What does the PM of France think of Obama! ?

From the NYT April 16, 2009

In the world according to Sarko, President Obama is weak, inexperienced and badly briefed on climate change; Mr. Obama, according to Mr. Sarkozy, “has a subtle mind, very intelligent and very charismatic. But he was elected two months ago and never ran a ministry in his life. He doesn’t have a position on a number of things.” Mr. Obama “is not always operating at a level of decision-making and efficiency,” according to the voluble Mr. Sarkozy.

And from UK Times April 15, 2009

World Agenda: Nicolas Sarkozy puts Barack Obama in the doghouse

Mr Sarkozy is pouring cold water on President Obama's efforts to recast American leadership on the world stage, depicting them as unoriginal, unsubstantial and overrated.

The American President's call "to free the world of the menace of a nuclear nightmare" was hot air, Mr Sarkozy's diplomatic staff told him in a report. "It was rhetoric – not a speech on American security policy but an export model aimed at improving the image of the United States," they said.

Social Behaviour

Animals that were formerly self-sufficient are modifying their behavior to take advantage of what they expect to be a new set of societal norms in the next four to eight years. This black bear has ceased hunting and, instead, has begun to merely sit outside a U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service office, waiting to be fed and to have his winter den dug by government employees. In honor of what is believed to be the cause of this behavior, area residents are calling him "Bearack Obama."

Economic Policy Conundrum

The world's economy is facing years of ill-begotten economic policies. The worst economic downturn in 80 years is the result of these policies. Healthy economic growth is savings based and thus is sustainable. However, the economic growth that has occurred was not based on savings and production, but was credit and policy induced. It was and is artificial and thus unsustainable.

The policies that were implemented included:

• Monetary policies - these kept interest rates low (artificially) for years
• Tax policies - favour debt financing over equity
• Regulatory policy - that allowed financial institutions to mismanage their operations eg excessive leverage
• Social policy - which pushed home ownership regardless of affordability
  

All of this combined created credit induced artificial demand. More and more debt was created.

The current world's view is that the solution lies in re-inflating the assets values. The proposal is to create more debt and more demand to lift the asset values. But this was the cause of the problem! Debt-financed demand can't not be sustained indefinitely and that is why the policy is doomed to fail in the long-term.

Economic demand has to be savings driven to be sustainable.

What now the governments has recently announced that in addition to debt driven demand, that they are now will use the nuclear option....of printing money which is a debasement of the currency. That will push up asset values in nominal terms but not real; as well as pushing up costs. Inflationary environments....everyone losses.

What is needed? It is an economic Marshall Plan for the world markets and economies. It requires work, it requires sacrifice, it requires lower expectations.

I think the people want change, and are willing to go with lower growth based on real economic principles and values.

However, what is required is need real leadership, leadership on savings and reducing costs. The US Congress needs to be an example and they are failing the world. Instead they are delivering empty promises, rhetoric and phony legislation. Appalling and disappointing.

Quote of the Week

"All of this reads as if yanked from an Ayn Rand novel. The government, in a desperate attempt to avoid political pain caused by its own foolish economic mistakes and lax oversight, has poured billions into bankrupt companies. Then when those companies pass out bonuses they claim are necessary to retain qualified workers, the political firestorm leads government officials to propose tax rates that would make even British socialists of a half century ago blush. We are slipping into debates that have nothing to do with a free economy and everything to do with the government calibrating how to balance the favors it hands out with the inevitable moral outrage those favors engender." --Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund

"Time Is Running Out Faster than Expected"

TIA Daily • March 13, 2009

COMMENTARY

The Obama backlash that I discussed in yesterday's edition of TIA Daily is now emerging as the big news story of the week.

In The Hill, a newspaper for Capitol insiders, congressional Democrats are quoted worrying that Barack Obama's "honeymoon" is fading and that "there is a growing sense that time is running out faster than expected." The reason? The stock market crash and the worsening of the economy, which has accelerated since Obama took office.

