Just Stop Digging
RULE # 1 – When you find yourself in a hole the best thing you can do is stop digging.
I think there is very little argument that the country is in a hole. A deep, deep hole. So why, finding the country in this hole, a hole much deeper than he ever imagined, does Barack Obama find the need to not only keep digging but to bring in new tools to dig even faster?
Such is the case with the president’s misguided plan to create a new tax on banks and his blatantly misleading statements used to sell the proposition to the voting public.
The president is reinvigorating yet another attempt at all out class warfare. The “haves” versus the “have nots”, the “us” against “them” mentality that worked so well for him in the campaign. But make no mistake about it. This new tax has absolutely nothing to do with, as the president said, getting “our money back”. This is a political decision designed to help a failing Democrat Party reignite the victim mentality amongst the voting public that has worked so well for them in the past. The deception behind this plan is profound and the misdirection being used to sell it is so subtle yet complete that it would make even Siegfried and Roy take notes.
“We want our money back” said Barack Obama. What he neglected to say is that most of the banks that received TARP funds have not only already given us our money back, but have given us an additional $8 billion in interest. To say that all these banks owe an additional debt for the emergency funds they received ignores the fact that some, like Goldman Sacks, didn’t want or need the TARP money and only took it because they were forced to do so. It also doesn’t explain the fact that some of the financial institutions being charged this new tax never took TARP money in the first place.
It is indeed the battle cry of a president so diminished in his handling of every task set before him, like the war on terror, that now in an effort to regain some form of stature he must return to the old time tested war on class. Barack Obama talks about Wall Street as if it was located on the moon. He puts Wall Street and the financial institutions in a different class as if they have no bearing in the lives of those on Main Street. To believe that, as proven once again today by Obama’s comments, is to be completely ignorant of just how our economy works.
Excluded from this new tax are the bailed-out, UAW run auto manufacturers General Motors and Chrysler as well as the genesis generators of the financial collapse Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. On September 30th, 1999 the very liberal New York Times published an article by the editor of their Washington Bureau Steven A. Holmes warning of the possible catastrophic consequences of the new policy being undertaken by the Clinton administration in forcing lenders to loan to unqualified buyers under the direction of Fannie May and Freddie Mac. In September of 2008, after the collapse, the equally liberal Senator Chuck Schumer all but admitted that it was this inane policy of lending money to people who could never pay it back that was the cause of the financial pandemic. Schumer said “Oh, the lowly mortgage, who would have ever thought that the lowly mortgage has brought us to the brink of financial ruin?” Uhhh…Steven A Holmes of the New York Times did Senator, along with past Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and a host of other economists worldwide. Those who did not think it were the Democrats, like Chuck Schumer and his pal the Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee Barney Frank. It was Big Bad Barney who told Fannie and Freddie that the only reason for their existence was to lend to subprime and minority home buyers. Congressman Frank supports the president’s new tax. With his economic track record that in and of itself should be enough to tell the American people that it’s a bad idea.
Once again proving his ignorance of anything economic Barack Obama said the banks being hit with this new tax would not be able to pass this new $90 billion expense on to consumers through increased fees because it would make them uncompetitive with the banks not being charged. This comment is beyond stupid on any number of levels, not the least of which is constitutional. This may be why the president warned the banks not get their lawyers involved fighting against the selective and unfair tax.
In order to stimulate the economy and create jobs businesses need to have access to credit. In order for banks to offer that credit they need to be solvent and profitable. Adding a new tax on the driving force of the economic recovery at a time when unemployment is at 10% and consumer confidence is nonexistent is like dousing the embers of the backyard barbeque with a fire hose. Class warfare is a fine tactic for a community activist but it can be fatal to the economy for the President of the United States.
In November we the people need to take away this guys shovel or the hole we are in will look like the penthouse when he’s done.
