Week 5 Blog

Economy: Obama's Fault?

I read an article on realclearpolitics.com, that a very interesting argument about who to blame for this economic mess we are in right now. In the end, he points his finger at President Obama, but his reasoning is interesting. The author, David Harsanyi, notes that it would be too early to blame the President, except for the fact that "Obama had not worked early to support agenda-driven omnibus pork bills, job-killing cap and trade schemes, and union assaults on workers' rights, to name just a few of his priorities." Harsanyi notes that the people Obama appoints to fix the economy, such as Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner, whos explanation of the bank bailout plan plunged the market down further recently. Harsanyi states that because Obama has drained his political capital towards "furthering ideology rather than economic growth," that this is his mess.

I think it is certainly a valid argument by Harsanyi, but I do not buy into it just yet. I don't think we really know yet about the quality of the bank bailout and the stimulus plan yet because we have not had enough time to observe its effects. Plus, the economy may have already reached a bottom this past week, when the market rose significantly on Tuesday. So for now, I am content on blaming Bush.

And the reason that I think I have the right to blame Bush is simple. Hey, we spent eight years with him, he had time to let his ideas try to shine through, and that didn't happen. Maybe Obama is smarter than all the critics, and maybe his plan isn't just a bunch of pork. Heck, the critics could be right, but it is too early to tell.

Speaking about the increasing market, I saw an interesting article on nyt.com this week detailing the boom in the stock market. The author, Thomas Friedman, likened this gain to the first day after a tragedy, making it the 9/12 of the stock market. At this time we need unity to keep this nation on track. However, Friedman notes that at this time the Republicans would rather see the Democrats fail, so that the Republicans can win elections, rather than see the nation succeed. It was documented before in clear words when Rush Limbaugh said that he wants Obama to fail.

Friedman also acknowleges that we need to keep helping the companies such as AIG, Citi, and GM get eaten up by the market, then the country will fail along with it. So, the article gives us a lot to think about. Overall, the gist of it is that no matter what happens, the Republicans will find a way to blame the Democrats, and some will even want the country to fail just for the Republicans potential gain.

Why is this? I don't remember the Democrats rejoicing over every Bush error over the past eight years. It is interesting to me how this whole hope-the-other team fails thing is a trait owned by just the Republicans. The Democrats seem to have a grown up opinion about everything.

Finally, a third article I found was on CBSNews.com. Declan McCullagh said that we can no longer achieve the days where the Dow Jones was 14,000, no matter how much stimulating the government does. He called into question the man in charge that put a stimulus bill into action trying to rescue AIG, Fannie and Freddie, GM, and all these companies that are struggling. He stated that we simply cannot fix all the problems and save all the companies and until we realize this the economy is in trouble.

I think he has a good point, but only to a degree. These are big companies, and if they shut down, like the Times article mentioned, it could be failure to the country. This isn't bailout money going to the small-chain restaurant down the street that employs 30 workers. This is much bigger than that. Millions of jobs are at stake with these jobs that are in trouble. Millions of people have mortgage problems. You can't just ignore the problem. What you can do is lessen it to a degree by not spending as much, but that's only my opinion.
Is that possible? I have no idea. But maybe you could spend less money in the stimulus bill and try that out. It's too late now, but heck, if it ends up working, I'm all for the stimulus bill fixing the economy. The likelihood though is that this one thing will not salvage the economy alone.