Current location:	Up Sh** Creek
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Entry tags:	barack_obama, great_depression_ii, jim_cramer

The Hits Just Keep On A Comin'

 

So Much for Hope

On Feb. 17, Obama signed a stimulus bill worth $787 billion -- the largest spending bill in history. But the Congressional Budget Office indicates only 20 percent of the funds will be spent this year, and the nonpartisan group suggests that the package could do more economic harm than good.

Obama also gave the green light to an omnibus $431 billion House Democratic spending bill laden with close to 9,000 pork-barrel spending items.

Plus, Obama revealed that he plans increase marginal tax rates on those earning more than $250,000.

The new taxes will yield more than $1 trillion in government revenues, but some economists believe the news of increased taxation will suck the wind out of any economic recovery.

In the middle of the market meltdown Thursday, Obama spent the day talking about a massive increase in healthcare spending, including a proposal in his budget that sets aside $634 billion in a 10-year reserve fund to pay for expanded care.

-- Obama Policies Feed Market Panic

This tsunami of red ink shows no sign of abating any time soon. We do not have this kind of money, period. According to the Congressional Budget Office, this massive spending spree will do no good anyway. One of the "changes" we were promised was that earmarks for pure pork was going to end. Weren't we promised that the new prez was going to go through any budget line-by-line and that he would cut these types of items out? Didn't he promise to whack any gov't program that wasn't delivering results? Looks like business as usual. We can no longer afford this, but just try telling that to these Democratic assholes.

We had a banking crisis coming into this regime, but now every area is in crisis. Each day is worse than the previous one for this miserable economy and while Obama's champions cite the stimulus plan, it's really just a hodgepodge of old Democratic pork and will not create nearly as many manufacturing or service jobs as we hoped. China's stimulus plan is the model; ours is the parody.

-- Economic Shrinkage Worst in 26 Years

The Latest Defector

Which leads me to the true irony of not being political: I don't like talking politics. It is personal, but some things are a matter of public record, including my substantial six figure donations to the Democratic Party before I was no longer allowed to contribute by contractual agreement. I regard two Democratic governors as my friends, and helped back one of them in a major financial way and spoke and campaigned directly for the other.

-- Cramer: My Response to the White House

This is Jim "Boo-yah" Cramer, host of the Mad Money financial show. Any one watching this show for any length of time would know that. One of those governors he mentions is Spitzer, and he was almost in tears when Spitzer was forced to resign.

I also made it clear in a New York magazine article that I favored Obama over McCain because I thought Obama to be a middle-of-the-road Democrat, exactly the kind I have supported all my adult life, although I will admit to being far more left-wing during my teenage years and early 20s.

To be totally out of the closet, I actually embrace every part of Obama's agenda, right down to the increase on personal taxes and the mortgage deduction. I am a fierce environmentalist who has donated multiple acres to the state of New Jersey to keep forever wild. I believe in cap and trade. I favor playing hardball with drug companies that hold up the U.S. government with me-too products.

So we know that Cramer is quite the trendy leftie. That he would now be another prominant defector from Obama demonstrates just how wrong this entire administration has gone.

But these are issues that we have no time for now, on the verge of a second Great Depression. This is an agenda that must be held back for better times. It is an agenda that at this moment is radical vs. what is called for. I am proud to have voted for the Obama who I thought understood the need to get us on the right path, and create jobs and wealth before taxing it and making moves that hurt job creation -- certainly ones that will outweigh the meager number of jobs he's creating.

Most important, I believe his agenda is crushing nest eggs around the nation in loud ways, like the decline in the averages, and in soft but dangerous ways, like in the annuities that can't be paid and the insurance benefits that will be challenging to deliver on.

More buyer's remorse. Yeah, Mr. Cramer, you was had. All too many voters did as you: they believed the slick words, the empty promises of "hope" and "change" and did not pay attention to what really counted. At least he is honest enough to admit his mistake. Would that the new POTUS do likewise, veto that spending bill, and live up to his promise to cut out the pork, especially now when we can no longer afford this dubious "luxury". It is becoming painfully obvious that this guy has no idea what he's doing.

If that makes me an enemy of the White House, then call me a general of an army that Obama may not even know exists -- tens of millions of people who live in fear of having no money saved when they need it and who get poorer by the day.

Join the club: Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilley, Rick Santelli, and now Jim Cramer. My, what strange bedfellows politics makes. This is indeed unfortunate. Mr. Obama should be listening to guys like Jim Cramer, not siccing his press secretary on him. Mr. Obama, we can't afford your far left idiot-ology. We are desperately in need of pragmatic solutions here, not more of the same old, same old that got us into this fix in the first place. Yeah, Mr. Obama may be so thoroughly clueless that he may not know about that "army" of the desperate whose 401k's have been devastated by a market downturn the likes of which we have not seen in a hundred years. We've had good times and bad; we've had bear markets and bull markets. However, every time we've had a bear market, it has always bottomed out at a level above that of the previous bear market low. Not this time: we're below the last market bottom. We may very well be looking at the makings of "Great Depression II". The last one was bad enough.

More and more, it's looking like we're headed for a disaster of unprecedented porportions. More and more, I'm wondering if we'll even make it to the 2010 mid-terms, let alone 2012.