Barack Obama has been patting himself on the back now that General Motors has pulled off the largest public offering in history, slamming Republicans who were opposed to the bailout and manufacturing 2012 campaign fodder.

But read this, and you will be informed enough to see right through this success story.

So, let me make sure I understand. Someone invested in a company to use the entire proceeds plus $2 billion more to repay creditors and repay shareholders when the company’s need for cash is so great. The lack of logic is concerning. Perhaps a political motive to repay government funds trumped sound business judgment?

These red flags and perceptions of impropriety during the GM bankruptcy and emergence from bankruptcy are mind-boggling. If this company were not owned by the U. S. government, I am certain the SEC would begin an investigation of the company.

There is no doubt GM, at least in name, is still around because of the Obama administration’s efforts but there is also little doubt that GM would still be around today, albeit after going through a more traditional bankruptcy process.

The difference is, the taxpayer and the original shareholders wouldn’t have taken it up the tailpipe and Barack Obama wouldn’t have another campaign sound bite.

Moreover, the structure of the deal has left GM in a precarious position, forcing them to report what may be unsubstantiated profits while in contrast Ford Motor Company, having truly survived the Great Recession is accelerating under it’s own power and without taxpayer assistance.

Ford is investing in engineering, innovation and design to stay competitive, all of which require enormous amounts of capital. If GM can’t use the proceeds of their IPO to do the same they may soon find themselves slapping Cadillac badges on dressed up Chevy’s again while competitors from Japan, Germany and Korea drink their milkshake.

First, contrary to popular administration folklore, GM did not survive bankruptcy. The name did, but that is all that happened. A new company acquired the name and assets of GM, and is now the company being called GM. I wonder if the GM commercials tracing its history back to the older GM without a disclaimer is being honest with those of us who own it — the American taxpayer.

GM’s profit of $2 billion in this most recent quarter is a little puzzling as well. I can imagine that the financial systems of a large company are difficult to control. But the disclosure statement by GM about its internal controls or lack thereof concerns me.

“We have determined that our disclosure controls and procedures and our internal control over financial reporting are currently not effective. The lack of effective internal controls could materially adversely affect our financial condition and ability to carry out our business plan.”

…but other than that, it’s all good [raises thumb].

Our economy may not be heading for a double dip but GM may very well be and not despite the government’s effort…because of it.

…the President assertions that:

1) The stimulus didn’t work because it wasn’t big enough

2) What we need is more spending

3) And higher taxes

Are

1) Wrong, 2) Wrong and 3) Wrong.

economic theory, history and statistical studies reveal that more taxes and spending are more likely to harm than help the economy. Those who demand spending control and oppose tax hikes hold the intellectual high ground.

Which tickles just a bit as surely President Obama has staked out the intellectual high ground, right?

Using powerful statistical methods to separate these effects in U.S. data, Andrew Mountford of the University of London and Harald Uhlig of the University of Chicago conclude that the small initial spending multiplier turns negative by the start of the second year.

Sound familiar?

government purchases have a GDP impact far smaller in New Keynesian than Old Keynesian models and quickly crowd out the private sector. They estimate the effect of the February 2009 stimulus at a puny 0.2% of GDP by now.

That’s two tenths of a percent.

By contrast, the last two major tax cuts—President Reagan’s in 1981-83 and President George W. Bush’s in 2003—boosted growth. They lowered marginal tax rates and were longer lasting…tax cuts have been far more likely to increase growth than has more spending.

Read it. It’s a bit technical, but it serves to reveal a President whose recently and soundly rejected policies are founded not in economic efficacy rather at best, in ignorance and at worst, and most likely, in an arrogant, transparent and desperate attempt to further his extreme liberal ideology.

"Oops. Gotta go dearie. I crapped myself."

Just what we need…

To reach the older market, wireless carriers are offering lessons in how to text, introducing phones with oversized buttons and fine-tuning their marketing strategies.

…octogenarians texting behind the wheel…how much slower could they go in the left lane with their turn signal on for the last ten miles?

