Hot News of the World: obamadoesntunderstandeconomics

Home / obamadoesntunderstandeconomics

Showing posts with label obamadoesntunderstandeconomics. Show all posts

Obama doubles down on anti-free trade rhetoric, won't let go of outsourcing jobs issue

Anti-business, anti-free trade rhetoric continues from Obama. One is either left with the notion that Obama doesn't understand corporate finance or he is dishonest. Given that even the Washington Post and FactCheck.org understands these points and has repeatedly pointed them out, one has to lean towards the latter. With charges of felony, you would think that the press would force the Obama campaign harder to back up their claims. From the Associated Press:

An unrelenting President Barack Obama jabbed at Mitt Romney's record with a private equity firm in an ad Saturday that aimed to keep his rival on the defensive just as the Republican challenger's campaign hoped to take advantage of poor economic data to gain an edge on the incumbent.
Obama met Romney's plea for an apology for the attacks with a mocking ad that charged that the firm shipped American jobs to China and Mexico, that Romney has personal wealth in investments in Switzerland, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, and that as Massachusetts governor, he sent state jobs to India.
"Mitt Romney's not the solution. He's the problem," the ads says as Romney is heard singing "America the Beautiful." . . .
Saturday, in Clifton, Va., Obama again tried to tie Romney to the loss of American jobs, contrasting himself with his rival.
"I want to stop giving tax breaks to companies that are shipping jobs overseas," Obama [said] . . . . "Let's give those tax breaks that are investing right here in Virginia, right here in the United States of America, hiring American workers to make American products to sell around the world."
Romney's spokeswoman, Andrea Saul, fired back Saturday, accusing the president of being less than truthful about Romney's record.
"The American people deserve the truth and they certainly deserve better from their president," Saul said, from Boston. . . .

From Fox News:

Obama in an interview with WJLA-TV said Friday that Romney needs to better explain his tenure at Bain.
"Ultimately Mr. Romney, I think, is going to have to answer those questions, because if he aspires to being president, one of the things you learn is, you are ultimately responsible for the conduct of your operations," Obama said. "But again that's probably a question that he's going to have to answer and I think that's a legitimate part of the campaign." . . .

Anderson Cooper on CNN summarizes the Obama campaign strategy this way:

Basically the Obama campaign wants to paint Romney as the greedy, out of touch rich guy, whose com BC closed factories and killed jobs just to make a quick buck. . . .

David Gergen had this statement on CNN on July 10th. When asked by Anderson Cooper if Obama was opening himself up to the charge that he is attacking success, Gergen said (3:19 into the video):

Absolutely, and you know I happen to think that the attacks on Bain capital are well off base. I know something about that company. I know something about the people who work there. I have done some work with them in the past. I was on a board that sold out to Bain Capital. . . .

Here is another statement by Gergen on July 12th:

Having said that, again, what's surprising about this is the Obama campaign is now playing a very rough form of politics. And is that really what we were promised way back when? . . .

The AP story also has this note at the end of the piece:

Bain Capital said in a statement that Romney "remained the sole stockholder for a time while formal ownership was being documented and transferred to the group of partners who took over management of the firm in 1999."

CNN reports the accusations from Team Obama of felonious conduct are simply false. John King spoke to four executives at Bain, two of whom are “active” supporters of Barack Obama and three of whom are Democrats. All four said that Mitt Romney left Bain in a rush in 1999 so as to work full time on rescuing the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, and that he had nothing to do with Bain after he left in February 1999. So what about the attacks on Romney by Obama claiming that Romney was still running Bain in 2000 and 2001? Well, that claim is essential to the Obama campaign ad on outsourcing. From the Washington Post on July 12, 2012:

Just because you are listed as an owner of shares does not mean you have a managerial role. . . .
Fortune obtained the offering documents for a Bain Capital Fund circulating in June 2000, as well as a fund in 2001. None of the documents show that Romney was listed as being among the “key investment professionals.” As Fortune put it, “the contemporaneous Bain documents show that Romney was indeed telling the truth about no longer having operational input at Bain -- which, one should note, is different from no longer having legal or financial ties to the firm.” . . .
In the Massachusetts document, Romney is also listed as 100 percent owner of “Bain Capital Inc.” But there is less than meets the eye here. Bain Capital Inc. was the management firm, which was paid a management fee to run the funds and actually made virtually no profit, since it existed to pay salaries and expenses. After Romney formally left Bain in 2001, a new entity called “Bain Capital LLC” took over the management function.
By virtually all accounts, Romney was focused on the Olympics in the 1999-2002 period. Yet because Romney had not legally separated from Bain, his name is littered across Securities and Exchange Commission filings concerning Bain Capital deals during this period. The crazy quilt of private-equity structures, in some ways, makes his ownership appear even more ominous, as the filings list hundreds of thousands of shares controlled by Romney. . . .