"We've got to see an uptick by August or the Democratic majority is in jeopardy," said Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), whose state had an 11.6 percent unemployment rate in January.

Stupak doesn't fault Obama for pursuing healthcare reform, because high medical costs are intertwined with the economic difficulties, he said.

But Obama must move quickly, he added, saying, "By summer there is no more honeymoon. Period."

And it is not just the economy. Chas Freeman, the sympathizer of tyrants picked by the Obama administration to be in charge of writing National Intelligence Estimates, did more damage on his way out than on his way in. After resigning, he issued a tirade blaming opposition to his appointment on a secret cabal of Jews. Here is the reaction from the Washington Post:

It wasn't until Mr. Freeman withdrew from consideration for the job, however, that it became clear just how bad a selection Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair had made. Mr. Freeman issued a two-page screed on Tuesday in which he described himself as the victim of a shadowy and sinister "Lobby" whose "tactics plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency" and which is "intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government." Yes, Mr. Freeman was referring to Americans who support Israel—and his statement was a grotesque libel….

Crackpot tirades such as his have always had an eager audience here and around the world. The real question is why an administration that says it aims to depoliticize US intelligence estimates would have chosen such a man to oversee them.

And Obama's staffing problems persist. His appointee as a coordinator for "urban policy" has been caught taking advantage of the unpaid services of an architect who also happened to be the beneficiary of large government projects controlled by his client.

Such scandals are not entirely a distraction. They serve to remind everyone of the corruption and abuse of power endemic in a government bloated by looted dollars. But it is the enormous expansion of government proposed by Obama, the administration's dishonesty regarding the fiscal consequences, and the resulting crash in the financial markets that is really feeding the growing discontent with Obama.

Megan McArdle, an economics blogger for The Atlantic, is the latest defector. Writing about Obama's budget projections, she says:

Of course they're too optimistic. In fact, the word "optimistic" is too optimistic. A better choice might have been "insane."…

Having defended Obama's candidacy largely on his economic team, I'm having serious buyer's remorse. Geithner, who is rapidly starting to look like the weakest link, is rattling around by himself in Treasury. Meanwhile, the administration is clearly prioritize[ing] a stimulus package that will not work without fixing the banks over, um, fixing the banking system….

The budget numbers are just one more blow to the credibility he worked hard to establish during the election…. These numbers...well, I can't really fully describe them on a family blog. But he has now raced past Bush in the Delusional Budget Math Olympics.

The more famous recent Obama defector is CNBC's Jim Cramer. An intolerably snide article in TIME describes how CNBC—the home of Cramer and "tea party" hero Rick Santelli—has become the voice of the investor class, which is ready to rebel against Obama's wealth-destroying policies. The TIME article sniffs that "there's still a small, demographically appealing niche for talking heads fulminating against the 'demonization' of business and being in favor of laissez-faire government." But the niche is not so small. CNBC's ratings have sharply increased during the financial crisis, and the investor class it appeals to is the broad American middle class.

So will all of this stop Obama's agenda? Is there reason to speculate that worry about a backlash will cause him to drop socialized medicine or cap-and-trade energy rationing from his agenda, so that he can focus more effort on stabilizing the financial system?

I doubt it. The Hill is already reporting that Obama has been buoyed by a small stock rally and feels confident going forward with his agenda.

Moreover, the Wall Street Journal's Daniel Henninger argues that an improvement in the markets its not Obama's goal. Instead, he cites a crucial passage from Obama's own budget documents which reveals that the administration's main goal is to reduce income inequality—by means of tearing down the wealth of the nation's top producers.

Turn immediately to page 11. There sits a chart called Figure 9. This is the Rosetta Stone to the presidential mind of Barack Obama. Memorize Figure 9, and you will never be confused. Not happy, perhaps, but not confused….

Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, French economists, are rock stars of the intellectual left. Their specialty is "earnings inequality" and "wealth concentration."

