Gorilla's Blog

1) Propose a woefully inadequate jobs program that at best hires only about 10% of the currently unemployed.

2) Propose $3 trillion in spending cuts and tax increases at a time when the output gap is $2 trillion and rising.

3) Presume that your key supporters will come out in droves, particularly if the other party nominates a complete clown.

It’s fine to propose things for the sake of appearing different, but doing nothing about the economy for another 12 months guarantees that unemployment will rise and you will indeed lose the election.

Gorilla says: “Barry used to be a smart guy, now he’s a defeated President walking!”

Our President is one and done.

There’s no sense that he really understands what’s going on.

The country needs bold, affirmative leadership, and he’s simply not providing any.

It’s not about the deficit, it’s not about the debt, it’s not about the stock market…

What it is about are 25 million unemployed Americans, and millions more who have lost their homes and their savings, and the refusal of our leaders to lift a finger to help them.

The country needs a serious jobs program and much, much more spending to close a $2 trillion output gap and a lack of sufficient demand.

Such spending is easily financed by the lowest interest rates of the past 60 years.

It’s more than a little strange that a ridiculous downgrading of US bonds leads to an increase demand for US bonds, but that’s where we are…

What we get are meaningless platitudes and a focus on problems that don’t actually exist: inflation, “confidence”, and a debt that’s entirely manageable.

It feels a good deal like watching Jimmy Carter twist in the wind: the sense that a good and decent man cannot bring himself to rock the boat and instead wallows in defeatism.

Gorilla says: “So long, Barack, it’s been good to know ya!”

As we watch our nation’s leaders fail to lead, it’s also interesting to note that the cost of financing the big, bad debt is lower than it has been in Gorilla’s lifetime.

Apparently the bond vigilantes are willing to finance a perpetual search for the confidence fairy.

At this point, the President’s pretending to care about jobs, but it’s too late. The time to do something serious about that was 2009, and he and the Congress simply didn’t do enough.

Bold initiatives were required for the worst economic downturn in 70 years, and, with the exception of healthcare reform (itself not very bold, but a start in the right direction), bold initiatives did not occur.

Now, one House of Congress is controlled by an insane, racist, extremist, misogynistic party who will not agree to anything proposed by this President for the foreseeable future.

It will be round after round of hostage style negotiations, economic growth stalling, and the likely end of the Obama Administration in the 2012 elections.

Democrats aren’t going to come out unless the Know Nothing nominee is a complete crazy (and that’s the only hope they have of winning in 2012, because the economy will be in recession by then).

They’re fed up with this Administration’s endless bipartisanship fetish and the inability of Congressional Democrats to agree on much of anything since the 2010 elections.

Gorilla channels Cronkite: “Didn’t have to be this way, but that’s the way it is!”