Posted on 03/04/2009 7:00:18 AM PST by IrishMike
Here in a nutshell is why I think Obama will preside over a prolonged world depression with extreme consequences for the developing world:
Americans, per my Peter Pan analogy, haven't been saving. They expected their homes and other assets to appreciate instead. Now the Boomers are broke just prior to retirement and are saving as much as they can. If everyone tries to save at once, the economy shuts down and stays shut -- it has nothing to do with the credit crisis. The only way to save without shutting the economy down is to export (as the Chinese have been doing all these years).
Now, the credit crisis has blown up Asian currencies. I just saw a note from an American university with which I have an old association warning that Asian students won't be coming in the fall -- the Korean won has fallen by half, doubling the cost of a US college education.
As the US borrows massively in world markets to finance Obama's infrastructure spending and so forth, other countries can't get financed. The credit of EUropean countries is sinking -- not just Ireland, with its bank troubles, but England, Spain, and so forth. My "flattened world" scenario is playing out faster than I feared.
World trade is collapsing. Japan's exports are down 35% year on year. That's Great Depression stuff.
Pulling capital out of the rest of the world to shove it at American consumers is exactly the wrong approach. American consumers don't want to consumer. They want to save (and have to save). They need to export.
The strategic consequences of this -- well, I already wrote about the flattened world.
This is going to be a catastrophe of Biblical proportions world-wide. Obama will go down in history as America's worst President ever.
Interesting take. The only thing that I could fault is that they will blame George Bush.
Obama gets to play the role of FDR and Bush gets Hoover.
Yes, it is definitely coming but what things can we begin doing now that will enable us to survive?
Ammo, cash, gold, canned food. And more ammo.
From November 13 - the last big day for the markets:
Bush defends free-market system
Mr Bush’s comments seemed to please investors, as America’s main Dow Jones index ended up 6.7%.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7728048.stm
How would he know? He has never read the Bible. He only reads the porn garbage koran.
I thought Rod Dreher was a football player? (bump)
Obama will go down in history as America’s worst President ever.
Obama IS going down in history as America’s worst President ever.......fixed!
yes.
and classroom texts are being written right this moment to this effect.
He's already got a good start on this, and may be "America's Last President". Ironic, because he is a USURPER, not The President.
I think I remember all the politicians saying NAFTA, and CAFTA were good for America. Now we manufacture very little for export, and import inferior junk, and contaminated food stuffs from Asia.
We have, the Bilderbergers, the Bushes and the Clintons, to thank for this We’re trying to get out of the hole, but ZerO is Talking trillion dollar deficits for years to come, spending money like a drunk sailor, and pushing us back down the hole.
NAFTA and CAFTA sure are good for America.
He might as well be, for all he has to contribute to the socio-political discussion. BO-ring.
Can I use that as tag line (your post)
...’Ammo, cash, gold, canned food. And more ammo’....
I am not so sure. The media has made such a case for the coming of the Obamessiah and that everything will be better now. They cannot now change direction because people are starting to watch the news with a more jaded eye. The MSM will try, not sure they will succeed in the near term.
It is interesting that Obambi has wrecked his Presidency within 2 months of coming into office. If he had just slowed down a bit and taken a slower approach and not rammed everything thru so fast he would be riding high. Now he has scared everyone so much that only Reagan-esque tax cuts can save his bacon.
I heard the other day that the government is predicting near 10% unemployment well into 2010. This is probably understated, plus what is going to turn this thing around? More bailouts? If so, it could get ugly real fast.
schu
NAFTA and CAFTA sure are good for America.
I mght also add Obama spending our great grandchildren into oblivion.
The Stock Market crashed and the Depression got underway in the first year of the Hoover administration. Democrats took over Congress in 1931 because nearly everyone understood that a catastrophe was unfolding. When Roosevelt took office two years later, the catastrophe was indelibly associated with Hoover and his party.
With that sequence of events behind him, FDR continued and expanded Hoover's response to the Great Depression, presented himself as a break with a failed past and got away with it (sort of). He got reelected in 1936 because the economy was growing strongly (despite high unemployment) during the run up to the election. Professor Ray Fair who designed an econometric model for predicting the results of presidential elections has written about this and his take is worth reading even though his model is seriously limited.
The economy crashed again in 1936-37 and FDR still got reelected in 1940 and ‘44,principally because World War II pulled his chestnuts out of the fire. He also benefited from Republican cluelessness. Neither Wilke nor Dewey even tried to offer a real alternative. Both were statists barely distinguishable from the incumbent.
Republicans are still clueless but Obama doesn't have Roosevelt's other advantages. The widespread understanding that we face an economic catastrophe took hold just as Obama took office and two years after the Democrats took over Congress, in which Obama was part of the majority. Since the Democrats took Congress the Dow is down by about 5000 points, economic growth has gone from strongly positive to frighteningly negative and unemployment has doubled. With power comes responsibility.
Early in the crisis Obama hitched his wagon to a stimulus plan which will clearly inhibit recovery and proposed a tsunami of spending and taxation which will inhibit it further. When recovery doesn't come, he is going to be Hoover, not Roosevelt.
The global economy has serious structural problems which can't be resolved without a lot of time, effort and agony. For a generation, the West has been consuming more than it produced and borrowing the difference from a bunch of semi-developed despotisms (and Japan). Our government is determined to reinflate that souffle. Unfortunately it has fallen and it won't get up. We have to save, invest and rebuild. It will take time. Every effort by the government to shore up the unsustainable economic order of the recent past will only delay and prolong the rebuilding process.
Obama is committed to making our pain as severe and long-lasting as possible. Unlike Roosevelt he has no place to hide from the electorate's anger. By the end of this year he is going to be the OJ president — nearly every Euro-American will consider him guilty of grotesque economic malpractice, only African-Americans will continue to find excuses for him.
Democrats will have a rocky 2010, after which even they will turn on Obama. Unlike Clinton, Obama can't save his presidency by tacking right after a mid-term rebuke. Clinton had no principles. Obama is a staunch defender of all the wrong principles. Character is destiny; Obama is destined to scuttle his own ship and ride it to the bottom.
Sadly, a lot of other people are going to get wet.
Tax freedom day has been set back to Nov 18th 2067.
Please do. Sorry to get back to you so late. I’ve been incommunicado.
Thank you !
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