How Much of This Hope and Change Disaster Can Americans Take?
Jim Hoft
It's time to put down the Kool-Aid. It's time to quit chasing unicorns. It's time to stop the Hopey-Changey advertising campaigns. It's time for reporters to quit bowing and for legs to stop tingling. Hope and Change may have made a good slogan, but as policy, it's a disaster. Sadly, not everyone understands this. Rasmussen reports released their latest economic polling this past weekend. Rasmussen reported on Sunday that democrats actually believe the economy is better today than it was a year ago:
Over the past year, overall levels of consumer confidence have bounced around a lot but ended up with little change. For the full month June 2008, the Rasmussen Consumer Index was at 71.9. In June, 2009, that number was 72:0.
But underneath those stable top line numbers is a dramatic shift along party lines. A year ago, Republicans were far more confident than Democrats. Today, the reverse is true.
Among Democrats, the Rasmussen Consumer Index jumped from 53.7 a year ago to 79.5 in 2009.
Among Republicans, confidence was at 99.4 a year ago and it’s fallen to 68.6 today.
It's hard to believe that anyone would think the economy is better today than it was a year ago. But, that's what the polling is telling us. Democrat's confidence in the economy jumped from 53.7 percent a year ago to 79.5 percent this year. This is really unbelievable. Granted it would be difficult to persuade these diehards otherwise, but let's take a look at the economic numbers. These results should tell us a thing or two about these fanatics.
Unemployment:
The US lost over 2.5 million jobs in the first four months of this year under the Obama Administration. The US economy lost 598,000 jobs in January, 706,000 jobs in February, 742,000 jobs in March, 545,000 jobs in April, 485,000 jobs in May, and 473,000 jobs in June. That's a total of 3,549,000 lost jobs since the beginning of this year. The US unemployment rate has risen from 7.6 percent to 9.5 percent under Obama, the highest rate in 26 years. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, via Sweetness and Light, released a map of the unemployment rate over the last ten years. It's not pretty. The US has lost 16,000 jobs each day since Democrats passed their non-Stimulus bill, the largest redistribution of wealth from the private sector to government officials in US history. President Obama promised that the unemployment rate would not rise above 8.0 percent with the Stimulus. Today, he says it will climb over 10 percent.
National Deficit:
Obama will more than quadruple the US budget deficit his first year in office. Obama inherited a 2008 budget deficit of 459 billion dollars. He voted for the 700 billion dollar bank rescue in the fall. He was left $350 billion from this spending bill when he took office. He then spent 787 billion dollars on a Stimulus Bill, 33 billion dollars on the SCHIP bill, and 410 billion dollars on his record-setting Omnibus Bill. The CBO estimated that the Obama budget deficit would total an astounding 13.1 percent of GDP this year. As a comparison, under George Bush, the federal deficit for 2008 was 3.2 percent of GDP. (See chart here) Obama says he loses sleep over his record spending but he still intends to spend trillions more for his nationalized health care program. Even Colin Powell and Der Spiegel understand that we can't continue to spend like this.
Gross Domestic Product:
By any measurement, GDP growth is far below what it was last year. Gross Domestic Product fell at a 5.5 percent annual rate in 2009's first financial quarter. Federal debt under Obama's White House is 41 percent of GDP, almost half the overall value of the economic production of the United States. According to national economists, the debt will rise to 81 percent of GDP in 10 years. And, Obama's cap and tax bill is a GDP killer. The Heritage Foundation reported that cumulative GDP losses for 2010 to 2029 approach $7 trillion. Single-year losses exceed $600 billion in 2029, more than $5,000 per household. Job losses are expected to exceed 800,000 in some years, and exceed at least 500,000 from 2015 through 2026.
Stock Market:
The stock market is down 3,000 points from a year ago, and nearly a thousand points since the 2009 Inauguration. Investors have not restored their confidence in the stock market and the massive government spending hasn't helped.
Inflation and Interest Rates:
With all of the irresponsible spending by democrats, most economists understand that we will likely see a huge rise in inflation and interest rates. The Telegraph reported that the US economy is lunging towards crisis as long-term interest rates are on course to double in size. This would cripple the country’s ability to pay its debts and could plunge the economy into another recession before the nation fully recovers from the current one. The information for this study reported by The Telegraph comes from the US Federal Reserve:
In a 2003 paper, Thomas Laubach, the US Federal Reserve’s senior economist, calculated the impact on long-term interest rates of rising fiscal deficits and soaring national debt. Applying his assumptions to the recent spike in the US fiscal deficit and national debt, long-term interests rates will double from their current 3.5pc.
The impact would be devastating by making it punitively expensive to finance national borrowings and leading to what Tim Congdon, founder of Lombard Street Research, called a “debt explosion”. Mr Laubach’s study has implications for the UK, too, as public debt is soaring. A US crisis would have implications for the rest of the world, in any case.
Global economic leaders are also concerned about the future of the dollar. Brazil, Russia, India and China called for a "more diversified" currency system in June. This news caused the dollar to drop.
In summary, President Obama promised hope and change last year during the election and he kept his word. The economy changed and is in the sewer since he and his democratic cohorts decided to spend their way out of a recession. Although democrats believe we are better off than we were a year ago, their opinion isn't based on reality. Democrats are misinformed, ignorant, or lying. It's time to put down the Kool-Aid.