…just so no one can say he didn’t lift a finger to reduce a bloated federal sector in a move widely reported as a “move to the center.”  A federal pay freeze yes, but consider this:

The freeze doesn’t extend to new hiring, bonuses or step increases. It doesn’t even match the three-year freeze recommended by the President’s deficit commission.

…and yet, it’s just to much to bear… it’s just not fair.

To whom? Why the poor, the huddled, the downtrodden federal workers of course.

American Federation of Public Employees President John Gage yesterday derided President Obama’s federal pay freeze as a “slap at working people.”

That might be a stretch. I know a lot of “working people” and they might take offense at being lumped in with government desk jockeys who enjoy unmatched job security, perks and disproportionate pay.

federal employees operate in a pay-and-benefit universe that no longer exists in the private economy. According to recent analyses by USA Today, total compensation for federal workers has risen 37% over 10 years—after inflation—compared to 8.8% for private workers. Federal workers earned average compensation of $123,000 in 2009, double the private average of $61,000.

[tape rewinding sound]

double the private average of $61,000. [emphasis and repetition mine]

Unions like to argue that federal jobs are unique, yet in occupations that exist both in government and the private economy—nurses, surveyors, janitors, cooks—the federal government pays 20% more than private firms.

Liberals are right! There are two worlds in America.

an estimated 2.1 million nonmilitary full-time [federal] workers (excluding 600,000 postal workers)

…who live in a fairy-tale world of fat pay and unmatched job security. If it weren’t for the fact that even the Pentagon has windows, they would have no idea what “working people” even look like.

Market forces have forced a painful but necessary redeployment of human capital in virtually every sector save one: the United States federal government. Obama’s less-than-token effort to realign the federal payroll with reality isn’t significant enough to be remembered let alone effect the fiscal reductions necessary to reduce our deficit.

Mr. President, you can put your finger back down and go back to the pressing work of destroying our nation’s financial future.

While the rest of the world’s economy spits and sputters, Canada’s makin’ bacon like nobody’s business, recovering from the world’s recession more convincingly than any other developed nation. Now, having gained a chip in the world economic game, they want to cash it in.

“When countries feel confident they tend to assert their national interests,” says Perry Spitznagel, vice-chair of law firm Bennett Jones LLP and organizer of a business forum last week titled “Canada Rising: Our Future as a Global Economic Leader.”

Down the road, experts say, Canada might use its newfound muscle in any number of ways, from demanding better treatment in trade deals with the U.S. to taking a leading role in the development of oil and other resources in the Arctic.

Ahhh. Hmmmm. I see.

My seasoned, thoughtful analysis: I can’t believe anyone lives North of International Falls.

Hours after the Minnesota Vikings announced the firing of head coach Brad Childress,  the team’s former defensive coordinator and now interim head coach uttered probably the dumbest, and sadly quite common cliche a sports personality can.

Leslie Frazier said the Vikings are a better football team than their 3-7 record

Uh, coach, it’s the games and the results thereof that, in fact, determine how good – or in this case bad – you are. That’s sort of the point of playing other teams, keeping track of the results, and ultimately promoting the better teams to the playoffs and beyond.

You are precisely as good as your win/loss record. There is no other measure.

Unless, there is a community service allowance we’re not aware of and that might be traded in for say a 5-5 record?

[checks the NFL rule book]

Nope. Sorry.

Maybe next year you will be a better team. How will we know?

You’ll win more games.

I just have to ask…why?

The Minnesota School Board Association is advising school districts across the state to expand their harassment and violence policy to specify several more groups, including gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) students.

What does it matter for what a student is being “bullied?”

Shouldn’t they add even more groups then?

Short. Tall. Fat. Skinny. Bespectacled.

I was teased for being a “carrot top” in elementary school. Shouldn’t “Individuals with Red or Auburn Hair” be added in case teasing escalates to bullying?

…its that they are bloated and inefficient too, and surprisingly, at least for now, airports can tell them, the TSA, to leave.

