Posted by
ApolloSpeaks on Monday, June 06, 2011 9:22:55 AM
I deserve reelection cause I stopped a great depression.
I've written about this before but feel compelled to do so again to set the record straight about the greatest dissembler and smiling fake ever to disgrace the White House. Obama playing the claim game (claiming the achievements of past administrations to bolster his failing presidency) says that his $860 billion stimulus plan (signed into law 27 months ago) prevented or staved off a "second Great Depression (see)-" not because of jobs that were made, but because of jobs saved, millions of them, according to Obama.
In other words, as bad as things now are it could be far, far worse, and we should be grateful that Obama, and not McCain, is in the White House. For if McCain (a deficit hawk) were in power today there'd have been no mammoth stimulus to create and save millions of jobs, and a Great Depression would be upon us in all its horror. It's really that simple. And if Obama is defeated in 2012 the millions of jobs the stimulus saved could be at risk thus catapulting the nation toward the economic abyss. In short, all that stands between a weak recovery and a second Great Depression is Barack Obama. Presently this is the core message of Obama's reelection campaign-quite a long ways from the daze of Hope and Change.
TOO BIG TO FAIL
Those who saw he HBO special "Too Big To Fail" know the truth. They know that it was TARP that rescued America, Europe and the world from financial Armageddon and catastrophic depression. They know that TARP was the work of Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke and Bush. They know that it was TARP that stabalized Wall Street and the banking system and saved us from the disastrous consequences of the entitlement mentality gone insane; the mentality that drove the volcanic sub prime loan explosion championed by Obama, Acorn and the radical Left-the mad, impoverishing, destructive belief that everyone including the poor (and especially them) have an absolute right to own a home regardless of bad credit. In short, it was the likes of Bill Clinton, Obama, Pelosi and Reid that nearly drove the economy into the sea, rescued in time by big bank bailouts as a last resort when Leman's failed and all seemed lost. Now Obama is tacitly claiming that TARP was a flop; that it was his stimulus, not Bush, who saved the day and prevented another depression. This is the audacity of desperation of a crashing administration that failed the towering hopes it raised for a booming recovery and beneficial change before 2012.
DID TARP FAIL TO PREVENT A DEPRESSION?
Let's look at it this way: from January 8, 2009 to the Senate's passage of the stimulus bill in February not once in any of his speeches did Obama warn that TARP had failed; that the economy was still sinking and headed down the drain; that a new depression was ahead and that a stimulus package equal to or exceeding TARP's $700 billion price tag was needed to "pull us back from the brink." Read through all of Obama's speeches between the above dates; not once does he mention that the doom of depression is approaching, that devastation is near and that emergency measures were needed to stop it!
NO FEDERAL STIMULUS SPENDING DURING 19TH CENTURY'S DEPRESSIONS
What Obama said repeatedly (though untrue) is that we're living through the worse recession since the Great Depression (the recession of the early 1980s was worse), and that massive government spending was needed to end it. And that was it. In one speech Obama said that if we didn't act the "recession could linger for years." And in a later speech he nonsensically said that inaction could result in "recession without end." At the time I asked myself what federal stimulus programs ended the recessions and depressions of the 19th century (some of which were quite severe)? As there were no such programs until the New Deal why didn't we have permanent, unending economic distress? Why did good times return with the economy booming again without federal aid and intervention? In short, if only federal spending can heal a sick economy why was there recovery after recovery without it in the 19th century? But that's a topic for another day.
"THE NEW DEAL WORKED," SAYS OBAMA
In his early speeches of 2009 Obama reiterated the theme that we can't return to the failed policies of the past-meaning supply side economics and tax breaks for the rich-to solve and end the recession. He said this while reaching back to 1930s New Deal Liberalism as a model for his policies. Indeed, Obama as usual ignoring historical facts said that FDR's New Deal was successful in ending the Great Depression; and that his New Deal on steroids, his massive stimulus spending ("the right size and right scope" to keep unemployment under 8% and spur robust growth) would hopefully end the recession before the end of his first term.
But once the second New Deal was failing, going the way of the first in prolonging and worsening the crisis (as I and others predicted) what did Obama do? Did he change course and try something new? Did he make good on his campaign pledge that if one experiment failed he'd try another and another until the right solution was found? No! Obama instead doubled down. He (and Biden) insisted (backed by Galbraith, Krugman and Reich) that the stimulus was the right idea but it was "undersized (see). In other words, the stimulus was big enough to avert another depression, but too small to stimulate consumption and demand and spark a robust recovery? Does that make any sense? If FDR's New Deal ended the Great Depression with significantly less spending (as Obama believes) how could a stimulus ten times the size possibly fail to do the job? But realistically a second stimulus greater than the first meant piling up more deficits and debt and alarming a freaked out public (consummers and investors) fearing national suicide and utter dread.
When unemployment unexpectedly rose passed 8% and climbed into double digits Obama changed the narrative to save Dems from defeat in 2010 and his fading messianic image. From his bag of leftist tricks Obama pulled the whopping lie he's been telling ever since that we'd be worse off today if it weren't for his spending spree. Indeed, hoping we'd lost sight of Paulson, Bush and TARP Obama's trying to cover up his stimulus flop by selling the con that he and he alone saved us from catastrophe, and he's the messiah after all.
Major websites that have linked his piece are as follows (click and see):
DayLife.com
LifeWhile.com
WELT ONLINE
Yes World.com