Reply #9: We're screwed

[Hawkowl]

The economic "team" Obama has put together is very weak. The treasury secretary is next to useless. The "stimulus" package was a wasted opportunity. I was listening to Peter Defazio (D) from Oregon the other day and only SEVEN PERCENT of the stimulus package was for "infrastructure". Defazio was describing his meeting with the president who kept insisting there was $200 billion in infrastructure. Clearly, since Obama is not a stupid man, he is being completely misled by his advisers. Tax cuts of $10 per week were a purely political tool that was not even used to get any political capital.

I don't hate Obama. I'm not even disillusioned, since having followed his career for the last 15 years I knew he would move even more to the center once elected. However, I am grim. Very grim indeed because although Obama is undoubtedly a political genius, his economic policies are astoundingly inadequate for the task at hand. We are going to think back of 2008 as the good old days of the economy. The key causal factors in causing this depression have not been addressed: accelerating foreclosures and insolvent banks and the resulting cessation of credit. The stimulus package resembles a prescribed aspirin by the doctor when you have a heart attack.

The feeble minded congress critters are absolutely fucking clueless on the economy. Rethuglicans complaining that the stimulus package was spending too much money, while we have conservative democrats like Evan Bayh deliberately slowing everything down because they want what? To prove a point? I'm just completely resigned that at best, we are going to follow the Japanese model of banking crisis of the 1990's that kept their country in recession FOR TEN GODDAMN YEARS.

This sucks. I don't hate Obama, I just have no confidence in his ability to turn this economy around in his first term. Just don't see it happening unless he sacks his idiot wall street cabinet. For those of you he are screaming it's only been 50 or 60 days- it doesn't matter. Obama the chess master can lose the entire match with only the first three incorrect opening moves.