Federal law allows airports to opt for screeners from the private sector instead. The push is being led by a powerful Florida congressman who’s a longtime critic of the Transportation Security Administration and counts among his campaign contributors some of the companies who might take the TSA’s place.

And it’s not just because of the national attention that their roaming hands are garnering on the news and on the web.

“I think we could use half the personnel and streamline the system,” Mica said Wednesday, calling the TSA a bloated bureaucracy.

the top executive at the Orlando-area’s second-largest airport, Orlando Sanford International Airport, said he plans to begin the process of switching to private screeners in January

“I am a frequent air traveler and I have experienced … TSA agents who have let the power go to their head,” Erickson said. “You can complain about those people, but very rarely does the bureaucracy work quickly enough to remove those people from their positions.”

Is this yet another sector that could be performed better, faster, cheaper than by the government?

In late 2008, Rahm Emanuel made famous the phrase “Rule one: Never allow a crisis to go to waste.” It was an unabashed entreaty to liberals frustrated by years of pent up designs to advance the socialization of America. Obama, Reid and Pelosi wasted no time while a stupefied citizenry watched the unfolding of a theretofore unimagined agenda.

Less than two years later another crisis has presented itself, the nature of which is surely an exception to Rahm’s axiom; a crisis within.

Within the party that is.

A handful of survivors of the electoral razing of the democratic party are not unlike those famous Japanese soldiers hiding in tunnels on remote isles months after V-J Day…

In 1944, Lt. Hiroo Onoda was sent by the Japanese army to the remote Philippine island of Lubang. His mission was to conduct guerrilla warfare during World War II. Unfortunately, he was never officially told the war had ended; so for 29 years, Onoda continued to live in the jungle, ready for when his country would again need his services and information. Eating coconuts and bananas and deftly evading searching parties he believed were enemy scouts, Onoda hid in the jungle until he finally emerged from the dark recesses of the island on March 19, 1972.

Some liberal democrats are figuratively living on Lubang, off the grid, not recognizing that Americans have soundly rebuked the extreme leftist agenda inflicted on them.

Liberals made clear Tuesday what they want from the bipartisan deficit commission — more help for the poor and middle class and bigger corporate tax increases.

Americans made clear that what they want is for their government to get out of the way, to cease disincenting those that would otherwise be spending, borrowing and investing in ways that create jobs for everyone, especially for the poor and middle class.

Mathematically, you can’t increase taxes enough on corporations or the wealthy to make even the slightest dent in the deficit let alone the national debt.  Eventually, either by choice or by force, the federal government will have to cut spending and by extension, entitlements.

Moderate and conservative commission members, who compose the bulk of the panel, have been more circumspect. After co-chairmen Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson offered their proposal last week — focused 2 to 1 on spending cuts over tax increases — the commission’s three Republican House members tentatively welcomed their approach.

The Tea Party may have given rise to a Regressive Movement in America, where once and for all, a majority will press the federal government and those it has enslaved by decades of sedimentary entitlements to do more with less, across the board.

…but not without a fight from the hardy few on Lubang.

But liberals were outraged. They tend to favor activist government, help for the needy and higher taxes on wealth to pay for it. Moderates and conservatives are more inclined to reduce government services to cut government debt and are less willing to raise taxes.

Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, said: “Democrats should fight loudly and clearly — because the public overwhelmingly wants Democrats to fight that fight.”

Not anymore Adam. The war is over. You can go home now.

Does Bill Cosby Know This?

the substance used to make Jell-O, as well as many gummy candies, marshmallows, puddings and taffies – is often made from the skin, bone and tendons of animals, usually cows or pigs. The manufacturer grinds up these animal parts, treats them with a strong acid or base for a few days to help release the collagen, then boils the mixture. Then, they scrape the gelatin, which rises to the top of this boiling mixture, from the vats. One big user, Kraft, sells 300 million boxes of Jell-O in the U.S. each year and offers 158 products under the Jell-O brand name. (Jell-O is even the “Official State Snack” of Utah.)