As described in Mr. Obama's budget, these two economists have shown that by the end of 2004, the top 1% of taxpayers "took home" more than 22% of total national income…. [T]heir "Top 1%" chart has become a totemic obsession in progressive policy circles.

Turn to page five of Mr. Obama's federal budget, and one may read these commentaries on the top 1% datum:

"While middle-class families have been playing by the rules, living up to their responsibilities as neighbors and citizens, those at the commanding heights of our economy have not."…

The rancorous language used to describe these taxpayers makes it clear that as a matter of public policy they will be made to "pay for" the fact of their wealth—no matter how many of them worked honestly and honorably to produce it. No Democratic president in 60 years has been this explicit….

The economy as most people understand it was a second-order concern of the stimulus strategy. The primary goal is a massive re-flowing of "wealth" from the top toward the bottom, to stop the moral failure they see in the budget's "Top One Percent of Earners" chart.

So there you have it. The Obama administration's goal is not to revive the economy, but to attack its "commanding heights"—and level them down to the ground.

One of the main signs of Obama's indifference to the economy, as many have pointed out, is his failure to make sure that the Treasury is fully staffed, even as that agency is supposed to be taking the lead on a massive rescue of the nation's banks. And the Associated Press is reporting yet another withdrawal of a top-level Treasury nominee. This is part of the reason why there is still no plan for what to do about failing banks, a full two months into Obama's presidency.

Of course, the Republicans have problems of their own, which they are always skilled at manufacturing. Afraid of having the "race card" used against them for the next four years, the party selected black Republican Michael Steele to be the public face of the party—only to discover that he is prone to cave in and tell the left-leaning press whatever it wants to hear, whether that means defaming Rush Limbaugh or flip-flopping on abortion.

If you need an inspirational antidote to all of the current news about politics and the stock market, I would direct you to composer M. Zachary Johnson's moving tribute to Schuyler Chapin, a former director of New York City's Metropolitan Opera who passed away early this week. Readers of TIA know Mr. Johnson for his writings on music, and hopefully also for his own compositions. (If not, I highly recommend that you buy his CD.) But he was also a personal secretary for Mr. Chapin in the final years of his life, and he offers a wonderful description of what the experience meant to him.

When the world recently lost Beverly Sills, Luciano Pavarotti and Brooke Astor (three of Mr. Chapin's many illustrious friends), I felt much the same as I do now: that their deaths represented a loss of the living links to the sensibilities of a prior era, to the values and culture of the pre-counterculture, pre-modernist world….

I feel similarly about Schuyler Chapin.

I grew up in post-counterculture, post-60s America, and have never liked the nature or results of the counterculture upheavals or the ideas behind them. Rather, I have for a long time admired the art, manners, and many of the basic values of pre-WWII culture. The 19th century had nevertheless been distant for me; the era was something I learned about from books and film, not something I had had firsthand contact with.

Schuyler Chapin was for me a direct link and immediate manifestation of that world. I cannot tell you how important this was for me personally, particularly given the kind of music I write. Knowing Schuyler was a concretization and affirmation for me of a part of myself.

For a description of an inspiring life and its beneficent impact on the world, read the whole thing. It's a reminder that we could all use right about now.—RWT

The Backlash Begins

We did want change. Bush, his Administration and ...and Congress (let us not forget them at all e.g. Barney and Nancy) messed things up. We knew that. However, the solution to this is not Obama, and it was not that other guy McCain, either.

However, now we got Obama....we have a bigger mess happening.

I have to say...this is real change for America and the world!
******************************

TIA Daily • March 12, 2009

1. The Obama Backlash Begins

It's still early, but this past week has seen the beginning of a backlash against Barack Obama—a backlash in the media, among the Washington establishment, and among an important segment of the public.

A revealing early skirmish was the appointment of Chas Freeman—an "Israel Lobby" conspiracy theorist, Saudi mouthpiece, and apologist of China's tyrants—to be in charge of writing America's National Intelligence Estimates.

