By Mr. Curmudgeon
The Obama recovery isn't all the mainstream media assured us it's cracked up to be. “The Federal Reserve will meet on Tuesday faced with a pivotal decision about whether to abandon its presumption that the economy is gradually picking up steam and begin to consider new steps to keep the recovery from sputtering out,” reports the New York Times.
Worse still, the crisis Obama didn't want to go to waste seems to be worsening. “A string of developments, including the weak jobs report last Friday, has altered the sentiment within the central bank, leading Fed policy makers to stop worrying for the moment about the increasingly remote prospect of inflation. Instead, they are increasingly focused on the potential for the economy to slip into a deflationary spiral of declining demand, prices and wages.” In other words, hello Great Depression II.
As the nation completes the initial two year shock of what is shaping up to be another economic depression, the Fed needs to re-examine the Keynesian presumptions that said massive government intervention in the economy is what got us out of the last one. Bush and Obama's bailouts and “stimulus” didn't jumpstart the economy, stop the loss of jobs or stabilize the housing market. The reason? Because the economic ills now besetting us are the result of government interventions.
Obama would have us believe “Bush policies” alone caused the crash. The reality of our situation is that our two-party political system failed the nation by burdening society and the economy with entitlements. The housing bubble, and the financial crisis that resulted from the bust, occurred because of a government policy that declared home ownership an entitlement. Isn't that why banks were forced to make sub-prime loans? Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bought those sub-prime loans in order to keep the Ponzi scheme rolling.
When the crisis hit, Rep. Barney Frank - who kept telling us Freddie and Fannie were solvent - blamed capitalism and championed financial reform so government could increase the scope of its economic intervention.
A year ago last June, President Obama held the first in a series of White House summits on health care reform…the same day the trustees for Social Security and Medicare announce the federal entitlement programs were nearing bankruptcy. Now, the Congressional Budget Office warns us that the nation's entitlement spending is “unsustainable.” Gee, you think?
Thank you two-party system.
As the economic crisis deepens, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has called Congress back from recess to pass a $26-billion “jobs bill” to bailout teacher and state public employee unions. Big government sure takes care of the little guy…big-government little guys. More insidiously, it signals that our big government ruling class is circling the wagons. Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Olympia Snowe and others among Washington's bipartisan big-government establishment seem to be consolidating their political base in advance of our worsening depression. And that base is not "We the People" but the bureaucratic class…America's permanent and unelected rulers.
Abraham Lincoln said, “…as a nation of free men, we will live forever or die by suicide.” Free men, it appears, chose suicide.
Americans may not be able to articulate why they are angry with Washington or why they have an especially strong anti-incumbent rage this election season. But they need reminding that our melting entitlement nation is all their doing…no one in big-government Washington, Republican or Democrat, shot their way to power. You put them there.
However, in the elections to come, the nation has a chance to redeem itself and start to dig out of the financial and political hole we find ourselves. Americans need to wake up to the disaster we face and remedy it by rejecting the destructive status quo with the Constitutional tools the Founders gave a free and not dependent people.
Tea Party! Tea Party! Tea Party!
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