“I am proud to be an American. Because an American can eat anything on the face of this earth as long as he has two pieces of bread.” Bill Cosby

Reading the Sunday Strib online (I buy a paper copy every once in a while for kindling)  I find it amusing how the Strib words the following passages…emphasis mine…

Minneapolis and St. Paul will face major budget deficits if the state reneges on its local government aid (LGA), a program that helps pay for services in hundreds of Minnesota cities.

Cities have to lock next year’s budgets into place in less than a month. Yet the governor’s race remains undecided, while Republicans have wrestled control of the Legislature from DFLers, and an estimated $6 billion state budget shortfall clouds the picture.

I might offer a revision for the former: if state legislators are forced to cut subsidies to cities not able to live within their means as the state itself now must?

…and for the latter: as voters wrestled control of a state legislature dominated by the DFL for decades and handed it to Republicans, ostensibly sending a message of confidence lost in the former and gained in the latter.

Meanwhile, Nick Coleman (I am still surprised to see him gainfully employed) suffers from the same malady as President Obama: if only we had communicated our plans better, the American people would have voted differently.

DFL legislators who never put up an effective fight against the No New Tax mantra of Gov. Tim Pawlenty and never had a comprehensive strategy for communicating the goals of all their legislative maneuverings should share the credit for the GOP takeover.

Or, they were actually, absurdly proposing resolving our employment and economic maladies by raising taxes and increasing spending and for the first time in decades, Minnesota said “Nyet!”

It will be months before we know the full scope of the corporate politics behind the legislative takeover. We may never know the sources of much of the money, since anonymous contributions are permitted in the anything-goes political climate.

Careful there Nick, remember if you point one there’s four pointing back at you.

But one Democrat who felt the sting of the corporate lash was David Bly, a state representative from the cow-and-college precincts of Northfield who was seeking a third term. Bly, a high school English teacher, has been a leader in the fight for a universal health care plan for Minnesotans and other progressive causes. He was told by DFL Party leaders that his seat was safe, then stood by helplessly as business interests paid for an endless blizzard of attack ads — a dozen or more — that were mailed to voters in District 25B. Bly abided by spending limits for lawmakers — spending about $31,000 on his campaign — while the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce Leadership Fund, the Minnesota Coalition of Businesses, and something called NFIB, the National Federation of Independent Business, may, when final reports are in, turn out to have spent far larger amounts on behalf of his opponent.

Nick, don’t confuse the DFL’s inability to hear the train coming down the tracks with treachery on the part of their opponents.

For the record, Bly has supported a balanced approach to state budgeting, including cuts and tax increases where necessary.

…and to a liberal legislator they’re always necessary. Minnesotans seem to have rejected the notion that yet another tax hike is a “balanced” approach.

So relax, everyone. Business is picking up. And business just picked up a new Legislature coming into office in January.

That’s right Nick, business – you know, the sector that actually creates jobs and pays taxes.

Many of the new lawmakers probably don’t even know where the Capitol is.

…only Nick Coleman and his ilk would think that’s a bad thing.

Oh, the humanity…

First, there was a plummeting “favorability” rating of 29 percent, nearly half of her “unfavorable” score, according to a recent Gallup poll. Then there was the staggering loss of 60 seats in the House of Representatives, a resounding midterm election “shellacking” if there ever was one.

Now, Nancy Pelosi can add “embattled” to her list of woes. On Friday, the lame duck speaker of the house announced her plan to fight to be house minority leader for the next session of Congress. Frankly, that decision sort of left me scratching my head and wondering how strong the Kool-Aid is in Pelosi’s office.

Turns out her new office might not have a Kool-Aid dispenser, among other amenities lost now that America has thrown her out on her saggy ass orderly asserted itself via the democratic process.

