last weeks rotten news on unemployment by saying the economy is facing serious headwinds." It took him three-plus years to figure that out?
Last Fridays crummy jobs report followed the grim news that economic growth is below 2 percent. Were slowing down again after not speeding up very much and the storm clouds over Europe threaten to toss the whole world back into full recession. What has this president ever done to help the economy heal?
Fine Obama took office in the teeth of the Great Recession with businesses shedding jobs in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. But that was three-plus years ago.
As the new president and with the help of a solidly Democratic Congress he gave us a bunch of stuff he said would turn things around: Nearly $1 trillion in stimulus spending which was supposed to kick the economy back into gear; ObamaCare which allegedly fixes long-term problems; the Dodd-Frank financial-reform law which claimed to tackle the roots of the 2008 meltdown.
Then his party lost big in 2010 and he apparently gave up on doing anything to help the economy. He even ignored the recommendations of his bipartisan deficit-reduction panel including its push for tax reform probably the best economic-growth idea to ever come near this White House.
De facto hes standing on the achievements" of his first two years. But we all know how those turned out.
Dodd-Frank almost assures that taxpayers will have to bail out the too big to fail" banks in the next blowup while heaping so many regulations on them that they arent lending to small business. For all the handouts given to people with underwater mortgages housing prices remain depressed. And the twin culprits of the housing bubble Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac remain largely intact still running up new taxpayer-backed debt.
Meanwhile the shovel ready" construction jobs his stimulus package was supposed to create never happened and the president actually jokes about it. The promised green jobs" drowned in oceans of red ink at government-backed losers like Solyndra.
They told us the stimulus would bring unemployment down to less than 6 percent by now; its 8.2 percent and rising.
And only Democratic Kool-aid drinkers think ObamaCares going to be anything but a growing hit on the economy.
So what does Obama have to say for himself now that his economic plan has so obviously failed?
Well that Mitt Romney is a greedy fat cat otherwise the presidents pretty flummoxed.
Consider what Obama said on Friday after the lousy jobs report: We knew the road to recovery would not be easy we knew it would take time we knew there would be ups and downs along the way . . . We do have better days ahead."
Great. How exactly are we going to get there again?
The presidents plan seems to go something like this:
* Washington should pick the winners (and the losers) like Solyndra. These businesses fit his ideological goals so someday they wont be miserable failures.
* The government should pick who gets tax breaks; such conglomerates as GE (run by Obama pal Jeffrey Immelt) should pay little if any taxes while small businesses and families earning $250000 (not that much in expensive places like in New York) pay much higher tax rates because theyre somehow millionaires and billionaires."
* Hit real millionaires and billionaires with the Buffett tax" so they can pay for more stimulus spending no matter that the tax would only cover a few days of added federal spending or that most of the jobs saved or created" by the stimulus were pure imagination.
In 2008 Obama seemed like a serious man at a time when the country needed to deal with a serious situation. But hes proved to be anything but serious when it comes to dealing with the nations economic woes.
Reporters in the Obama camp still parrot his line about how President George W. Bush left him with such a mess or (as one told me on Friday) that Americans just have to get used to a new normal" of low growth and high unemployment.
I doubt it because he barely even pretends to have a clue. He could be offering something bold and different as voters decide whether to give him four more years; instead hes offering the same excuses the same solutions" and whatever distractions he can come up with.
Serious headwinds" indeed.
Charles Gasparino is a Fox Business Network senior correspondent.
last weeks rotten news on unemployment by saying the economy is facing serious headwinds." It took him three-plus years to figure that out?
Last Fridays crummy jobs report followed the grim news that economic growth is below 2 percent. Were slowing down again after not speeding up very much and the storm clouds over Europe threaten to toss the whole world back into full recession. What has this president ever done to help the economy heal?
Fine Obama took office in the teeth of the Great Recession with businesses shedding jobs in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. But that was three-plus years ago.
As the new president and with the help of a solidly Democratic Congress he gave us a bunch of stuff he said would turn things around: Nearly $1 trillion in stimulus spending which was supposed to kick the economy back into gear; ObamaCare which allegedly fixes long-term problems; the Dodd-Frank financial-reform law which claimed to tackle the roots of the 2008 meltdown.
Then his party lost big in 2010 and he apparently gave up on doing anything to help the economy. He even ignored the recommendations of his bipartisan deficit-reduction panel including its push for tax reform probably the best economic-growth idea to ever come near this White House.
De facto hes standing on the achievements" of his first two years. But we all know how those turned out.
Dodd-Frank almost assures that taxpayers will have to bail out the too big to fail" banks in the next blowup while heaping so many regulations on them that they arent lending to small business. For all the handouts given to people with underwater mortgages housing prices remain depressed. And the twin culprits of the housing bubble Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac remain largely intact still running up new taxpayer-backed debt.
Meanwhile the shovel ready" construction jobs his stimulus package was supposed to create never happened and the president actually jokes about it. The promised green jobs" drowned in oceans of red ink at government-backed losers like Solyndra.
They told us the stimulus would bring unemployment down to less than 6 percent by now; its 8.2 percent and rising.
And only Democratic Kool-aid drinkers think ObamaCares going to be anything but a growing hit on the economy.
So what does Obama have to say for himself now that his economic plan has so obviously failed?
Well that Mitt Romney is a greedy fat cat otherwise the presidents pretty flummoxed.
Consider what Obama said on Friday after the lousy jobs report: We knew the road to recovery would not be easy we knew it would take time we knew there would be ups and downs along the way . . . We do have better days ahead."
Great. How exactly are we going to get there again?
The presidents plan seems to go something like this:
* Washington should pick the winners (and the losers) like Solyndra. These businesses fit his ideological goals so someday they wont be miserable failures.
* The government should pick who gets tax breaks; such conglomerates as GE (run by Obama pal Jeffrey Immelt) should pay little if any taxes while small businesses and families earning $250000 (not that much in expensive places like in New York) pay much higher tax rates because theyre somehow millionaires and billionaires."
* Hit real millionaires and billionaires with the Buffett tax" so they can pay for more stimulus spending no matter that the tax would only cover a few days of added federal spending or that most of the jobs saved or created" by the stimulus were pure imagination.
In 2008 Obama seemed like a serious man at a time when the country needed to deal with a serious situation. But hes proved to be anything but serious when it comes to dealing with the nations economic woes.
Reporters in the Obama camp still parrot his line about how President George W. Bush left him with such a mess or (as one told me on Friday) that Americans just have to get used to a new normal" of low growth and high unemployment.
I doubt it because he barely even pretends to have a clue. He could be offering something bold and different as voters decide whether to give him four more years; instead hes offering the same excuses the same solutions" and whatever distractions he can come up with.
Serious headwinds" indeed.
Charles Gasparino is a Fox Business Network senior correspondent.