Info from FactCheck.org is available here. Fortune's article is available here.

Moreover, unwinding a private equity firm's ownership structure is extremely complicated. The "firm" itself is largely a legal construct of convenience, since it doesn't pay salaries, make investments or do much of anything else. Instead, what matters are the individual funds.
In the case of Bain Capital's funds, it's reasonable to assume that Romney was considered a "key man," meaning that each fund's limited partners could have voted to end the fund's investment period -- or take over fund management themselves -- if a super-majority felt it prudent. But that didn't happen, and Bain saw no reason to expend massive administrative effort to amend existing funds. Instead, it asked Romney to sign documents when necessary, and made the managerial/ownership changes on new funds going forward. . . .

On July 13 the Washington Post had this:

The one thing new we saw in the Globe story was the assertion that “Romney’s state financial disclosure forms indicate he earned at least $100,000 as a Bain ‘executive’ in 2001 and 2002, separate from investment earnings.” But then we realized we had already reviewed those documents in January. The 2001 form describes him as a “former executive” (see page 1 of form A-5) — the campaign says this was retirement pay — but the 2002 form says “executive.” So either you believe he suddenly rejoined the firm, after leaving it, or someone made a typo.
Romney’s sudden departure from Bain had left the partnership in flux, in fact almost breaking up the firm, and a final resolution was not reached until he ended his Olympic sojourn and decided to run for governor. At that point, he signed retirement papers that set his departure date as February 1999, the month he left for the Olympics.
Fortune magazine on Thursday reported that it had obtained the offering documents for Bain Capital funds circulating in 2000 and 2001. None of the documents show that Romney was listed as being among the “key investment professionals” who would manage the money. As Fortune put it, “the contemporaneous Bain documents show that Romney was indeed telling the truth about no longer having operational input at Bain — which, one should note, is different from no longer having legal or financial ties to the firm.”
Still, if the Obama campaign wants to put its money where its mouth is, it should immediately lodge a complaint about Romney’s financial disclosure form, filed just last year, rather than try to mislead people about potential violations in relatively unimportant SEC documents. . . .

Obama's campaign has spent $100 million on attack ads in swing states.

President Barack Obama's campaign has spent nearly $100 million on television commercials in selected battleground states so far, unleashing a sustained early barrage designed to create lasting, negative impressions of Republican Mitt Romney before he and his allies ramp up for the fall. In a reflection of campaign strategy, more than one-fifth of the president's ad spending has been in Ohio, a state that looms as a must-win for Romney more so than for Obama. Florida ranks second and Virginia third, according to organizations that track media spending and other sources. About three-quarters of the president's advertising has been critical of Romney as Obama struggles to turn the election into a choice between him and his rival, rather than a referendum on his own handling of the weak economy. Obama's television ad spending dwarfs the Romney campaign's so far by a margin of 4-1 or more. . . .

President Obama: "If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen."

book3 Obamaantibusiness obamadoesntunderstandeconomics

Transcript from a talk in Roanoke, Virginia on July 13, 2012:

So I’m going to reduce the deficit in a balanced way. We’ve already made a trillion dollars’ worth of cuts. We can make another trillion or trillion-two, and what we then do is ask for the wealthy to pay a little bit more. (Applause.) And, by the way, we’ve tried that before -- a guy named Bill Clinton did it. We created 23 million new jobs, turned a deficit into a surplus, and rich people did just fine. We created a lot of millionaires.
There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me -- because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t -- look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. (Applause.)
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet. . . .

Someone should really educate Obama about the history of the United States. A lot of states in the US didn't have public education until the 1870s, and yet they had literacy rates around 96 percent. Public universities got started well after private universities did, and so the vast majority of our colleges were originally private. That even the subways in NYC were originally built and operated privately until government price controls (a 5 cent maximum fare) and "capturing" of existing private lines. You had private highways in the US up until 1916.

