Obama has basically ****ed with the core economic principles that make for an environment where growth can actually occur
1) Stable currency. By reappointing Ben Bernake and threatening the rest of the world with a beggar thy neighbor bullshit approach to economics, the two have put the world on the brink of economic collapse. No stable currency means of exchange only enriches people that make their livings sitting in front of Bloomberg terminals gambling on the instability. You create stability you have less ways to profit from gambling and you can return the gambler to betting on Redskins vs. Eagles. You also tilt the economy in favor of the banking industry instead of the industry that actually produces things people need.
The reason the rest of the world does business in $ is because we have a track record. Wreck that track record and the dollar collapses as the world seeks something else that is more stable. Whether it is gold or another currency, people will make a flight to something they feel has a stable value.
2) Stable legal environment. When you ignore what happened at Lehman, AIG, Fannie and Freddie, Bear Stearns, Countrywide etc you encourage their behavior to continue. There is obvious cases of financial fraud at those institutions and there needs to be perp walks and orange jumpsuits. When you allow dishonest players to profit from being dishonest, you push the honest players out of the system or force the honest to become dishonest to survive. When you fail to enforce the law, there is no law.
The GM bailout and AIG bailout while they tout GM is doing well (more accounting gimmicks) is the worst case because the government circumvented the legal enacted process to unwind institutions that default on their debt.
3) Government debt. The entire debate about the Bush tax cuts is ridiculous. You can extend them, but rational players know that debt will have to be paid. You get the debt under control. You cannot have growth with large government debt because people investing in your economy know that the debt will either be paid by increased taxation or through monetization of the debt. Both ensure that your economy will fail in the future. This will cause capital flight to more stable environments.
The reason we recovered from the 1980s recession and the Savings and Loan debacle is because the government didn't go in and try to make everyone whole. Volcker contained the mess in the 1980s recession and was willing to take short term pain in order to right the ship.
For the S&L scandal they had laws on how to deal with the situation and where there was evidence that people violated the laws, the people went to jail.
There has not been one prosecution for the biggest financial fraud in American History and the players were bailed out in an argument we needed to save the world and stabilize. The players destabilized the world, destabilization is not a bad thing. It allows the people who destabilized to be removed from power and the ship to right itself.
These are things, I think even a Liberal and a Conservative should be able to agree with, because it is part of the foundation of the country.
