Hope and Change Hangover

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How much stimulus is enough? How many dollars does there need to be in the world to lift us out of our deep financial funk? Just how much government debt should we have to create enough demand to get the economy off of its belly?

Because let’s face it, that’s where it is…Crawling along at more or less zero growth…

Yes, I know the official numbers are 2% growth…but are those numbers really  there?

Think about the statistical gymnastics it took for the administration to show the unemployment level fell to 8.2%...1.2 million unemployed had to be “disappeared” to make that happen.

Where the light is

But, if you ask someone like Keynesian economist Paul Krugman, he’ll say that we haven’t had enough of stimulus and debt, and that we ought to have much more of both…

Such genius reminds me of the old story about a policeman watching a drunken man on his hands and knees crawl around in circles beneath the glow of a single streetlight in an otherwise dark lane.

The policeman comes up to the drunk and asks what the problem is.
The drunkard says, “I’m looking for my house key.”
The policeman says, “I’ll help you look for it. You lost it nearby?”
“No,” replies the drunkard, “I lost the key down the street somewhere.”
“Then why are you looking for it here?” The policeman asks quite puzzled.
The drunkard looks at the policeman as if he were crazy and then says,
“Because, this is where the light is, of course.”

Such goes the reasoning of the drunkard…

And, it would seem, the wizards at the Federal Reserve and in the Obama administration.  In our case, the house is the nation’s economy, our society and the wellbeing of both. It once was a strong house, well kept and in control of its finances… But it hasn’t been looked after.

Too many of our leaders have spent too many hours away from home, bending an elbow in sleazy socialist bars, on the golf course, and listening to too many Harvard lectures about how to take care of a house, rather than actually doing it.

And of course, the key to that house is the sound economic policies of limited government intervention, reasonable budgets, and a monetary policy that doesn’t bankrupt the country…

But with an administration—and to be fair, it’s been many administrations before it as well—that repeats the same policies of huge debts and social dependence and yet expects the economy to improve, real economic recovery does not look to be in our near future.

What's to be done?

The current administration is either collectively delusional, fanatic to the point of blindness, or they’re all stinking drunk.

Personally, I would prefer that it were the latter.

Becoming sober is an overnight process…

Curing mental illness, on the other hand, is a dubious prospect at best…

But changing the minds of rabid fanaticism to an ideology regardless of outcomes?

Forget about it.

Hair of the dog

That’s why it’s so tragic and yet so infuriating to see both Bernanke and Obama cheer the massive debts of stimulus spending the way they do…

As they call for yet more stimulus spending, more debt, more federal control of the economy, whether via Obamacare, bringing Fannie Mae back from the dead, or QE3.

Dragging the economy to its knees in the service of ideology or some other vapid theory, is working about as well as the drunkard looking for the key in the glow of a streetlight…

And unless something changes, nothing will change. The economy will remain as it is…crawling about in a circle of frustration and zero growth.

I s this too over the top?

Maybe.

But come on, let’s face facts…

Stimulus spending is all that Obama and Bernanke know. They’ve both been pounding shots of socialism whiskey for so long that their beer goggles make them think that even this economy is a 9+ and worth taking home to mom.

And why wouldn’t they?

They’ve spent their entire adult lives drinking at the Keynes Bar and Grill, like two barflies with a never-ending tab… And even if you are an Obama supporter, you have to admit that there’s not a lot of open-mindedness in the administration, is there?

The solution to every economic problem is always what?  You got it…

More federal intrusion, more federal control, and more federal taxation.

When that’s all you got in you’re your bag of tricks, the answers always the same and the results are always a version of either bad or worse…

And the prescription is always the same, too.

Got a pounding hangover headache, America? Here, have a hair of the dog, old chum; it’ll fix you right up.

You would think at some point that the head of the DNC, or even one of the President’s trusted advisors have got to think about trying “Plan B” and pull the Community Organizer-in-Chief away from the bar, call a cab, and sober the man up.

Now, it’s true that his message has changed some of late…

From “hope and change” to faint praise for market capitalism on some theoretical level…

But that’s just because they can all read poll numbers…

Which is about all we can expect from a guy who lives in a theoretical world, where abstract concepts are tossed around a committee table between bong hits or whatever else their controlled substance of inspiration might be…

In the meantime, the economy has been nursing a 3-year hangover from so many shots of hope and change most of America can’t even remember what’s it like not to have a financial headache with 16 zeros after it.

Will the administration change its plan and let America set about sobering itself up? Or will they double down on stupid as they head into the election in what may be the biggest frog march of an administration out of Washington D.C. since Jimmy Carter said “trust me, America?”

That remains to be seen.

In the meantime, like most Americans, I’ll be asking myself that age old question: “Anybody seen my keys?”

And those are…The Gorrie Details.

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