Vice President Joe Biden faults Mitt Romney for believing that “so-called job creators” build the economy

JoeBiden obamadoesntunderstandeconomics

Biden said at the National Education Association conference: “[Romney believes] somehow, that those so-called job creators will make everything okay for the rest of us. We believe that the way to build this country is the way we always have, from the middle out . . . [to] invest in the things that have always made our economy grow: innovation, research, development, infrastructure, and education.”

Obama backing away from newest claim that today's jobs report is a "step in the right direction"

ObamaDishonest obamadoesntunderstandeconomics ObamaMisstatement

Remember Obama's statement last month: “The private sector is doing fine. Where we're seeing weaknesses in our economy have to do with state and local government." Obama never really backed away from that comment. After today's unemployment numbers, Obama claimed the jobs report is a "step in the right direction."

But at a stop Friday afternoon in Pittsburgh, his last on a two-day bus tour through Ohio and Pennsylvania, Obama dropped the line -- stressing instead the work that remains.
"We have been fighting back," Obama said. "But what we all understand is that we've got so much more to do. Too many of our friends and family members and neighbors are still out of work. Too many folks still are seeing their home property values under water." . . .

The connection in both statements is that the private economy in Obama's mind is really doing fine.

So should the tag for this post be to classify Obama's statements as misstatements (not really) or dishonest (probably).

To Obama government money comes out of thin air

keynesianism obamadoesntunderstandeconomics stimulus

Obama on June 1, 2012 in Golden Valley, MN: I assume there are some folks here who could use $3,000 a year. Let's get that done right now. That means they're going to be -- you know, if you have $3,000 a year extra, that helps you pay down your credit cards, that helps you go out and buy some things that your family needs, which is good for business. Maybe somebody will be replacing some thingamajig for their furnace. They've been putting that off. But if they got that extra money, they might just go out there and buy that thing, right? . . .

Obama fails to understand that the money has to come from someplace. If government takes the money from some people and gives to others, why will that increase total spending. If you put your pay check in the bank, either you spend it on the mortgage or car or food or the bank buys bonds or lends out the money. To believe the typical MPC argument you would have to believe that saving is the equivalent to throwing money in a hole in the backyard.

Abound Solar declares bankruptcy

obamadoesntunderstandeconomics Solyndra stimulus

Just this week Abound Solar announced it was declaring bankruptcy.

Abound Solar, a solar panel maker that received a $400 million loan guarantee from the federal government, announced on Thursday that it would file for bankruptcy amid plummeting prices and intense competition from Chinese manufacturers in the solar equipment market.
The failure of Abound, which tapped about $68 million of the loan guarantee before the Energy Department cut off its credit last September, comes after the collapse last year of Solyndra, another high-tech solar panel maker that had received federal funds. . . .
Abound Solar, of Loveland, Colo., with manufacturing in Tipton, Ind., had been struggling for months. In February, it announced it was closing its factory to conserve resources while it tried to start production of a more advanced product. The company produced panels that made electricity directly from sunlight using a chemistry called cadmium telluride, which was intended to have a cost advantage over the more common silicon cells. But that cost advantage eroded as silicon cells plunged in price.
Abound said it would file for bankruptcy next week and dismiss its 125 employees. . . .

Obama continues blaming speculators

2012election conspiracytheories KeithOlbermann Obama2012 Obamaantibusiness obamadoesntunderstandeconomics speculation

I have tried several times to explain how speculation works, but Democrats can't pass up a chance to bash businesses.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, HOST: Let's talk a little bit more about the economy. Gas prices are starting to come down this week, but the president wanted to show he's on top of it, saying he's prepared to crack down on speculators.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: My administration will take new executive actions to better analyze and investigate trading activities in energy markets and more quickly implement the tough consumer protections under Wall Street reform. None of these steps by themselves will bring gas prices down overnight, but it will prevent market manipulation and make sure we're looking out for American consumers.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS: Keith, the president did made a concession there. The problem is they actually hadn't been able to come up with any evidence that speculation was driving up the price. There's a lot of hunches, no hard evidence.

KEITH OLBERMANN: Yeah. One of the -- one of the things I turned to, to try to establish that was to look at the average gas price at various key moments, and the lowest price in the last six years, the nadir of gas prices at the pump, was the day of this president's inauguration in 2009. There has to be some connection between that being the least busy political moment of a president's career, where you're not going to -- you're not going to hurt them, you're not going to harm him that way, and the price of gas. There has to be an almost deliberate or at least a side effect quality to that. There must be.

