[J] It is the jobs stupid!!

Dear Friends,

President Obama still does not understand why the markets are crashing.  Clearly it was not the downgrade of the United States debt since all the people selling stocks today were simultaneously buying US treasuries and interest rates went down and not up.  The problem is not the United States debt level or the dysfunctional government that we have with crazy Republican extremists and a President who is unwilling to confront them. 

Here is a summary of the President's remarks by Holly Bailey (here):

In his first public remarks since Friday's downgrade, Obama blamed political gridlock for the nation's setback and insisted the markets still consider the United States a "triple-A country."
S&P's move, Obama said, was "not so much because they doubt our ability to pay our debt … but because after witnessing a month of wrangling over raising the debt ceiling, they doubted our political system's ability to act."
"We didn't need a ratings agency to tell us that we need a balanced, long-term approach to deficit reduction," he added. "That was true last week. That was true last year. That was true the day I took office."

The market is dropping like a rock because there is no growth in the economy and everybody knows that cutting federal spending will slow or reverse growth.  The only way to get this economy to grow is to increase demand and the only way to increase consumer demand is to provide people with jobs and the only way to get job growth is for the Federal government to spend money and to spend it on infrastructure projects that we badly need.  As long as the President and the Republicans are focused on deficit reduction, the markets will not improve.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

[P] A Failed President and Presidency

Dear Friends,

For the last several weeks I have had a sick feeling that President Obama would cave-in once again.  Now I am just sad for the country, sad for the poor and middle class, sad for those looking for jobs and sad for our democracy.

For reasons that I will never understand, many months ago President Obama adopted the Republican narrative that the Federal debt was the most important issue that we were facing.  Normal people, including the vast majority of Americans, knew very well that President Obama was wrong and that the most important issue was getting people back to work.  We heard a lot about jobs, jobs, jobs but neither Congress nor the President did any thing other than the way to small stimulus package.

Since the Republicans, President Obama and the leaders(?) of the Democratic Party had all adopted the idea that the deficits were the most important issue and since the Republicans had learned from their past experience negotiating with President Obama that he will always cave-in, the Republicans decided to hold the nation hostage in order to further their ideological drive to make the Federal government so small that it will essentially disappear.  The Republicans threatened to kill their hostage (the US economy) if they did not get huge and very damaging budget cuts.  Instead of going to the American people and calling the Republican members of the House of Representative far right wing hostage takers, he decided to negotiate with them.  Everybody knows you never can win negotiating with hostage takers and terrorists.  But President Obama did anyway.

We know from past experience that President Obama is a terrible negotiator.  So guess what happened, the far right wing extremist that have taken over the Republican Party got virtually everything they wanted, and President Obama got nothing.

I will not repeat here all the reasons why it is a terrible deal.  The best summary of how terrible the deal is that I have read is Paul Krugman's op-ed in The New York Times today entitled "The President Surrenders" (here).

My conclusion is that President Obama is a failure as a President and that his Presidency is a failure.  He has no idea how to lead.  He is unwilling to take a position and fight for it.  He is incapable of negotiating.  The economy will not recover before the 2012 election.  The unemployment levels will remain unconscionably high.  There is a substantial risk that President Obama will not be able to be re-elected, and we will be left with one of the crazy Republican candidates.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal