Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : The Obama - Clinton Disaster -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (8320)	3/4/2009 2:46:59 PM
From: jlallen	Respond to of 103300

Are you a member of the GOP? If not, STFU. We in the GOP will make that decision. J.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (8320)	3/4/2009 3:16:40 PM
From: longnshort	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 103300

BLANKLEY: Obama lied; the economy died Big government is really his bag, but he doesn't own up to it Tony Blankley Tuesday, March 3, 2009 OP-ED: I am trying to capture the spirit of bipartisanship as practiced by the Democratic Party over the last eight years. Thus, I have chosen as my lead, the proposition: Obama lied; the economy died. Obviously, I am borrowing this from the Democratic Party theme of 2003-08: "Bush lied, people died." There are, of course, two differences between the two slogans. Most importantly, I chose to separate the two clauses with a semicolon rather than a comma because the rule of grammar is that a semicolon rather than a comma) should be used between closely related independent clauses not conjoined with a coordinating conjunction. In the age of Barack Obama, there is little more important than maintaining the integrity of our language - against the onslaught of Orwellian language abuse that is already a babbling brook, and will soon be a cataract of verbal deception. The other difference is that George W. Bush didn't lie about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He was merely mistaken. Whereas President Obama told a whopper last week when he claimed he was not for bigger government. As he said Tuesday night: "As soon as I took office, I asked this Congress to send me a recovery plan by President's Day that would put people back to work and put money in their pockets. Not because I believe in bigger government - I don't." This he asserted though the budget he proposed the next day asks for federal spending as 28 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), higher by at least 6 percent than any time since World War II. Moreover, after 10 years, Mr. Obama's proposed spending as a percentage of GDP would still be 22.6 percent, nearly 2 percentage points higher than any year during the Bush administration, despite the full costs of the terrorist attacks of Sept, 11, 2001, the Iraq and Afghan wars and the rebuilding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Consider also his assertion in his not-quite-State of the Union address that: "My administration has also begun to go line by line through the federal budget in order to eliminate wasteful and ineffective programs. As you can imagine, this is a process that will take some time. But we're starting with the biggest lines. We have already identified $2 trillion in savings over the next decade." But, lamentably, a few days later, The Washington Post reported: "A senior administration official acknowledged yesterday that the budget does not contain $2 trillion in spending cuts over the next decade. Instead, the figure represents Obama's total efforts at deficit reduction, including tax hikes [of more than $1 trillion] on families making over $250,000 a year. It also includes hundreds of billions of dollars 'saved' by not continuing to spend $170 billion a year in Iraq." Only a big government man would think of calling a trillion-dollar tax increase a spending cut or "saving." Technically, of course, it is true. A trillion-dollar tax increase will reduce spending by a trillion dollars for those private citizens who were taxed. And, from the perspective of the federal government, a trillion dollars taxed is a trillion dollars saved from the greed of the taxpayers who produced the wealth - and might well want to spend or invest it in non governmental activities. But the foregoing are merely pettifogging numbers compared to Mr. Obama's bigger ideas about energy and health care. Our president shares a fascinating idea about energy with most of what used to be known as the "small is beautiful" crowd. It is a curious phenomenon that one needs a very big government to enforce the beauty of small. As Mr. Obama's energy secretary, Steven Chu, said last year: The price of electricity in America is "anomalously low." You see how much smarter that Nobel prize winner is than you. You probably thought you were already spending enough on electricity and fuel. And sure enough, Mr. Obama explained last week that in order to make alternative energy sources wind, solar - perhaps eventually human muscle power? - economically competitive, he intends to raise the price of carbon-based energy until it is so expensive that even solar power will be such-a-deal. This level of destructive irrationality cannot be accomplished in the private sector. It will take a very big government indeed to bring such inanities into being. (disclosure: being rational, I give professional advice to carbon-based energy producers.) If President Obama were to try to misrepresent his positions for the next four years, there would be nothing he could say that would approach the inaccuracy of his claim last week that he is not for big government. It is the essence of the man and his presidency. He doesn't like America the way it has been since its founding - and it will take an abusively big government to realize his dreams of converting America into something quite different. If you don't know that, you don't yet know Barack Obama. Tony Blankley is the author of "American Grit: What It Will Take To Survive and Win in the 21st Century" and vice president of the Edelman public-relations firm in Washington

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (8320)	3/5/2009 3:29:56 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 103300

Editorial: The Never-Ending Bailout March 3, 2009 nytimes.com Americans awoke to the news on Monday that federal officials had spent yet another feverish weekend concocting yet another bailout. This time, the Obama Treasury Department — sounding a lot like the Bush Treasury Department — promised another $30 billion to the American International Group, the giant insurer. It was the fourth time since September that taxpayers have been called upon to rescue A.I.G. from collapse. It brings the bailout commitment for that one company to some $160 billion. In a joint statement with the Federal Reserve on Monday, the Treasury justified the move, saying that “the potential cost to the economy and the taxpayer of government inaction would be extremely high.” That’s a textbook rationale for any bailout. What no one is saying — the Bush folks wouldn’t, and the Obama team seems to have taken the same vow of Wall Street omertà — is which firms would be most threatened by an A.I.G. collapse. The Treasury and the Federal Reserve noted in their statement that A.I.G. is a “significant counterparty to a number of major financial institutions.” That means that by enabling A.I.G. to avert bankruptcy proceedings, the taxpayer is also bailing out — whom exactly? Not knowing is not acceptable. At this stage of a deepening crisis, no one is arguing that the government should let A.I.G. collapse into a disorderly bankruptcy. It is too interconnected. During the housing bubble, it used unregulated derivatives to insure mortgage securities that turned out to be toxic — without putting aside reserves in case it had to pay up. If it now went under, there could be a chain of catastrophic defaults among banks that hold the securities and related investments. The A.I.G. bailouts fail the basic test of transparency: Who ends up with the money? Major financial institutions are not innocent victims of A.I.G.’s demise. They are sophisticated investors, and they should have known the risks being taken — and who profited mightily from the relationship before it all came crashing down. Whoever the recipients are, they should be investigated for their roles in the crash and, to the extent possible, be made to pay for the bailouts. The serial A.I.G. bailouts are especially problematic for their connection to the Wall Street bank Goldman Sachs. At the time of the first A.I.G. rescue last fall, it was reported by Gretchen Morgenson in The Times that Goldman was A.I.G.’s largest trading partner, with some $20 billion of business tied into the insurer. Goldman has said that its exposure to risk from A.I.G. was offset, or hedged, by other investments. What is certain is that Goldman has lots of friends in high places — yet one more reason why this bailout has to be as transparent as possible. Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman’s chief executive, was the only Wall Street executive at a September meeting at the New York Federal Reserve to discuss the initial A.I.G. bailout. Also involved in the discussion was the then head of the New York Fed, Timothy Geithner, who is now President Obama’s Treasury secretary. It is also painfully clear that more of the same black-hole bailouts are failing to restore stability or confidence. Stock markets worldwide tanked on Monday. A growing chorus of economists and commentators — including this page — are urging the Obama administration to adopt a more comprehensive solution: a government-run restructuring, or nationalization. The government would not only take an ownership stake in firms that require extensive and ongoing bailouts — as it has done with A.I.G. and Citigroup — but also direct control of the weakest ones. It would get a realistic assessment of the assets crippling them and revamp their finances before returning them to the private sector, where they would be smaller and healthier and could start lending again. We know that many Americans are uncomfortable with the word nationalization — politicians even more so. But each new bailout of old losers only feeds mistrust of the government and weakens public support for the even tougher decisions to come. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company