The rambling here about conspiracy theories is crazy. Speculators make money my arbitraging away price differences. To sell gas when you think that it will rise in the future is a sure way to lose money. The same is true if you buy it up when you think that it will be lower in the future is another way to lose money. For a massive market like oil where this conspiracy trading increases the profits of other speculators to go in the other direction.

New piece in Philadelphia Inquirer: Speculators smooth out the rough spots

Energy Obamaantibusiness obamadoesntunderstandeconomics op-ed pricecontrols speculation

My new piece with Grover Norquist in the Philadelphia Inquirer starts this way:

With regular gas prices topping $3.70 last weekend, angry politicians are blaming the higher prices on speculators and greedy oil companies. On Monday, The Hill newspaper reported that 23 senators and 45 congressmen, all Democrats except for one independent, called for urgent action against the "speculators" they hold responsible. Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania demanded, "Consumers shouldn't be forced to pay higher prices at the pump because of speculative bets on Wall Street."

These politicians want the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to use its new regulatory powers under a law signed by President Obama two years ago to limit the amount of oil that speculators can buy.

This isn't a new concern. Last April, when regular gas prices hit $4 a gallon, the president launched a Department of Justice investigation into what he called "manipulation in the oil markets that might affect gas prices."

Unfortunately, neither the Democrats in Congress nor Obama appear to have a clue how markets work. The policy reminds one of Richard Nixon's attacks on speculators during the 1970s. . . .

An example of how wealth is transferred to favored businesses by the Obama administration

obamadoesntunderstandeconomics Regulation wealthtransfers

This businessman worked on the Obama campaign and his firm handles the mandate that health care records be digitized. This guy argues that digitizing records will save money. But if that is true, why have to mandate that they do this? It is pretty amazing that this guy has the nerve to say that it is good to have this mandate when his firm personally benefits from the mandate.

Democrats anti-science?

obamadoesntunderstandeconomics

This long seemed obvious to me, but something may be catching on when there is an op-ed in the Washington Post. This piece has a point about how long it would take for the Volt to pay for its saving money on gas (something that I have written about many times), and it is not a pretty sight.

. . . The electric vehicle flop also illuminates a point about science — or the politics of science.

Democrats and liberals are fond of calling their conservative and Republican adversaries “anti-science.” To the extent that the right espouses “creation science,” or disputes established facts about environmental degradation, it’s an appropriate label.

But progressives’ fascination with electric cars and other alternative-energy schemes reflects their own refusal to face the practical limitations of alternative energy — limitations that themselves reflect stubborn scientific facts.

Stubborn Scientific Fact No. 1: Petroleum packs a lot of energy per unit of volume. (Each liter contains 34 megajoules.) Consequently, gasoline makes a cheap, portable and convenient motor fuel.

By contrast, even state-of-the-art batteries deliver far less energy than gas, in a far bigger package. A Volt can go 35 miles on a single charge of its 435-pound battery. This sounds like a big deal until you realize that a gas-engine Chevy Cruze gets 42 miles per gallon — and costs half as much as a Volt. . . .

A 64% total tax on corporate profits?: Obama sure knows how to encourage investment

Obama Obamaantibusiness ObamaDishonest obamadoesntunderstandeconomics

Companies already face a 40% marginal income tax. If they pay out their profits as dividends, Obama wants up to a 40% tax on those dividends. Those two taxes together would imply a 64% total tax on the profits earned by American shareholders. Of course, the total tax won't be that high because firms would immediately stop paying dividends, though I am sure that the Obama administration is assuming that the tax will have no effect on the dividend payout rate. From TVNZ:

President Barack Obama's 2013 election-year budget took investors by surprise with a call for significantly higher taxes on dividends, a major change from his earlier tax proposals and one that will raise the ire of dividend-paying companies.

Households earning more than $250,000 a year would see the tax they owe on dividends rise to a maximum of almost 40% next year, equal to the higher maximum income tax rate set to take effect in 2013. The current top income rate is 35%.

Obama again proposed raising the current 15% long-term capital gains tax rate to 20% for the wealthy. He had earlier also sought to set a 20% tax on dividends. . . .