Freeman withdrew his nomination on Tuesday when it became clear that he would face opposition even from congressional Democrats. The whole imbroglio is described below, including Freeman's departing tirade about the perfidious influence of the Jews.

I suspect that this incident will be marked as the beginning of a sharp disillusionment with Obama among many "moderates" and among a swath of the center-left that is generally pro-Israel and remembers the old-fashioned "liberal" stance of being opposed to dictatorship and political oppression—people like Marty Peretz at The New Republic.

It will get worse, as these people begin to realize that Freeman was not some aberration, not just a "failure of vetting," which implies that the administration would not have chosen him if they had only been more aware of his views. Rather, it will become clear that Obama's policies and appointments are motivated by a far-left ideology that is hostile to American interests and allies and sympathetic to dictatorship.

And remember that the public is not really paying much attention yet to Obama's foreign policy. When they start to pay attention—when some new disaster forces them to pay attention—they will begin to take the measure of the new president and how he is conducting himself in office, and I suspect they will not like what they see.

Meanwhile, in another promising foreign-policy development, it looks like Senator Leahy's "Truth Commission"—an attempt to harass and intimidate the intelligence agents who helped prevent terrorist attacks on the US for the past seven years—has fizzled.

"The Intel Czar Stumbles," Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, Newsweek, March 10

Chas Freeman, the Obama administration's choice to serve in a key US intelligence post, abruptly withdrew Tuesday after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and numerous other congressional leaders complained to the White House that he was too closely tied to Saudi and Chinese government interests.
The resignation of Freeman represents another serious "vetting" embarrassment for the White House and a personal blow to Dennis Blair, President Obama's national intelligence director. After choosing Freeman to head the National Intelligence Council, Blair had publicly defended his choice and insisted as recently as this week that he had no intention of withdrawing the selection. On Monday, Freeman himself was telling people on Capitol Hill that the more criticism was heaped on him, the more intent he was on fighting to stay at the intelligence council….

A spokeswoman for Blair said that neither Freeman nor the intelligence czar would have any comment beyond the brief written statement Blair issued Tuesday regarding Freeman's withdrawal. But in a rambling and angry e-mail obtained Tuesday night by Foreign Policy, Freeman lashed out at his accusers and seemed to blame all his troubles on unnamed members of the "Israel Lobby."

"I have concluded that the barrage of libelous distortions of my record would not cease upon my entry into office," Freeman wrote, explaining his decision to withdraw. "I do not believe the National Intelligence Council could function effectively while its chair was under constant attack by unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction in a foreign country.... The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth. The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views, the substitution of political correctness for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favors."…

Pelosi in particular was upset about public comments that seemed to belittle the Chinese human-rights movement—a cause she has championed for years. In 2005, for instance, Freeman was quoted as writing in a public e-mail about the Tiananmen Square massacre: "[T]he truly unforgivable mistake of the Chinese authorities was the failure to intervene on a timely basis to nip the demonstrations in the bud … In this optic, the Politburo's response to the mob scene at 'Tian'anmen' stands as a monument to overly cautious behavior on the part of the leadership, not as an example of rash action.

"I do not believe it is acceptable for any country to allow the heart of its national capital to be occupied by dissidents intent on disrupting the normal functions of government, however appealing to foreigners their propaganda may be," he added. "Such folk, whether they represent a veterans' 'Bonus Army' or a 'student uprising' on behalf of 'the goddess of democracy' should expect to be displaced with despatch [sic] from the ground they occupy."

2. How to Lose Friends and Alienate People

Some of the building backlash against the administration is directly self-inflicted.

The White House's press flacks and polemicists may have thought that they were very clever to target Rush Limbaugh; while he is popular with the conservative "base," he is apparently not well liked by moderates. But having indulged in this kind of argument ad hominem—attacking the message by attacking the messenger—they can't stop with Limbaugh.

Thus, they have decided to target any critic of the administration. The latest target: CNBC financial commentator Jim Cramer. I can't recall, by the way, previous presidents having their press secretaries single out specific media figures by name and making them the targets of personal put-downs, as Obama's people have done with Rush Limbaugh, Rick Santelli, and now Cramer.

