out of government-run schools. Like, say, Monday?? (Don’t be nervous – loads of ready-made, great curricula out there. Just about anybody could teach it. Plenty of videos, etc. if you think you can’t.)
Private schools, church-run schools, charter schools, vouchers, home schooling. Almost anything will be better than the leftist-amoral-cynical-trivial-illiterate curriculum in the government k-12 schools.
It should be as high a priority for us as the medis, Ivies, etc. Those could ruin our present. The K-12 mis-indoctrination could ruin our future.
BTW, a few dedicated parents home-school their kids after they get home from work. They make varying arrangements for child supervision during the day.
Usually, it takes half or less the time the same learning would take in a school setting. For lots of reasons. Among those, less distraction, fewer students per teacher. Often not more than 1-2 hours of actual instruction time to learn a days’ equivalent of public school instruction.
OldNeocon,
Big advocate of home schooling. My oldest graduated from public school, went to an elite University, cast off our values and campaigned for Obama. The other three kids have been and in last case are homeschooled. They are all well rounded, with a Christian mindset,confident and not politically correct sheep.
Most areas have people to network with in home school co-op teaching. My second son read all of Shakespeare’s works in High School. (How did he live without Toni Morrison and “Heather has two Mommies”?)
Many rich educational opportunities are available in a home school setting.
Different states have different rules for home schooling. When Obama gets done driving a stake in the heart of the economy ,the pro life movement, the military and the health care system; I’m sure he, the NEA and Comrade Ayers will come after home schooling.
Trangbang68,
I’ve also read that the Ivies are delighted to accept home schoolers, as their education is far superior to most Ivy applicants.
Leo, your prayer is much appreciated. We will be praying and I know we will get through this. Bogie, I appreciate your concern as well. To the extent possible, we tried to plan for this. I am still working and looking for better paying jobs. We’ll survive. This downturn, however, does seem worse than other ones in the past few decades and the information we have from my husbands company seems to confirm this. I wish the best to the rest of the commenters here, and hope you all don’t have to face job losses!
First, I stumbled onto this site a couple of months ago and would like to congratulate everyone here. It’s a breath of fresh air to see all of the intelligent comments by people who actually know the subjects they’re speaking of.
One of the things being discussed on this thread is summed up by wretchard #3.
“This is a very dangerous moment, one which nobody, not even those who dislike President Obama, should relish. This is the equivalent of being in a 747 at 41,000 feet and realizing there’s an imposter or someone who doesn’t know how to fly the airplane at the controls. Once the news starts to spread in the cabin, it will cause a destructive panic, which won’t solve the basic problem of flying the plane. Whatever gratification anyone gets from having had doubts from the outset are secondary to the need to keep the airplane in a stable flight envelope.”
I agree completely, but the problem is that I don’t think the airplane is flight worthy any longer, even if a qualified pilot emerges. L3 in #18 says:
“Unfunded pension and entitlement liabilities. By some estimates, the US Social Security and Medicare system has an unfunded liability of $100 trillion, or about 7 times our GDP. In addition, there are large liabilities in both public and private defined-benefit pension plans, and even the defined-contribution plans like 401(k)s have taken a severe hit from the current financial mess.”
L3 states many other challenges we face, all of them valid, but this one is enough all by itself.
I fear that, even if we find a bottom and the economy slowly recovers, or at least stabilizes, this problem is poised to send it right back into a death spiral.
The only possible way we could forestall this would be a a major global economic recovery (based on something other than runaway US consumer spending – what might that be?), coupled with a new sense of responsibility on the part of our government to live within it’s means and stay out of the way (Ha!). Not going to happen.
I’m trying not to be alarmist (both here and in my personal life), and I don’t relish this, but don’t see any plausible way out.
Bankruptcy is the way out. If it’s good enough for GM, it should be good enough for us too.
A default would make the government borrowing money much more expensive. Pissed off taxpayers are likely to get more pissed off when a third of their dollar goes to making interest payments on federal debt. The era of cheap money is over, as well it should be.
that is a nice thread. it sounds like the trenches, but not like the troops about to go over the top. More like the troops set to receive the other guy going over the top. defense has that advantage, an attacker is most vulnerable to attack after his attack has failed. a trench general’s worst fear was not that his attack might fail, but that the enemy might come right on behind his retreating troops.
dtmack@45; economists have this term “muddle through”. what it means is, everything is really a hopeless mess, but due to a lack of a better alternative, people just keep on keeping on, even learning new skills and gaining new satisfactions, however grim, from them. we can do that if we maintain enough goodwill, and keep our nuclear shield strong up. i hate to say this as then saying it is to ignore what i just said about good will, but the people who groomed O played the race card, and set themselves a win/win: O succeeds, or fails, and if he fails it is because of something white America did or didn’t do. So, win/win for the deep left foundations, billionaires, and theoreticians, they either get their socialist revolution or an enormous race relations defeat, and either one is fine with their theory –just different time points along the historical inevitability notion so thrilling to the type.
so we want to watch that. we don’t want a leni riefenstahl making our campaign commercials. if this situation gets hot we ought to have our principles practiced in our heads already –much as we would have a prayer at hand, a doctrine to free the mind for the hand. “It’s the socialism, stupid!” those who can’t abide it, can’t abide it. Vox Populi ? Well, that’s a problem. But if vox populii voted on what turned out to’ve been lies, serious lies, then the strict Constitution wins hands down over the People’s Democratic Evolving Penumbra.
Seems simple enough –identify the definition of a soft-stolen election, so as not to be at sea on the issue, and to know the right from wrong, for justifying or not a resistance.