The Grand Unification Theory of Sucking

Reading Drudge can be so entertaining. Or educational. Edutational? Anyway, check out this series of headlines on your right, presented by Drudge without context.

The media critic’s job is to provide context, so here we go. Let’s start from the bottom and work our way up.

First headline – Big government spending programs — having opposite desired effect… :

The Federal Reserve announced a $1.2 trillion plan three months ago designed to push down mortgage rates and breathe life into the housing market.

But this and other big government spending programs are turning out to have the opposite effect. Rates for mortgages and U.S. Treasury debt are now marching higher as nervous bond investors fret about a resurgence of inflation.

Well, duh. Some of us have been warning you about this since before Obama was even sworn in. Look, stimulus spending can’t work, because of one of three things happens:

1. That extra spending means extra taxes which means the whole thing is a wash. (Government spending having some “multiplier” effect unknown to consumer or business spending is a big, fat lie.)

2. That extra spending means extra debt, which drives up interest rates, which chokes off growth.

3. That extra spending means extra money being printed, which means inflation which means any growth is illusory.

Of course, there’s no rule saying you can pick only one result. Mix and match up to all three to suit yourself! If I had to bet, I’d say we will indeed get all three.

Next headline — Unemployment Rate Gallops Ahead of Expectations… :

The White House says America’s employment picture is worse than the Obama administration had anticipated just a few months ago. The somber admission follows the latest jobless report showing the highest unemployment rate the United States has seen in more than 25 years.

U.S. unemployment jumped a half percent in May, to 9.4 percent prompting this comment by Austan Goolsbee, a member of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors:

“The economy clearly has gotten substantially worse from the initial predictions that were being made, not just by the White House, but by all of the private sector,” said Austan Goolsbee.

Here’s the missing context: The Obama people are the ones making it worse, those stupid idiot dumb-dumbs. What, with the printing of the money, the driving up of the interest rates, and the impending raising of the taxes.

Look. When you hire an employee, you’re betting on the future. You’re betting your own money that there will be enough new business to justify your new hire. And to put a human face on it, you’re making a commitment to another human being who will be counting on the power of your judgement to put food on his table.

Are you going to take that risk and make that commitment when the dumb-dumbs are in charge?

Next headline, sans link: NYT MONDAY: TENSIONS GRIP OBAMA ECONOMIC TEAM… DEVELOPING…

Well, duh.

Let’s pretend for a moment that, god forbid, you break your arm. And somehow you end up with a team of doctors all trained at Obama University. As you lie there on the table in the ER, one doctor treats your arm by banging on the unbroken one with a ball-peen hammer. The second doctor takes the unusual course of setting your hair on fire. And the third one uses leeches.

Undeterred by your arm’s stubborn refusal to set, soon the doctors start blaming one another. And even though all of them are doing nothing but compounding your injury, none will take any blame. In fact, the louder you scream, the harder they go to work on you.

That, apparently, is what’s going on in the West Wing these days. Our economy is being managed by Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, and Dr. Howard.

Last headline, again no link yet: OBAMA PLANS FOR NEW BANKING REGULATIONS… DEVELOPING..

So now in walks a fourth doctor. This one has some Percocet and a splint, and when you see him you think, “Oh, at last, someone who knows what they’re doing!” At which point, Hospital Administrator Obama shoots the fourth doctor in the face with a pistol. And wait until you see the hospital bill – they’ll charge you for everything, including the bullet.

Are the banks too scared to move? Then threaten them with an all-new regulatory environment, one which might leave them as screwed as a GM bondholder!

Add up all the headlines and here’s what you have: The certainty that the government will screw up the markets, and uncertainty as to what new rules the markets will work under. Everyone is too scared to move, and for good reason. So there will be no new jobs, there will be no growth.

Until Team Obama gets its collective head out of our asses, all we have to look forward to is bumbling incompetence and pointless arguments. Which might be entertaining if they didn’t result in taxes, stagflation, and the Francification of a once-great nation.