But what makes this a completely self-inflicted injury is that Cramer is a Democrat who supported Obama during the election. Yet he is still an investor who wants his audience to prosper and grow rich—and he has instead watched their portfolios crash by another third due to Obama's bumbling.

But most of all, what emerges from Cramer's response to the White House criticisms is his sudden realization, based on statements by the president and his press secretary, that the administration doesn't give a damn about investors, they they are indifferent to the horrific losses in the stock market. This is how Obama will create many new enemies. (See also item #6 below.)

Cramer admits that he started out, in his teenage years, as a Trotskyite. Maybe this experience will help move him a little further toward the right and towards advocacy of the free market. In much the same way that the neoconservatives were famously converted from the left by the experience of being mugged, how many people like Cramer might be converted by the experience of seeing the stock market get mugged.

"My Response to the White House," Jim Cramer, TheStreet.com, March 5

The lines are drawn pretty clearly: If you can help people make money to be able to retire, enjoy life, pay for college, pay down debt, etc., you are a "good guy," so to speak. If you take the other side of the trade, you are, well, let's say, a less favored fellow. And if you gun for the gigantic investor class that is out there that includes 90 million people in one form or another, whether it be 401(k)s or individual stocks or pension plans, then you are on my enemies list….
"I'm not entirely sure what he's pointing to to make some of the statements," [White House Press Secretary Robert] Gibbs said about my point that President Obama's budget may be one of the great wealth destroyers of all time. "And you can go back and look at any number of statements he's made in the past about the economy and wonder where some of the backup for those are, too."

Look at the incredible decline in the stock market, in all indices, since the inauguration of the president, with the drop accelerating when the budget plan came to light because of the massive fear and indecision the document sowed: raising taxes on the eve of what could be a second Great Depression, destroying the profits in healthcare companies (one of the few areas still robust in the economy), tinkering with the mortgage deduction at a time when US house price depreciation is behind much of the world's morass and certainly the devastation affecting our banks, and pushing an aggressive cap and trade program that could raise the price of energy for millions of people….

Gibbs went on to say, "If you turn on a certain program, it's geared to a very small audience. No offense to my good friends or friend at CNBC, but the president has to look out for the broader economy and the broader population."

How much I wish it were true right now that stocks played less of a role in peoples' lives. But stocks, along with housing, are our principal forms of wealth in this country. Only the people who have lifetime tenure, insured solid pensions and rent homes but own no stocks personally are unaffected…. If we only want to help those who have no wealth to destroy, we are not helping the majority of Americans; we are not helping the broader population.

Obama has undeniably made things worse by creating an atmosphere of fear and panic rather than an atmosphere of calm and hope….

I believe his agenda is crushing nest eggs around the nation in loud ways, like the decline in the averages, and in soft but dangerous ways, like in the annuities that can't be paid and the insurance benefits that will be challenging to deliver on.

So I will fight the fight against that agenda. I will stand up for what I believe and for what I have always believed: Every person has a right to be rich in this country and I want to help them get there. And when they get there, if times are good, we can have them give back or pay higher taxes. Until they get there, I don't want them shackled or scared or paralyzed. That's what I see now.

If that makes me an enemy of the White House, then call me a general of an army that Obama may not even know exists -- tens of millions of people who live in fear of having no money saved when they need it and who get poorer by the day.


3. Not the Barack Obama They Knew

During last year's general election and during his presidential transition, Obama seemed to move sharply toward the political center, indicating his support for conventional policies and naming some cabinet appointees who had a reputation for being "centrists." It is now obvious that this was a feint intended to disarm Obama's critics and make them slow to respond when he unveiled his actual agenda, which is an attempt to move America much farther to the left.

But it hasn't taken long for a lot of people to realize that they have been fooled. This is beginning to happen, not just among the general public, but even among the media and political establishment in Washington and New York.

