The Wall Street Journal editors have had enough:

Americans have welcomed the Obama era in the same spirit of hope the President campaigned on. But after five weeks in office, it’s become clear that Mr. Obama’s policies are slowing, if not stopping, what would otherwise be the normal process of economic recovery. From punishing business to squandering scarce national public resources, Team Obama is creating more uncertainty and less confidence — and thus a longer period of recession or subpar growth.

They contend that it’s getting late in the game to blame George Bush for the overwhelming gloom gripping the economy. And in the absence of any new external events they conclude:

What is new is the unveiling of Mr. Obama’s agenda and his approach to governance. Every new President has a finite stock of capital — financial and political — to deploy, and amid recession Mr. Obama has more than most. But one negative revelation has been the way he has chosen to spend his scarce resources on income transfers rather than growth promotion. Most of his “stimulus” spending was devoted to social programs, rather than public works, and nearly all of the tax cuts were devoted to income maintenance rather than to improving incentives to work or invest.

His Treasury has been making a similar mistake with its financial bailout plans. The banking system needs to work through its losses, and one necessary use of public capital is to assist in burning down those bad assets as fast as possible. Yet most of Team Obama’s ministrations so far have gone toward triage and life support, rather than repair and recovery.

But the president seems unconcerned with the private-sector slump. He’s out to expand government into new areas of regulation and control, inflict new taxes on investors, and remake the U.S. economy in the mold of its European counterparts so it will absorb more and more of the nation’s GDP than at any time since World War II.

Liberal pundits and other supporters of the president feign ignorance as to why the markets are crashing or they contend the downturn is unrelated to the Obama economic agenda. This is hogwash. CNBC analyst Charlie Gasparino, who spends his day with traders, investors, and other analysts, asks them why markets are in a downward spiral. Lo and behold, the administration’s policies and uncertainty have freaked them out. He describes their buyers’ remorse:

Obama was anything but mediocre, they told me time and again, as the financial crisis devastated the markets and ushered in one nasty recession. And these days they are a sorry lot because they now admit they really didn’t listen to Obama. Yes, their man was elected, and they still defend their choice for president based on his obvious intelligence, grace under pressure, and for the simple fact that they couldn’t bring themselves to vote for the erratic John McCain, and the novice Sarah Palin.

But for all of that they can’t believe what they are witnessing: an economic agenda that is contradictory at best, and possibly reckless in its extreme. Policies that will certainly make a very bad situation even worse, and when things do get better, they will certainly not be better enough to compensate for the pain we are experiencing.

One wonders when public opinion and polling will catch up with economic insiders’ views and the reality they are witnessing. When the next batch of 401K statements comes out? When the Dow hits 6000 — or 5000? When the unemployment rate hits 8% — or 9%? We’re about to find out, I suspect, just how far great rhetorical skill and media cheerleading can carry a president when his policies are so antithetical to the requirements of economic recovery. I suspect the answer will be: not far enough.