All of these things will send the economy further down the tubes.
Anyone know what the Marxist word for "free-fall" is? Get used this picture, America!
Click image to enlarge (Screen shot from gatewaypundit)
Stocks are down 10% since Inauguration Day.
The Washington Post reports:
President Obama is putting the finishing touches on an ambitious first budget that seeks to cut the federal deficit in half over the next four years, primarily by raising taxes on business and the wealthy and by slashing spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, administration officials said.
In addition to tackling a deficit swollen by the $787 billion stimulus package and other efforts to ease the nation's economic crisis, the budget blueprint will press aggressively for progress on the domestic agenda Obama outlined during the presidential campaign. This would include key changes to environmental policies and a major expansion of health coverage that Obama hopes to enact later this year.
Anyone tell Obama that businesses don't "pay" taxes; they simple raise the prices of their goods and services and/or cut jobs!
From Real Clear Markets:
So the Obama theory – government spending is stimulus. If so, financial markets should feel the love. The U.S. budget is awash in red ink, and $800 billion more of it should easily move the needle on our economic prospects. Indeed it has – in the wrong direction. Financial markets don’t want more government debt or a scramble for “shovel-ready” spending projects. They want the skeletons in the banking sector’s closet exposed and expunged.
The Bush Economy went up in smoke in September-October 2008. The financial meltdown hit Wall Street, devastating bank equities and laying waste to America’s 401-Ks. The Republican ticket, McCain-Palin, was a 50-50 bet on Sept. 15; by Oct. 15 it was a 5-1 long-shot. Voters saw the carnage: the Dow Jones Index lost 17% of its value from Sept. 2 through Nov. 3. In a flash, Americans lost years of toil, and
Republicans the election. Decisively.
The election marked a turning point. Investors looked forward to the economic policies crafted by Democrats in Congress and the White House. More pointedly, they wanted decisive, well-crafted action on the banking crisis. Hence the Dow soared 6.5% Nov. 21 on news that Timothy Geithner, the highly-respected head of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, was Obama’s pick for Treasury Secretary.
Yet, from Nov. 4, 2008 through Feb. 12, 2009, the DJI overall fell 18% -- a larger drop than during the Sept-Oct plunge. In January, when the Obama plan, promising far greater deficits than the two much smaller “emergency stimulus” plans signed by Pres. George W. Bush in 2008, was unveiled, the market tanked – the worst January performance in 113 years.
More pointedly, key political victories for the Team Obama spending plan have not been viewed as buying opportunities on Wall Street. A string of negative market reactions began with the December 18 announcement of a stimulus bill of $700 billion (Dow down 2.5%), continued with the January 7 announcement that the actual plan would be “on the high side” (-2.7%) and continued with last week’s 61-36 Senate vote supporting the Administration’s fiscal plan. The White House victory and the new bank bail-out plan announced the following day by Treasury Secretary Geithner were met with a 5% wipe-out in the DJI, and a decline in Treasury bond yields, indicating a “flight to quality.”
The market clearly does not like what you're doing! So stop it!
And, this just in, Obama will allow Bush tax cuts to expire.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will allow tax breaks given to wealthier Americans under his predecessor, George W. Bush, to expire as scheduled rather than eliminate them sooner, an administration official said on Saturday.
Obama, who promised during his White House campaign to roll back tax cuts on people earning more than $250,000, also plans to boost tax collections from about 16 percent of the economy this year to 19 percent in 2013, the official said, confirming a Washington Post report on Obama's budget proposals for the 2010 fiscal year.
Ohhh, it's going to be a realllllly long 4 years...
No comments:
Post a Comment