Poor Leadership Will Get You Nowhere

There is one piece of the anatomy that is necessary for a person to have in order to succeed in the position of Commander-in-Chief, and that is a body part that President Obama is severely lacking. That piece of anatomy is a backbone, and everything that Obama has done and said up to this point shows that he doesn't have the spine to be President of the United States.

Am I being too harsh with my words? Maybe. But I am not trying to be malicious here. Although I oppose most of his policies because of a difference in ideologies, I'm also not comfortable with the highest position in this country being subverted by the human-equivalent of a jellyfish. There I go again. It's not my goal to be mean. I'm just trying to shine some light on one of the President's chief failures. But it's not mean if it's the truth, right?

Let's tackle this from another direction. If I was one of President Obama's advisers I would sit him down for a pep talk, and I would outline how he acted and reacted to certain key events that occurred during these past few months that would have a serious impact on how he guides policy in the future. The decisions that he has made so far will only weaken a weak leader even further.

1) Health care reform.

Mr. Obama, you are a wonderful speaker, and when you talk about the deficiencies of the health insurers and how a government option is going to help uninsured Americans and lower the price for health care, you make me believe it. Your words can seduce and inspire, but only for the few minutes it takes for rationality and the facts to come flying back into my head. And that's the problem with your words, Mr. Obama. They are short on facts. It's not that I believe that you are lying to me and the rest of the American people. It's just that you speak in romantic generalities and that goes to soothe the fears of Americans for a only a short period of time. Since this debate has raged, you have refused to DEFINE your agenda, allowing critics to make both just and unjust claims against your very own ideas. And it's easy to do when you don't have concrete ideas to unveil to the public. The public becomes scared that things can change for the worse and when you go to reassure them, you speak in those romantic generalities again. It's not enough. What's worse, you backtracked on the very heart of your reform, putting the public option on the chopping block when criticism got too tough on you. And then you put it back on the table when you found that little bone in your back that wants to be a spine one day. Or was that just Pelosi's spine borrowed for the occasion as you came under fire from your own party. It seems to me and the rest of the people that not even YOU have a clear idea how you want health care reform to unfold, and that is what is scaring people the most. Stop being a jellyfish and outline in a clear method that everyone can read what you expect from Congress. Then there can't be any UNJUST criticism of your plan if it is all laid out. There can only be JUST criticism and items that you can refute and debate about.

2) Van Jones.

Mr. Obama, your opponents on the other side of the aisle are going to look into every person's record that you have in your employ, and when they find a crack that they can exploit, they are going to try to widen it into a chasm. Take a lesson from our last president. Bush was dumb as a doorknob, but at least he had a spine in the crooked form of Dick Cheney. No one was booted from that administration without a great fight. Huge injustices were routinely ignored in the face of great outrage and media coverage, and still Bush would not bend on many issues. The man sucked as a president but at least he had goals that were never marginalized by Democratic attacks or public outcries. Mr. Obama, you let one minor functionary go in the form of Van Jones, and it's not going to stop there. He was a kook, sure. But now you've given your opponents a victory and they are going to keep the ball rolling when it comes to scrutinizing those who work for you. Bush would have barely commented, and definitely would not have relented so easy. Get ready for the next round of attacks. If you don't, you are going to watch your administration fall apart one by one.

3) Speech to Students.

This was by far the stupidest issue for both Republicans and Democrats. Mr. Obama, you were set to tell students to work hard and do well for themselves, that by excelling they would be doing their country good. But you let attacks by the opposition get to you again. You let Republicans guide your actions, and maneuvered you into changing your speech and releasing it early to stop any criticism. Such a tiny issue in the whole scheme of things, and you let the Republicans tell you what to do. If you can't even exercise control over what you are going to tell school children, then how are you going to solve such problems as health care, the economy, and foreign policy. If you let yourself be browbeat over such trivialities, then there is no way in hell that you are going to control the conversation on much larger and broader issues that will confront the people of this nation.

