Too Big To Fail.
POTUS's routine, meandering, too-big-to-fail speech to Brookings this news cycle is like an exhibition game to a homecourt audience during a break in the long season, and he contributed no more than a video moment to the well-known facts that the jobless number is at 10% and likely to stay that high or go higher in the next months as well as remain above 8% into 2011. The Obama administration is both fraught and fickle about the economy's dreadfulness. POTUS asserts that Larry Summers warned him a year ago that joblessness would grow at a rate not seen since the 1930s, however POTUS does not explain how, if this scene is reported accurately (dubious: Summers says a lot in all directions, like a roulette wheel with many numbers), then why did the Obama administration devote the year to healthcare reform and cap and trade on the Hill and to a stimulus package that only served to fill state budget gaps and a few stand-alone construction projects? The answer is likely that the White House did not see the 10% and higher, nor the long term grinding of 8%, nor the certain damage that the jobless rate would do to POTUS ratings and the the Democratic agenda. The stimulus package is mocked, which is why POTUS has to reflexively defends it. Cap and trade is shelved or put in a drawer or just generally off track (choose metaphor) at the Senate level just because it is preposterously expensive, has no popular support, is a direct tax on a jobless public, and is now part of the legend of crooked science and global warmist doomsaying by an elite of newspaper reading ninnies. And the healthcare reform bill, freighted with the panacea of the public option, is not going to get out of the Senate before Christmas, before SOTU, and may not get out at all until and if it invents a 60th vote that doesn't exist except in string theory.
Why POTUS Jobs?
Gallup shows POTUS at a new low of 47%. This is high compared to where he is headed into the Springtime, though it is unlikely he can break 40% before the 2010 elections. The jobless rate can go to 11% when and if people start looking for work in the Spring (which drives up the rate). POTUS knows he cannot have a second stimulus package, and might not be able to appear to spend anymore of an already $12 Trillion estimate deficit. The novelty is to use unspent TARP. This is witty of them, because TARP was part of the debt already. Nonetheless, this is the latest fade from the Obama team. What they aim to do with the unspent (unclaimed) TARP (perhaps $75 Billion) is unclear. POTUS refers to something like a jobs program, which is labelled a "jobs creation" program that includes tax cuts and so forth. More big thinking for little folk. Nothing substantive about moving banks to loan to small businesses -- and the credit drought continues because the banks do not aim to risk their leverage again for fear of another down-turn and another cycle of blowing up. In all, the administration's jobs thinking is not profound -- nor designed to do more than talk the game. POTUS looks to have settled into a winter of discontent. The polls will sag; the House Democrats will sweat; the Senate will bluster; and the banks will continued to borrow at 0% and buy T-Bills (and some equities), which is a guaranteed way to make money for their bonus babies.
Biden, Biden, Everywhere.
Note that POTUS is much with VPOTUS this day. At the national security briefing at 930 am (very late for a Bush White House); and the economic briefing at 10 am, and then a few minutes with Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod on the polls (POTUS meets with senior advisers), and then off to the speech at Georgetown (above); but later POTUS and VPOTUS are together with StateSec Clinton. Much to do about VPOTUS in the room, the man with the Rolodex, the attitude and the energy. Puzzle, is this suggestive of my brother's keeper? It seems significant that POTUS went to Biden territory, the unemployed of Allentown, to make his visit to the lonely -- and to include in his dry speech to the Brookings brains. POTUS borrowing real people from VPOTUS? POTUS seems most comfortable in the bubble he complains of? POTUS is the bubble? The economy is a bubble? Has POTUS ever remarked on a bubble before? Is this Biden metaphor? Biden has been inside the Senate bubble since 1972. Neither POTUS nor VPOTUS have not worked outside of government or government fed enterprises. Does POTUS mean bubble or palace?
Cash-for-Caulkers.
My favorite new Obama administration fantasy made it into the POTUS speech, though in disguise. The best they could do with hasty language improv was call it "home retrofits." (At the NYT, where they think of Brookings as "non-partisan, the program turned up as "offering rebates to people who make their homes more energy efficient.") Home Depot and Lowe's live in the hearts of the White House team, true bourgeioise heroes, enthralled to those acress of plywood and gadgets for the do-it-yourself.
Has anybody noticed how bad Obama is looking these days? He appears so much more deflated than he did only a year ago. I almost feel sorry for Barry - like I did for Bush. We're in the process of castrating another flesh-and-blood president - the third in a row. If there are any smart people left in this country, I'm sure that they've figured out by now that taking on the position of POTUS is like strapping on a suicide vest to be detonated remote control by cell phone. Understand, that's exactly how we end up with the dregs.
We really should call for an investigation to find out who is abusing our presidents; who exactly is it that's on the other end of that cell phone; who it is that's lurking behind the curtain. Could his name be Soros? Or is it us who've become so jaded; so disillusioned; so cynical as to summarily renounce any authority? I know that I'm guilty as well. I may well have crossed the line a time or two. I welcome those who point it out. Come to think of it, Harry Reid hasn't been looking so stellar either - neither has Pelosi, but with her you can't really tell. I've often thought she might be one of those Japanese animated robots.
It isn't only the jobs figure. Of those who have jobs, how much are they working, and how much are they being paid. Even if we return to full employment, if wages decline we are in the same boat.
If you listen to the head of TrimTabs -- I see him occasionally on cable shows (actually YouTube clips of cable shows) -- he'll tell you that the government can fiddle around with employment numbers, they can fiddle around with GDP numbers, they can fiddle around with inflation and other government numbers. But a less fudge-able number is the daily tax receipts to the US Treasury from workers and companies. That will tell you how the economy is really doing.
Tax receipts from individuals are down about 8% compared to last year (Y-O-Y). Company witholding receipts are down a staggering 64% Y-O-Y.
Holy moley.
Sorry, I meant to provide a link to the Treasury income tax witholdings receipts data, from teh Zero Hedge website:
http://tinyurl.com/ykvqa37
Obama's should stop smoking those cancer sticks.
That is, Obama should stop smoking those cancer sticks.
It takes a great deal of energy to maintain a big ego like that. If he would ever just relax, come clean, say, you know, maybe this tax-and-spend thing isn't working so well, I don't have all the answers, give me some time, I'll try to get it right, etc. then people would give him a break. When someone projects a "PERFECT" glass image it's human nature to want to tear it down. He has to decide how far he's gonna ride it down before he tries the ol' come-clean approach. Look at Jimmy Carter. He at least knew the ol' humble approach. And it worked for a while, and at least made his presidency a bit more "beerable".