Even Obama's own hand picked CEO advisors what him to change his regulatory approach

Obamaantibusiness obamadoesntunderstandeconomics Regulation

It turns out that Steve Jobs hasn't been the only business executive warning Obama about his policies. From Reuters:

President Barack Obama's jobs council called on Tuesday for a corporate tax overhaul, expanded domestic drilling and new regulatory reforms, a set of proposals unlikely to provide a quick fix for high unemployment or gain much traction in an election year.
A panel of top U.S. business leaders advising Obama - whose re-election chances could hinge on whether he can boost the fragile economy - offered its latest job-creation prescriptions at a meeting with him at the White House.
Obama pledged to "push as hard as possible" on their recommendations but also sought to temper expectations. "Obviously this year is an election year, and so getting Congress focused on some of these issues may be difficult," he cautioned his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. . . .
"With this report, President Obama's own panel of experts has endorsed the approach to job creation House Republicans have been pursuing for more than a year," Republican House Speaker John Boehner said in a statement. . . .

A new Harvard Business School survey of their MBAs confirms these fears.

A new survey of the business school's alumni found that nearly three-quarters of respondents expect the U.S. to be less competitive over the next three years. They said the U.S. is losing ground to emerging economies, where low wages, increasingly skilled workers, growing markets and proximity to customers frequently trump traditional American strengths such as sophisticated infrastructure, a reliable legal system and effective macroeconomic policy.

The survey is part of a multiyear Harvard Business School project on U.S. competitiveness. Its authors, Harvard professors Michael Porter and Jan Rivkin, defined competitiveness as a two-pronged condition in which firms operating in the U.S. can not only win business but also foster rising living standards for American workers. "If businesses win and wages go down, that isn't competitiveness. If wages go up but businesses are losing, that's not competitiveness either," Mr. Porter said.

Pessimism on both counts ran high, but American workers may face longer odds of success in the global economy than corporations do.

While 45% of the study's 9,750 respondents said U.S. companies will be less able to compete with their overseas counterparts in the near future, 64% said those companies will be less able to offer high wages and benefits at home. About a quarter of the respondents identified themselves as chief executives, founders or equivalents. . . .

One more reason why Obama should have been in the private sector

obamadoesntunderstandeconomics

I have worked in the federal government, and this statement by Obama is absurd.

you won't meet harder working folks than some of the folks in these federal agencies.

Now I am sure that Obama feels that he has an out by saying the word "some." Is he saying that there might be 4 or a few more workers there who are as hard working as any others that you would meet? But that is not how most people will take this. There is no way that a private company would last very long with the work ethic in government. Virtually no one else worked on evenings and weekends. There were people who would seem to do about one week's worth of work a year. I was at the US Sentencing Commission. One person I knew had the task of forecasting prison populations. I suppose that the first year he did it the task may have taken a few months, but when he updated the program each year it basically involved adding one more line of data, rerunning the regression, and changing some numbers from the previous report. It is hard to see how all this could have taken more than a week, but the rest of the year he would disappear into his office. Unfortunately, there were many other similar examples.

All that said, Milton Friedman used to say that we should be thankful that we never got the government that we paid for. Could you imagine how much more intrusive the government would be in our lives if people actually worked as hard as Obama claims?

Add this to Obama not understanding issues such as the role that profits play in motivating work. The full quote is here:

"So much has happened and yet the government we have today is largely the government we had back then. And we deserve better. Go talk to the skilled professionals in government serving their country. And by the way, you won't meet harder working folks than some of the folks in these federal agencies. They devote countless hours to trying to make sure that they're serving the American people, but they will tell you their efforts are constantly undermined by an outdated bureaucratic maze."

Obama's view on Free market economies

book ObamaDishonest obamadoesntunderstandeconomics

One has to read Obama's full speech to realize how really bad it is, but here is a taste of it.

“The market will take care of everything,” they tell us. If we just cut more regulations and cut more taxes -- especially for the wealthy -- our economy will grow stronger. Sure, they say, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, then jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everybody else. And, they argue, even if prosperity doesn’t trickle down, well, that’s the price of liberty.

Now, it’s a simple theory. And we have to admit, it’s one that speaks to our rugged individualism and our healthy skepticism of too much government. That’s in America’s DNA. And that theory fits well on a bumper sticker. (Laughter.) But here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It has never worked. (Applause.) It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It’s not what led to the incredible postwar booms of the ‘50s and ‘60s. And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade. (Applause.) I mean, understand, it’s not as if we haven’t tried this theory. . . .