Mr. President, please stick up for yourself. It has gotten very embarrassing to see. Nine months and you are caving in left and right. You have no clear cut agenda of your own, no original thinking and no hard-set ideas. All you have are those flowery words that make us swoon, but will not serve to make life for American's any easier in the end. If events keep up this way, you will definitely be a one-term president because you will have let the opposition guide your policy into a ditch. When I criticize your actions, I don't want to feel guilty in the end because I didn't pick on someone my own size. I mean, I am just a tiny blogger after all. I shouldn't feel that way when I talk harshly about the most powerful person in the world.

Now stand straight and tall, puff that chest out and stop bending in the wind. I mean, what are you afraid of? It's just Congress, after all.

Happy Birthday, Paul Volcker!

I would like to wish former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Adolph Volcker a heartfelt happy birthday. He will turn 82 on Sept. 5 and will have lived from one Great Depression to the next. He was the first and the last truly independent Fed chief, being more devoted to his ideas of monetary policy than to the White House.

Appointed to this position in 1979 by President Carter, Volcker immediately got to work fighting the vicious stagflation of the last decade. Switching the economic philosophy of the Federal Reserve from Keynesian to Monetarism required that he begin to focus solely on the money supply. Unfortunately for Carter, this meant that he was going to have to start raising rates to make money tighter and keep the money aggregates stable, which typically isn't a policy that will get a president reelected when the economy starts to sour. Despite limited protests by Carter, Volcker started his tightening and put the president on the unemployment line with millions of other Americans.

Reagan came to power and promised the American people that good times were ahead of us, and that he would usher in that new age of prosperity. He offered the prospect of shrinking deficits coupled with tax cuts to bring his plan to culmination. When Reagan's "shrinking" deficit turned out to be anything but small, the president's faulty budget plan along with his tax cuts created an inflationary fiscal policy that butted heads with Volcker's recessionary monetary policy. Volcker stood the course, despite a massive outcry from Washington and a threat to limit Fed power if he didn't lighten up on interest rates. In fact, he tightened monetary policy even further in the depths of the 81-82 recession to counteract Reagan's inflationary policies, driving rates north of 20%.

The result was an economic downturn, the harshest we had seen since the Great Depression, with large scale unemployment and numerous bankruptcies. Volcker forcefully drove the U.S. into this downturn, defying two presidents and all of Congress, just to stay true to his goal of ending the run-away inflation of the past decade. He truly was the most powerful person in the world.

Now I don't want to romanticize Paul Volcker, here. No unelected official should have that much power: the power to end presidencies and send Congress into a panic, to turn economies rightside-up and upside-down. But the Federal Reserve was started in 1913 to be independent of the White House, and although it maintained that it was in fact independent, in reality it has always been an extension of the executive branch which will ALWAYS fight for easy money and inflation. Credit must be given to Paul Volcker for being the first and last chairman to actually DO HIS JOB in the near century that the Fed has been in existence, the first and last chairman to actually regulate the currency without being influenced by politics in Washington.

That said, Mr. Volcker, I wish you a happy birthday, and I also express the hope that the power you once wielded will be diminished and eventually destroyed, starting with H.R. 1207 and the move to audit the Fed.

Car For Idiots

Now, I don't know much about cars. I'll gladly admit my ignorance here. But as someone who is recently in the market for a car (my Mercury Sable has broken down for the 133rd time), I dont think I'll be waiting for the Chevy Volt to come out before I go shopping. Why? Well I don't know many people who would be willing to pay the whopping $40,000 for the car when it comes out, nor do I know many people who may be able to afford it. Sure the government may subsidize it or give the buyers some tax credits, but really, is this the best that GM has to offer? Is this the future of the company that will save it from government control? In the end it will just be a novelty car or a status symbol.

"Look how much I care for the environment, honey. I just put us in debt for the rest of our lives."

"That's alright, schnookums. It's not like we can afford the ARM on our house either, but we did it anyway."

