Saturday, August 21, 2010

The 'summer of recovery' becomes the dog days of doom

  • August 20th, 2010 11:50 am
American determination and self-reliance is evident in her small towns. Landrum, South Carolina
Photo: Historic Train Depot/Anthony G. Martin

As predicted, Obamanomics is a prescription for economic disaster. The unexpected spike in jobless claims for July signals the beginning of woes. One can bet the farm on the fact that it WILL get much worse under the current economic policies.

500,000 filed for unemployment in July--the highest in 9 months, taking us all the way back to the worst days of the current severe recession.

The economy was actually showing a faint glimmer of self-healing, apart from government help, by the time the stimulus package and the bailouts kicked in. Americans have always shown an amazing resilience in times of great hardship, and most hunkered down to weather the storm, do what they had to do to survive, and sow the seeds for a financial comeback.

Businesses were beginning to hire again. Consumer spending began to rise, albeit modestly. There were, indeed, modest signs of a rebound, not because of anything government did but due to the ingenuity, hard work, and determination of the American people.

But even in the midst of the positive signs, something was amiss. The signs of recovery were few and far between and tentative at best. Confidence in the economy was not on the rebound at all. And, with Barack Obama and company traveling around the country telling outright falsehoods, such as the laughable assertion that 3.6 million jobs have been saved or created since the great messiah took office, citizens knew in their heart of hearts that something did not add up.

While the President and his minions traveled the country touting the supposed 'summer of recovery,' the facts belied the rhetoric. Few businesses were hiring. Consumer confidence was not rebounding but plummeting. Frightened over the prospects of the largest tax increase in American history--when Obama and the Democrats allow the Bush tax cuts to expire--citizens stopped spending. Businesses stopped expanding.

The uncertainty as to what government will do next is grinding the economy to a dead-halt.

Further, the economic program implemented by Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress is the very antithesis to recovery.

Runaway government spending at a time when the national debt is 'unsustainable' is a prescription for disaster. And it has been over 60 years--during WWII--since the budget deficit equaled over 9% of the GDP. We are now back at that level for 2 years in a row, and we are not engaged in a world war.

But that's not all, unfortunately. As top Obama adviser Rahm 'Dead Fish' Emmanuel is famous for saying, 'Never let a good crisis go to waste.' The Obama Administration took those words quite literally.

In the name of 'saving the nation from economic disaster, this gang of Leftwing extremists embarked on a plan to ram through rank socialism--the bailout of Wall Street, GM, Chrysler, the 'stimulus package' that basically sent taxpayer funds into the pockets of unions, ObamaCare, which we are now finding out is a nightmare reminiscent of Nazi Germany, and other spending measures that sent the deficit soaring through the roof and pushing the national debt to a very dangerous level that Obama's own advisers say is 'unsustainable.'

The result of this drunken sailor spending spree is the present downturn in the economy--and more unemployment.

We have been down this road before...with similar consequences. FDR's spending practices prolonged the Great Depression and served as the perfect excuse to implement draconian changes to the American government and economy--most of which was totally repealed after his death.

On the other hand, the Depression of 1920, which progressives have successfully scrubbed from public school textbooks, was quickly ended within a little over a year, by Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge.

The result? The 'Roaring 20s'--the greatest period of economic prosperity and expansion in American history.

How did they do it? Massive and deep tax cuts, lowering the tax rates, and cutting government spending to the bone.

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