The Obama administration learned nothing from the financial crisis

financialmarkets mortgagecrisis obamadoesntunderstandeconomics

Remember how the pressure to give loans to individuals who couldn't afford them lead to the financial crisis (see here and here)? Failure to count welfare or unemployment payments as income is viewed as evidence of discrimination. Now the Obama administration forces Bank of America to pay record $335 million penalty for supposedly discriminating against minorities:

Bank of America Corp. will pay $335 million to settle allegations that its Countrywide Financial Corp. unit discriminated against black and Hispanic borrowers, in the largest residential fair-lending settlement in history.

The agreement, announced on Wednesday, involves more than 210,000 minority borrowers who were charged higher fees or who could have qualified for a prime mortgage, one offered to borrowers with the best credit histories, but instead were steered into a more costly subprime loan.

The case is the first by the Justice Department that accuses a lender of steering borrowers to more costly mortgages. The agreement also ends a separate discriminatory lending lawsuit filed by Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan in state court in June 2010.

Bank of America neither admitted nor denied the allegations in the settlement. The bank said it settled to resolve issues tied to Countrywide's practices before Bank of America's July 2008 purchase of the lender. The bank said it is "committed to fair and equal treatment of all our customers." . . .

Obama explains his views on Capitalism

book Obamaantibusiness ObamaDishonest obamadoesntunderstandeconomics socialism

Laziness as problem for the US not attracting new business?

book obamadoesntunderstandeconomics Regulation Taxes

Obama's solution of eliminating competition between the states to attract businesses will make it even harder to attract businesses. From Fox News:

President Obama said that the United States has gotten a "little bit lazy" when it comes to bringing in new businesses in to the states. He made the comments at a CEO summit as part of the APEC conference Saturday, when asked by Boeing CEO James McNerney about looking at the world from a Chinese perspective and what they might consider as impediments to investing.

Obama said it's important to remember that the U.S. is still the largest receiver of foreign investment in the world and things like stability, openness and innovative free market culture are attractive. He also said there are a lot of things that make foreign investors see the U.S. as a great opportunity - like stability, openness, our innovative free market culture.

"But we've been a little bit lazy, I think, over the last couple of decades. We've kind of taken for granted -- well, people will want to come here and we aren't out there hungry, selling America and trying to attract new business into America, Obama said. . . .

"Because of our federalist system, sometimes a foreign investor comes in and they've got to navigate not only federal rules, but they've also got to navigate state and local governments that may have their own sets of interests. Being able to create if not a one-stop shop, then at least no more than a couple of stops for people to be able to come into the United States and make investments, that's something that we want to encourage," Obama said. . . .

Here are some recent similar statements by Obama.

In a speech last week at a fundraiser in San Francisco, the president said Americans have "lost our ambition, our imagination." In late September, he said that the country had "gotten a little soft." And at a DNC event in September, he said that Americans' "faith" that life would be better for their kids had been "shaken."

Here is an interesting collections comparing Carter to Obama on "malaise."

On the bad investment decisions the government is making on

book governmentwaste obamadoesntunderstandeconomics

Michael Barone has some useful numbers and points to remember available here. $67 billion for 160 miles? $420 million per mile?

It hasn't failed because of a lack of willingness to pony up money. The Obama Democrats' February 2009 stimulus package included $8 billion for high-speed rail projects. The Democratic Congress appropriated another $2.5 billion.

But Congress is turning off the spigot. The Republican-controlled House has appropriated zero dollars for high-speed rail. The Democratic-majority Senate Appropriations Committee has appropriated $100 million in its budget recommendation. . . .

The feds insist California build a 160-mile segment in the Central Valley that is estimated to cost at least $10 billion and will have virtually no riders. The estimated cost of the whole project has zoomed from $43 billion to $67 billion, and there seems to be no prospect of any more public- or private-sector money. . . .

UPDATE: This is an entirely instate route. Why should there be any federal funding? From the WSJ:

The Obama administration's push for high-speed trains is foundering, as Congress moves to clamp down on funding and a showcase California project encounters new hurdles. . . . Florida canceled a planned Tampa-to-Orlando route in February.

