Strange musings

The President had some curious things to say regarding the economy at a joint presser with Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel yesterday.

“It is just very important for folks to remember how close we came to complete disaster,” he told the watching TV cameras and reporters.

“The world economy took a severe blow two and a half years ago, and in part that is because of a whole set of policy decisions that had been made, and challenges that have been unaddressed over the course of the previous decade,” he said, standing alongside Merkel, whose economy has rebounded during the last two years.

(italics, ours... you know, just sayin')


That ungracious and ungrateful so-and-so. If Bailout Nation was initiated under Bush and then put on human growth hormones under Obama, why doesn't the Prez give any props to Bush for getting the wheels up?


And then there was this:

“Two years ago… we were still near the bottom of a vicious recession… we could have done what a lot of folks in Washington thought we should do, and that is nothing” amid extensive passages promising investment and government support for communities, he declared.

(italics, ours)

Oh, no we didn't. We all knew Team O was going to do something... quite a lot of something as a matter of fact.

And about that nothing. Know who actually recommended doing nothing? Christina Romer, that's who. Well, to be completely fair to Ms. Romer, former administration economic advisor who bailed out a few months back to go teach at Cal Berkeley, she was an advocate for doing something, chiefly the $787 billion stimulus package known affectionately in these parts as Porkulus. However, her prediction for doing nothing would turn out to be much better for employment figures had we done that instead of doing something as the chart below shows.

And how did the President respond to all the bad economic news that rolled in last week?

“Economic data that in better times would pass without comment, now suddenly people wonder well are we going to go back to this terrible crisis and all that affects consumer confidence; it affects business confidence; it affects the federal markets,” he said.

Don't know about you all but we can't recall a 9.1% unemployment rate passing without comment. Perhaps this is what explains him dating his signage of the Westminster Abbey guest registry "May 2008"... retreating to a happier time and place when no one in the media ever questioned, poked or prodded with respect to his policy positions or past associations.

Expect more disassociations from reality from the President if things don't unexpectedly turn around here, right quick.