In Newsweek, Howard Fineman writes that "the establishment is beginning to mumble that the president may not have what it takes." Fineman's own comments are a mushy, toadying mess, but he offers a helpful list of the growing criticisms of Obama.

Below, Jennifer Rubin gives an overview of how a collection of media commentators who consider themselves to be "moderates" have come to realize that Obama is pursing a leftist agenda and are now complaining that they were deceived.

"'I'm Maureen Dowd, and I've Been Had'," Jennifer Rubin, Pajamas Media, March 4

They may need a support group before the month is out. They could gather in New York or Washington where many victims reside. The meetings would start: "I'm Maureen [or David]. I'm a duped Barack voter. And I'm mad."
The ranks indeed are filling with the disaffected and the disappointed—Chris Buckley, Maureen Dowd, David Brooks, David Gergen…. And then there is the very angry Marty Peretz. Their complaints are varied but expressed with equal amounts of remorse and bitterness. They all have been done wrong by Barack.

Chris Buckley is in mourning over the loss of fiscal sobriety and the sense he has enabled a spend-aholic….

Maureen Dowd has multiple complaints. She's miffed that the post-racial president's attorney general is playing the race card and she too has had it on the spending and business-as-usual fronts:… "'You know, there are times where you can afford to redecorate your house and there are times where you need to focus on rebuilding its foundation,'" he said recently about the 'hard choices' we must make. Yet he did not ask Congress to sacrifice and make hard choices; he let it do a lot of frivolous redecorating in its budget….

"Team Obama sounds hollow, chanting that 'the status quo is not acceptable,' even while conceding that the president is accepting the status quo by signing a budget festooned with pork."

Then there's David Brooks…. Looking for a moderate, he wound up with a crazed leftist….

Meanwhile, Marty Peretz, who attested to candidate Obama's pro-Israel and tough foreign policy bona fides during the campaign, now is incensed the president has put into a high level national security post Chas Freeman, the Israel-bashing toady of the Saudis who assigned responsibility "both ways" for 9/11 and bemoaned the Chinese didn't crack down on the Tiananmen Square protesters quick enough….

They and the rest of the country are figuring out the bitter truth: Obama bears little resemblance to the moderate and soothing figure who tied up John McCain in knots.

4. "A Great Pretender"

Here's another segment of the media that Obama is beginning to lose. He's losing Israel backers (see item #1), the financial press (item #2), and "moderates" (item #3). He's also losing the serious, "technocratic" types. This is the professorial type who tries to stay neutral on "ideological" issues and instead focuses on demanding honesty about the actual economic numbers behind any given political proposal.

The quintessential example of this type is economics columnist Robert Samuelson. In the article below, Samuelson assails the ruinous dishonesty of Obama's budget and concludes that Obama is just another manipulative politician who "constantly says he's doing things that he isn't, and…relies on his powerful rhetoric to obscure the difference."

"Presidential Double-Talk," Robert J. Samuelson, Newsweek, March 7

To those who believe that Barack Obama is a different kind of politician—more honest, more courageous, more upfront—please don't examine his administration's recent budget….
Barack Obama is a great pretender. He constantly says he's doing things that he isn't, and he relies on his powerful rhetoric to obscure the difference. He has made "responsibility" a personal theme, and the budget's cover line is "A New Era of Responsibility." He claims that the budget begins "making the tough choices necessary to restore fiscal discipline." It doesn't….

As a society, we should be willing to pay in taxes what it costs government to provide desired services. If benefits don't seem equal to burdens, then the spending isn't worth having (granting exceptions for deficits in wartime and economic slumps).

If Obama were "responsible," he would be leading a candid conversation about government's size and role. Who deserves support and why?...

It would also be "responsible" for Obama to acknowledge the big gamble in his budget. Defense—a.k.a. national security—has long been government's first job. In Obama's budget, defense spending drops from 20 percent of the total in 2008 to 14 percent in 2016, the smallest share since the 1930s. The decline, reflecting large savings from an Iraq troop drawdown, presumes a much safer world. If the world doesn't cooperate, Obama's deficits would grow….

