Bloomberg isn’t buying the Obama administration’s “not our fault” take on the stock-market crash. So Robert Gibbs will now have to add that entire news service, along with the Economist, the Wall Street Journal, Rick Santelli, and Jim Cramer to his list of supposed know-nothings who are too dense to appreciate the brilliance of Tim Geithner and the efficacy of a spending orgy, tax hikes, nationalization of healthcare and major industries, and cap and trade. Bloomberg reports:
“It’s the Obama bear market,” said Dan Veru, who helps oversee $2.8 billion at Palisade Capital Management in Fort Lee, New Jersey. “We don’t know what the rules are in so many different areas the government is touching.”
[ . . .]
“Obama should be listening to the stock market more than talking to it,” said Kenneth Fisher, the billionaire chairman of Woodside, California-based Fisher Investments Inc., which oversees $22 billion. “He hasn’t gotten out of the gate well.”
Like the old joke: if people tell you that you’re drunk, perhaps it’s time to sit down.
And ABC’s the Note gets into the act with a jab at the PR-obsessed president who might not get the big picture on a day when unemployment hits 8.1%:
From the White House, on the president’s trip Friday: “The President will deliver remarks at the Columbus Police Graduation Exercises. The 25 Columbus police recruits graduating Friday learned in January that instead of being sworn-in as officers, they would be let go. However, Mayor Michael Coleman announced last week that he would use money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to pay the recruits’ salaries so they could keep their jobs.”
Yes, 25 jobs. Just wait until that new Arby’s opens out on Route 50. . . .
Yowser. And then on a more serious and entirely cogent note, Rick Klein asks:
On a policy level, how long before the Wall Street tumble and other awful economic news will force a major re-thinking of the Obama economic strategy? (Can you say, “Stimulus: The Sequel”?)
On a political level, how long can the president muster the public support for his prescriptions, without tangible evidence that they’re working? (Can he get there without buy-in from economic commentators?) (And if he can’t stock his Cabinet, can he fix an economy?)
Now, imagine an alternative Obama program: Following the atrocious announcement of 8.1% unemployment, he hits the “reset” button. He announces there will be a two-year moratorium on corporate taxes. He cuts the payroll taxes. He declares he will veto the omnibus spending bill and that he intends to keep government’s share of GDP below 20% so as not to duplicate the pattern of other hobbled economies with enormous welfare-state obligations. He announces a “recovery first” program in which cap and trade, healthcare, and card check will be declared “long-term” goals — but not the focus of his time or attention so long as we are in a recession. And then he replaces Tim Geithner with Martin Feldstein. Would the bear market end? Would 401K values and confidence rise? Would business executives rally to his side?
If you want to be in the business of economic recovery you need to do things to encourage that. If you want to be in the business of conducting a grand social experiment, you ignore the advice and pleas of just about everyone with a stake or expertise in the economy. And then you watch the markets continue to dive.