I'm all about finding ways around oil. I think it is very important to ween ourselves off of Mideast oil and just let the region sink into conflict and destroy itself without any American participation. But are electric cars really the way to go? As a renter, I wouldn't know where to plug the darned thing in at night. That sure is going to be a long extension cord leading to my bathroom outlet. And somehow I doubt that our aging grid will be able to handle an influx of electric cars on the street when it can't even handle my air-conditioner.

I think at some point, electric cars could be a swell option. Once we can make one that is cheap enough for average joes to buy. But in the mean time why can't we look into natural gas and liquid coal technology? Those are two resources that the U.S. has an abundance of and would be a nice stepping stone before we made the unbelievable jump to mowing our lawns and putting it in the fuel tank.

So GM, I would like to echo the Audi CEO's sentiments (even though he later retracted it). I'm not going to buy your "Car For Idiots." I'm going to look into a nice little Honda Fit instead, avoid the exorbitant premium and buy a car that is actually fuel efficient. Good luck, GM. You're gonna need it.

Read the article HERE.

Audi President Elaborates on Criticism of Volt

“No one is going to pay a $15,000 premium for a car that competes with a Corolla. So there are not enough idiots who will buy it.”

Those were the words of Johan de Nysschen, president of Audi of America, who recently spoke (quite candidly) to Lawrence Ulrich in MSN Autos about the Chevrolet Volt...

How To Lose Your Sovereignty

As people may have heard, Iceland is bearing the brunt of the global depression. Unfortunately for the Icelandic people, a population of only 320,000, their banking sector which was nine times the value of their GDP, had fallen into the same easy credit policies as the rest of the western world. When the threat of insolvency loomed, the central bank couldn't bail them out because of how small their bank is compared to the mountain of bad debt acquired by the big three Icelandic financial institutions. To make a long story short, after a serious devaluation of their currency, a plunge in the stock market, and the acquiring of a series of loans from the IMF, Russia, Norway, Sweden, and even the Faroe Islands (that has to be emasculating), we arrive at the point where Iceland is willing to join the European Union and adopt the euro as their currency. Many fear that this is the beginning of their loss of sovereignty, and rightly so. It's the easy way out. Rather than taking their licks for their own financial excesses, they are willing to sell their independence for a quick end to their problems.

Iceland pressed to join euro

By Andrew Ward in Stuttgart

Published: September 3 2009 02:00 | Last updated: September 3 2009 02:00

Joining the euro offers the only “durable solution” to Iceland’s economic problems but the country’s bid to enter the European Union would be a complicated process, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development...

Read the article HERE.

Outhouse

Count Me In The Failure Caucus

Here's an article from Slate that lists a bunch of people from economists to politicians who believe the market is going to take another tumble and dubs them the Failure Caucus. Well count me in. There is no way that this economy is fixed despite what the Federal Reserve, the Treasury and the CNBC pundits say. If banks are still in jeopardy and housing has yet to bottom then a recovery CAN NOT happen.

Failure Caucus

Who's rooting for the economy to tank again? These guys.

Most Americans have a lot riding on the success of the government's efforts to pull the U.S. economy out of its ditch: individual investors, bankers, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Democratic politicians, and taxpayers. A somewhat smaller group has a lot riding on the failure of these efforts....

Read the article HERE.

FDIC in Trouble

Just add another government agency that just doesn't have the ability to do its job. I know most people in America breathed a sigh of relief when they upped the bank deposit insurance up to $250,000 from $100,000, (I wish I had that much to insure lol) but now that's going to have to be covered by the tax payer. The numbers are amazing. $4.5 trillion in bank deposits to insure and the FDIC only has $10.4 billion in its piggy bank. The 416 troubled banks are worth $300 billion in deposits and the FDIC can't even cover that.

Be careful where you keep your money. Just because it is insured by the government doesn't mean that you will get it back, at least in a timely fashion.

The Coming Deposit Insurance Bailout
Another lesson that federal guarantees aren't free.

Americans are about to re-learn that bank deposit insurance isn't free, even as Washington is doing its best to delay the coming bailout. The banking system and the federal fisc would both be better off in the long run if the political class owned up to the reality....

Read the article HERE.