Confidence (too little) and uncertainty (too much) are at the core of this crisis. All of Obama's double-talk threatens to reduce the first and raise the second. Investors and traders have surely noticed the discrepancies between Obama's words and actions.

5. All of the People All of the Time

So when will Obama begin to lose the support of the American people? The poll results reported below offer the first indication. They show that Obama is still widely popular, but that his policies, including the massive expansion of government, are not popular. Moreover, they show growing negative reactions to Obama among voters on the right and the center.

Most important, however, is the fact that the polls register growing opposition to Obama among voters who follow the news closely, particularly the financial news. These are precisely the people who have the most influence on the opinions of those who don't follow the news closely. For more on these people, and why they're turning against Obama, see item #6 below.

It's a bad position to be in, when your continued political success depends on the public not paying any attention to what you're doing.

"The Cracks In Obama's Popularity," Amy Walter, National Journal, March 10

[A]s many have noted in recent days, the latest polling shows that [Obama is] more popular than his party or his proposals….
The 31 percent of voters who say they are paying attention to the various economic plans in Washington "very closely" are the most pessimistic about Obama's economic programs, as well as Obama personally. For example, a bigger percentage of these voters who oppose Obama's $75 billion plan to help prevent foreclosures are in the "very closely" category than those who are paying attention "somewhat closely." Just 27 percent of those who give Obama a positive job approval rating are in this "very closely" category, while 42 percent of those who say they disapprove of the way he's handling his job are in this group. In other words, there's evidence that those who are the closest followers of the details are those who are more disapproving of the job Obama's doing.

It's important to note that this group of voters is wealthier, better educated and slightly more Republican. Yet, remember, Obama did very well with these voters in 2008. He split with John McCain at 49 percent among those making $100,000 or more, and carried both college educated and post-graduate voters.

Finally, voters are less supportive of more government involvement in the economy than they were just a month ago. In January, 55 percent of voters were supportive; today it's at 49 percent. Meanwhile, the number of people who say they think it's a bad idea rose 8 points from 37 percent to 45 percent.

So, how long does Obama's glow survive? No one knows for sure, though many peg the summer as make-or-break. Until then, the reality is that the more scrutiny these programs get—and the more closely the details are followed—the harder it will be for him to keep those ratings up.

6. "Obama Doesn't Get It"

The polls indicate that opposition to President Obama and his agenda is not yet a broad, popular movement. But I have already noticed a sharp shift among an important and very influential subset: the entrepreneurs, individual investors, independent professionals, and small business owners. These people are the backbone of the upper middle class, and Obama has set out to turn them into an exploited class who are to be drained dry to pay for his expansion of government.

These people see what is coming, and their panic is radiating outward, resulting in the actual, literal hoarding of gold, in response to fears of inflation and financial collapse, as well as a growing interest in the primitive, pre-money-economy expedient of barter, which helps productive people minimize their taxable cash income.

And it can also be seen in the fact that "Saturday Night Live" is now beginning to make fun of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, presenting him as a gullible, empty-headed naïf going onto national television to offer $400 billion to the first person who can come up with a solution to the financial crisis.

But laughter will not be the dominant reaction to Obama's failures; the dominant reaction will be rage. Obama is taking a public accustomed to nearly three decades of prosperity, and he is about to put them through a ringer of hardship and privation. They are going to become very, very angry.

The article below is a preview, presenting the Obama economy from the perspective of real small business owner. What it makes completely clear is the fact that Obama is ignorant of and indifferent to the whole world of business and investing—which means he is out of touch with the concerns and economic requirements of most of the American middle class.

This is the sort of thing that can add a little steam to a tea party.