California envisioned a $45 billion high-speed system extending from San Francisco to Southern California, with trains running by 2020. The state's original business model assumed it would get one-third of its funding from the federal government, although it received no such commitment. So far, the project has received roughly $3 billion from the U.S. government, with little more likely to come. . . .

New health care regulations seemed destined to force many off of private health insurance

healthcare obamadoesntunderstandeconomics Regulation

Almost everyone would like a Porsche or a Volvo, but the question is are we willing to pay the price. For the vast majority, the answer is obviously "no." No matter how much it would nice to own such a car, the cost simply outweighs the benefit. Not everyone wants to buy even a mid level car. Sure it would be nice for many people to own a somewhat nicer car, but the costs aren't worth it either. Notice this news article at Fox News reporting:

The advisers recommended that the package be built on mid-tier health plans currently offered by small employers, expanded to include certain services such as mental health, and squeezed into a real-world budget. . . .

Senator Harry Reid blocks vote on Obama's job bill

ObamaDishonest obamadoesntunderstandeconomics unemployment

From the Associated Press:

“At least put this jobs bill up for a vote so that the entire country knows exactly where members of Congress stand,” the president said. “Put your cards on the table.”
Even as Obama spoke, McConnell was attempting to call his bluff by pushing for a quick Senate vote on the jobs bill, which Senate Democrats have acknowledged doesn’t have the support to pass. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid objected so he could delay action until Democrats can corral more support. . . .

Here is an earlier September 5th story from the Associated Press:

President Barack Obama said today that congressional Republicans must put their country ahead of their party and vote to create new jobs as he used a boisterous Labor Day rally to aim a partisan barb at the GOP. In a preview of the jobs speech he will deliver on Thursday to Congress, Obama said there are numerous roads and bridges that need rebuilding in the US, and over 1 million unemployed construction workers who are available to build them.

Citing massive federal budget deficits, Republicans have expressed opposition to spending vast new sums on jobs programs. But Obama said that with widespread suffering, "the time for Washington games is over" and lawmakers must move quickly to create jobs. "But we're not going wait for them," he said at an annual event sponsored by the Metropolitan Detroit AFL-CIO. "We're going to see if we've got some straight shooters in Congress. We're going to see if congressional Republicans will put country before party." . . .

UPDATE: More on Obama bashing Republicans over the stalled bill.

A combative President Barack Obama challenged a divided Congress on Thursday to unite behind his jobs bill or get ready to be run "out of town" by angry voters. Hoping to use public frustration and economic worry as leverage, he called his proposal an insurance plan against a painful return to recession.

In a news conference long on restatements of his ideas, Obama laid bare the dynamic that now is Washington: The era of compromise is over.

Frustrated over getting nowhere with Republicans, Obama demanded that they explain themselves to the country and promised to keep "hammering way until something gets done."

Despite Obama's taunts, Republicans showed no signs of switching positions. Instead, they pressed unsuccessfully for a symbolic vote later in the day so they could demonstrate their opposition to the bill the president submitted three weeks ago. They also predicted they would prevail next week when Democrats try to advance a reworked version, which Obama supports, with a tax on millionaires.

Speaking at a forum just about the same time as Obama, House Speaker John Boehner said the president had decided to "give up on governing, give up on leading." Said Boehner: "We're legislating. He's campaigning." . . .

UPDATE: Change in Senate rules. Democrats claim that they are changing the rules because Republicans are slowing things down, but they really changed the rules because Republicans were trying to force the Democrats to vote on Obama's proposed jobs bill. They were upset that Republicans were trying to speed up a vote, not slow it down.

Senate Republicans tried to embarrass Democrats who don't support President Obama's job bill by forcing a vote on the measure Thursday, but Democrats responded by stripping Republicans of legislative power.

The GOP tried to force Democrats to vote on Obama's $447 billion jobs-creation bill to prove that even the president's own party doesn't support the proposal. Republicans tried to attach the jobs bill to a measure dealing with China.

However, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., responded to the Republican effort with a proposal, approved 51-48, that changed the rules of the Senate and stripped Republicans of their power to offer amendments to bills once the Senate agreed to cut off debate and vote.

It was an unusual and devastating blow to the minority party.

Reid and Democrats said they retaliated because they have grown tired of Republicans trying to slow down or block legislation with amendments unrelated to the bill on the floor. . . .

Hot News of the World