Today, Obama announced that he has instructed his cabinet secretaries to cut a total of $100 million from the federal budget. In a federal budget of $4 trillion, that is a rounding error. What is going on? The Obama people do everything with a view to campaigning, not governing. They appear to believe that the American public cannot handle large numbers and will think $100 million is a substantial cut in the budget. They may be correct, at least for Obama voters.
Michael Ramirez always seems to get the idea into a cartoon. The question is whether the US economy can survive Obama’s machinations and those of his crew. The people who ran the Titanic into the iceberg were skilled, unlike the Obama clowns.
Even Paul Krugman is dismissive.
Let’s say the administration finds $100 million in efficiencies every working day for the rest of the Obama administration’s first term. That’s still around $80 billion, or around 2% of one year’s federal spending.
I liked how NRO did the math,
[I]n a $3 trillion budget, a $100m spending cut is equivalent to a person who makes $50,000 a year declaring proudly that he will cut a whopping $1.67 from his expenses.
And a pol said that the government will pay $100 million in interest, per day. For the next 10 years!
Unfortunately, I feel like we are all strapped to the iceberg, unable to escape.
The Obama people do everything with a view to campaigning, not governing.
Good point. We’ve got an earnest student body president who is anxious to do all the token things. This represents token tokenism.
I’ve already made my peace with these idiots. That way my anger does not get in the way of finding investments and trades that directly or indirectly benefit from their god awful fiscal maneuvering that will hyperinflate this country. With a good shot at becoming the new Britain…the one that use to rule to seas, but is now just plain seized. I do look forward to when these Tea Parties morph into a real political steamroller. To invoke comedienne Judy Tenuta…it could happen.
Watch out, allan. This is a bear market rally. The bear market will go on until the Dow is much lower.
You forget, Doc. I play both sides of every fence. I make as much or more money on the downside. We have a lot of room between here and a real bottom. My personal opinion is that way more than half of this initial bear rally wave is just short covering. That’s why the biggest gainers were the previous biggest losers…namely the financials, specifically big banks.
I guess you could label how I trade as swing trading, but I am quite opportunistic at times, as well as holding PM positions I’ve had since 2003. It boils down to taking what the markets are giving at even particular time. I always ‘watch out’ by taking small sips until a trend gets rolling. Not a greedy guy at all, just found a great business for these times. I’m expecting a few more crunching drop days near term. But not adding any shorts until I see a little pop. Maybe today…
There is some noise I have been reading that Obama’s crew does not believe that the public understands “scale” very well. 100 million dollars does sound like a lot of cash.
Except the lottery jackpot this week in Washington is 165 million bucks.
Instapundit posted that great new poster: Obama face, and in retro lettering underneath it? “Welcome back, Carter.” Gabriel Kaplan would be appalled.
A lot of people bought cheap bank and AIG shares and made some real money. That is probably over as of yesterday. They had the idea that the gov’t was guaranteeing they wouldn’t fail and the gov’t figured that out so they are now diluting the stock. The fall is still to come I suspect.