"When It Comes to Real-Life Experience with Stocks, Obama Doesn't Get It," Jim Prevor, The Weekly Standard, March 6

On Tuesday, March 3, 2009, President Obama made comments about the stock market…. As he spoke, I realized that three things have changed, perhaps profoundly and forever, regarding the way many people will perceive the President….
When President Obama dismissed a decline of the Dow from 9,625 on Election Day to 6,763 on March 2 as something akin to a tracking poll, the vast middle class suddenly saw how alienated their concerns were from Obama's concerns….

I realized that in the White House, Obama doesn't deal with what I do: Scared secretaries with tears in their eyes coming in to ask for advice when they see 401-K statements down by 25 percent since Election Day.

Obama seems unconcerned with a divorced woman approaching retirement age looking at her 401-K statement and realizing that her plans to retire and spend time with her church and her grandkids are gone.

I wonder how the president would answer his salesman who, after never asking for a dime in his whole life, asks for a loan, because he had promised his children that he would pay his grandkids' college tuition and he hasn't the foggiest idea how he is going to do that now….

Obama doesn't understand the implications of the stock market dive for real people....

Every stock market investor quickly learns that the math of markets is forbidding. After all, if stock prices go down by 50 percent, they have to rally by 100 percent to get one back to even.

Yet this doesn't begin to explain the problem…. If a family needs $25,000 to pay tuition and it sells stocks to raise the money, that money is not available to benefit from any future upswing in market values. So even if Obama orchestrates a miraculous rebound, countless millions of people will have been permanently hurt….

We learn that the president knows nothing about markets or business….

The notion that the president and his party are alienated from this mainstream of productive America for whom the stock market is not like a tracking poll but is real life is the kind of realization that shapes political identities.

Obama Declares War on Investors, Entrepreneurs, Businesses, And More

Posted By: Larry Kudlow | Anchor
cnbc.com | 27 Feb 2009 | 04:39 PM ET

Let me be very clear on the economics of President Obama’s State of the Union speech and his budget.

He is declaring war on investors, entrepreneurs, small businesses, large corporations, and private-equity and venture-capital funds.

That is the meaning of his anti-growth tax-hike proposals, which make absolutely no sense at all — either for this recession or from the standpoint of expanding our economy’s long-run potential to grow.

Raising the marginal tax rate on successful earners, capital, dividends, and all the private funds is a function of Obama’s left-wing social vision, and a repudiation of his economic-recovery statements. Ditto for his sweeping government-planning-and-spending program, which will wind up raising federal outlays as a share of GDP to at least 30 percent, if not more, over the next 10 years.


This is nearly double the government-spending low-point reached during the late 1990s by the Gingrich Congress and the Clinton administration. While not quite as high as spending levels in Western Europe, we regrettably will be gaining on this statist-planning approach.

Study after study over the past several decades has shown how countries that spend more produce less, while nations that tax less produce more. Obama is doing it wrong on both counts.

And as far as middle-class tax cuts are concerned, Obama’s cap-and-trade program will be a huge across-the-board tax increase on blue-collar workers, including unionized workers. Industrial production is plunging, but new carbon taxes will prevent production from ever recovering. While the country wants more fuel and power, cap-and-trade will deliver less.

The tax hikes will generate lower growth and fewer revenues. Yes, the economy will recover. But Obama’s rosy scenario of 4 percent recovery growth in the out years of his budget is not likely to occur. The combination of easy money from the Fed and below-potential economic growth is a prescription for stagflation. That’s one of the messages of the falling stock market.

Essentially, the Obama economic policies represent a major Democratic party relapse into Great Society social spending and taxing. It is a return to the LBJ/Nixon era, and a move away from the Reagan/Clinton period. House Republicans, fortunately, are 90 days sober, as they are putting up a valiant fight to stop the big-government onslaught and move the GOP back to first principles.

Noteworthy up here on Wall Street, a great many Obama supporters — especially hedge-fund types who voted for “change” — are becoming disillusioned with the performances of Obama and Treasury man Geithner.

There is a growing sense of buyer’s remorse.

Well then, do conservatives dare say: We told you so?

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URL: http://www.cnbc.com/id/29434104/