The Tatler has learned President Obama’s new jobs program might be unveiled right after Labor Day. The White House has gone silent for a long time while unemployment remains above 9% and economic growth slumps to .4%.
What could be his new, imaginative idea?”
Could be Stimulus II?
Yes, after the failure of the first $800 billion round of stimulus, the President’s best idea may be to recommend more stimulus spending.
Today’s Washington Post is floating a trial balloon from White House aides that report:”President Obama has decided to press Congress for a new round of stimulus spending.” No dollar amounts were mentioned.
Yesterday during his bus tour in Atkinson, Illinois the President prepared his audience for his new economic policy, saying he would cut spending by spending more. The two, he said, are not inconsistent. “When Congress gets back in September, my basic argument to them is this: We should not have to choose between getting our fiscal house in order and jobs and growth.”
Meanwhile in reaction to a slew of bad economic reports and the news of a new stimulus plan, Wall Street is experiencing another meltdown.
The Dow Jones average swooned at the opening bell, down at least 450 points. Adding to the downturn were the weekly jobless claims report showing an increase of 9,000 new unemployment claims, topping to a monthly total of 408,000. In other bad news home sales dropped 3.5% and factory activity in the Mid-Atlantic region tumbled to a two year low.
The President will be able to munch on all these new economic reports while he luxuriates on a tony vacation. Today the President lands on Cape Cod via Air Force One, then hops onto a Marine One helicopter to land on the celebrity island of Martha’s Vineyard.
He forgets the $152 billion Economic Stimulus Act of 2008. Maybe he voted “Present”. Actually I looked it up – BO didn’t bother casting a vote.
So this would be Failed Stimulus III (we swear it will work this time).
One could argue that the TARP fund from the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 was another stimulus in that it was designed to keep financial institutions afloat and in business.
While Obama didn’t have any direct input (though he voted for it and supported it in speeches), his economic team was part of the discussion.
So this would be Failed Stimulus IV: This Time it’s Personal
I’m with Bianchi, in effect it would be Failed Stimulus IV. And yes, it’s very, very personal.
Obama: “We should not have to choose between getting our fiscal house in order and jobs and growth.”
Listen up, BoBo. In this economy, every single day, every business is forced to choose between growth and fiscal sanity:
- Invest in new technology (growth) or pay utility bills to keep the machines running (sanity)? Pay the bills.
- Hire more people (growth) or pay the fuel bills to keep the sales and shipping fleets on the streets (sanity)? Keep the fleets on the streets.
- Invest in R&D (growth) or make the most of what you already have for now (sanity)? Leverage what you have.
Every day, we have to choose between what we want in a blue-sky-DC-delusional world and what we must do in that alternate dimension called The Real World.
So, Barry, you want to double down? Buy a second gray cell. Vigorously rub them together. See if you can generate a spark of common sense.
Some of the comments here have made me laugh out loud. Thanks, I needed that.
GDI’s comment:
So, Barry, you want to double down? Buy a second gray cell. Vigorously rub them together. See if you can generate a spark of common sense.
Still laughing about that one.
Buck O’Fama – “the dog ate my economy” Also hilarious.
And Suthenboy your entire post made me laugh.
At least as we circle the drain we can find some humor in these events.
In the last 2 years or so my business has collapsed and I am now heading for bankruptcy and maybe losing my home. I guess this is the change Obama spoke of.
This man has a concrete block for a brain, driving around the country in zillion-dollar buses like a Middle Eastern potentate while bad and worse news about the economy “unexpectedly” emerges each day. Maybe if he hung around the White House and acted like he gave a damn about what is happening, folks would find his “the dog ate my economy” BS a bit more believeable. But his act is not helping things, if anything, it’s making people madder.
His only other choice is to do something that will actually grow the economy, but then he’d be admitting his policies over the last 3 years have been wrong-headed. So now his only chance of re-election is creating another economic-sugar-high with some stimulus that might take him through 2012. It’s a desperate gamble, but the only choice he has.
I have no experience using drugs, so maybe someone out there can help me. I am suspicious that I have, somehow inadvertently, ingested a hallucinogen.
These are my symptoms:
a) I keep imagining that the President of the United States is a Marxist/Socialist. In my delirium I keep hearing him using Marxist language about redistribution, spreading wealth, Keynesian economics etc. etc.. I know this is a delusion because socialism has failed 100% of the times it has been tried so no one except the worst kind of idiot would fall for that clap-trap. No one that stupid would be able to breath on their own, much less get elected President.
b) In this bizarro, wacked-out dream, most of the mainstream media is supporting this socialist President. Not just supporting him but covering for him and making ridiculous excuses for him. For example, it seems to me that the president and his attorney general have been caught pulling off a gun-running operation to some incredibly bloody, vicious drug gangs south of the border in order to scare people into giving up their second amendment rights. Even through the fog I seem to be in, it looks like terrorism to me, yet the mainstream media will not report much on it.
That simply cant be true. I am hallucinating right?
c) Through the implementation of socialist policies ( one of which is strangely called ‘Obamacare’ ) the economy, which was not good to start with, has gotten progressively worse ( it is a harmless pun! ). The policies are disasters, yet the president and his supporters continue to try them with more and more vigor. Currently, in my delusion, the president is patting unemployed people on the head, telling them all will be well when he unleashes his newest scheme at some undisclosed time in the future, after he gets back from a lavish vacation on Martha’s Vineyard. He is promising this time it will work.
d) Everytime I read national political news since 2008 my vision seems off. Everything is distorted as if I am looking into a fun-house mirror through a zoom-lens that keeps zooming in and out in and out……wow. Its gotta be a drug of some kind right? This is coupled with an auditory hallucination of ‘ woooooooowwwweeeeeeewwwwwoooooowww…’
The list goes on and on, but that should be enough to deduce the cause of my delirium. Can anyone tell me what kind of drug or poison I might have been exposed to? Am I crazy?
No you’re wrong. According to John McCain, the only bizarro people are the Republicans that want a balanced-budget amendment.
The President will be able to munch on all these new economic reports while he luxuriates on a tony vacation.
Um… no, he won’t. Wasn’t it reported that he doesn’t take daily economic briefings anymore?
Ok, this time I will drop the sarcasm.
I am guessing it has sunk into his thick head that his policies are failures. Is it possible that he has given up? Or Cracked up? Has the DNC told him to pack up in 2012? What other explanation is there for this apathy?
Just a wild, unsubstantiated guess.
Buck O’Fama – “the dog ate my economy”
Priceless…and hilarious.
President may propose Stimulus II to keep his ‘job plan’.
I advocate extending unemployment insurance benefits indefinitely. This depression was caused by governmental stupidity at the federal, state, and local levels when they ordered home loans be made to people who they knew were clearly unqualified to take out astronomical home loans. When these deadbeats defaulted, this in turn toppled the economy. Since the Feds are responsible for killing the goose that laid the golden egg, it is only right that they pay everyone who got fired because of their stupidity.