"Fixing" The Economy Is Not Obama's Goal

Why are Americans even putting up with all this neofascist economic policy? It is not the job of the federal government to confiscate private property or nationalize businesses. The more the government moves this direction, the more wealth is destroyed. As wealth is destroyed people lose jobs and hope.

Either Obama is an economic ignoramus or he, Pelosi, and Reid are intentionally precipitating this economic disaster to satiate their megalomania.

A.) Democrat regulatory policy, with regard to the mortgage industry, is certainly the rot at the center of this crisis. Of this there is no doubt. Anyone can go to YouTube and review the hearings where Republicans warned of the impending mortgage catastrophe while Dems asserted there was no reason to regulate their private sandboxes of Freddie and Fannie.

B.) Fannie and Freddie were deeply vulnerable to an economic downturn but they were not the trigger. The trigger was the election of Pelosi, Reid, and their leftist friends who immediately set about instituting policy that began tying up American LNG and oil reserves. This combined with ever increasing "green" legislation as well as the impending threat of cap and trade policy (which McCain bought into but only because he wanted to "reach across the aisle" to the leftists on the other side) started steadily increasing the cost of energy futures. As a result, between 2006 and 2008 the price of gas at the pump went from under $2/gal to over $4/gal. Similarly diesel and jet fuel costs skyrocketed.

In order to deal with this massive new cost of living, the American public, relying on their vehicles to get to their jobs, gradually began cutting back on discretionary spending just to buy food and fuel. Vacations were cut back or cancelled, desserts and lattés removed from their menus, cut-backs on the purchase of new vehicles, and tons of other similar purchasing quickly ground to a halt as the Democrats pushed their economy crushing energy policy. As the travel, auto, and hospitality industries started to weaken due to the ever increasing cost of energy, the dominos started falling. The trucking industry started laying off drivers, the airlines began firing huge number of employees. Car dealerships went bust while hotels, coffeehouses, movie theaters, restaurants, theme parks, and thousands of other businesses that rely on American disposable income started going belly up.

C.) With increasing unemployment caused by skyrocketing energy prices in late 2007 and early 2008, people began falling behind on their credit card payments but were left no choice but to continue using them in order to buy necessities. Finally, by mid 2008 many people were simply not paying on their cards at all (this is about the time we started hearing radio ads for businesses promoting ways to get out of paying off unsecured debt). By July 2008, many out-of-work Americans were beginning to default on their mortgages. These were not "people who couldn't afford their homes" as many like to claim. These were people who could afford their homes right up until Pelosi and Reid drove the cost of energy so high that their employer had to lay them off, at which time, they BECAME people who couldn't afford their homes. These were people who had good jobs before the Democrats in government destroyed their lives.

D.) Chuck Schumer precipitated a bank run of over $100 million dollars on IndyMac late in June of last year. It is not surprising then, that shortly thereafter, consumer confidence in the banking industry, already reeling from newly defaulting mortgage loans, began to abate. Consumer confidence is crucial to our economy and it always has been. When the Democrats finally had their way and convinced a majority of Americans that the economic downturn (which started under the Pelosi/Reid watch) was George Bush's fault, they paved the way for their ascendancy to the White House. Given that pushing doom and gloom got them the presidency, why is anyone surprised that Obama continues to preach doom and gloom instead of his promised "home and change"? If he wanted to push change he would immediately eliminate all "green" and cap and trade legislation. That would be a massive and hugely beneficial change. If he wanted to instill hope, and thereby consumer confidence, he would abandon all the socialist and nationalizing industry rhetoric and work to clean up the banking mess. But neither of those things keeps him and his ilk in power.

Bottom line, government meddling and the craven and economically fascistic (used in the technical, not pejorative sense) policies of Pelosi, Reid, Schumer, Dodd, Frank, and Obama clearly precipitated this disaster. Personally, I believe they did it on purpose rather than as simply bumbling fools that they often appear to be. Obama is now using the crisis that leftists in his own party caused to advance the nationalizing of our economy.

"Fixing" health care by further regulating it, "fixing" education by giving the teachers unions yet further control, "fixing" energy policy by further driving up its costs are not solutions in the manner which most of us understand the word "fixing". They are using it in the same sense we use the phrase "price fixing". That is, to establish a lock on the economy that benefits their personal lust for power. The most disheartening thing about all of this is how many people have fallen for the cynical and deeply dishonest rhetoric of this snake oil salesman. The teacher's unions have done their job all too well.