Gone will be the spacious office suite with its federalist decor, the rides home aboard a military plane, and a good chunk of her staff. “It’s a profoundly humbling experience”

she’ll lose the right to authorize overseas congressional trips and dole out prime office space to lawmakers. She will also shed 10 percent of her $5.1 million office budget and lose nearly half of what records show is a staff of over 50.

Sniff. Sniff.

I almost feel sorry for Barack Obama. He’s traveling the world over, looking for some love, and coming up empty.

America handed him an epic rejection of virtually everything he has “accomplished”  just two years in. Knowing fully well what was coming, he skipped the country on a trade mission, a multi-bazillion-dollar entourage in tow, hoping to bring home a trade agreement…or…something.

President Obama’s hopes of emerging from his Asia trip with the twin victories of a free trade agreement with South Korea and a unified approach to spurring economic growth around the world ran into resistance on all fronts on Thursday, putting Mr. Obama at odds with his key allies and largest trading partners.

Does the whole world hate Obama?

After five largely harmonious meetings in the past two years to deal with the most severe downturn since the Depression, major disputes broke out between Washington and China, Britain, Germany and Brazil.

OK, maybe not the whole world, just a majority of the largest economies of the world, so technically there are countries out there, theoretically, that don’t think America’s fiscal and monetary policies are being crafted by an administration consisting of a band of arrogant bookworms that have never owned, created or run anything resembling an enterprise.

In two years, the Obama administration has effectively rendered America to the economic equivalence of adolescence, world leaders now treating Obama and his staff like underclassmen.

As if a global scolding wasn’t embarrassing enough for the soon-to-be one-term President, his Treasury Secretary, steeped in academentia, was fending off attacks from back home.

The disputes were not limited to America’s foreign partners. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner got into a trans-Pacific argument with one of his former mentors, Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, after Mr. Greenspan wrote that the United States was “pursuing a policy of currency weakening.” Mr. Geithner shot back on CNBC that while he had “enormous respect” for Mr. Greenspan, “that’s not an accurate description of either the Fed’s policies or our policies.” He added, “We will never seek to weaken our currency as a tool to gain competitive advantage or grow the economy.”

Well, if you say so.

…well, at least not again…because the Fed’s current plan to buy $600 Billion of government securities is precisely, explicitly that.

Does Geithner actually believe we are all that stupid or that he’s so much smarter?

Much of the rest of the world seemed to share Mr. Greenspan’s assessment. Moreover, Mr. Obama seemed to be losing the broader debate over austerity. The president has insisted that at a moment of weak private demand, the best way to spur economic growth is to have the government prime the pump with cheap credit and government stimulus programs. He quickly found himself in an argument with Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany.

Wait, who? Great Britain? Isn’t Great Britain…like, our Huckleberry? How retarded does the President and his staff have to be to screw up that relationship?

America isn’t subscribing to this administration’s ineptitude and neither is the rest of the world.

Playing a fools game, hoping to win, telling those sweet lies and losing again.

I don’t begrudge your choice to smoke cigarettes as long as you:

1) Keep it out of my face.

2) Keep it out of my kids’ face.

3) Quit throwing them out of your god-damned window.

4) Pay your fair share: don’t expect me to pay higher life, disability or health insurance premiums. You should though.

5) Let me bum one off of you once a year or so for old times.

But seriously, if you don’t know smoking is dangerous by now, is it because the government hasn’t done an adequate job of edumacating you?

Apparently the government thinks you’re so damn stupid that the dangers can only be conveyed to you in pictures.

Corpses, cancer patients and diseased lungs are among the images the federal government plans for larger, graphic warning labels that would take up half of each pack of cigarettes sold in the United States.

Whether smokers addicted to nicotine will see them as a reason to quit remains a question.

Sounds like another shovel-ready project to me.

The share of Americans who smoke has fallen dramatically since 1970, from nearly 40 percent to about 20 percent, but the rate has stalled since about 2004. About 46 million adults in the U.S. smoke cigarettes.

In the same period, the average cost per pack has gone from 38 cents to $5.33. Much of those increases are from state and federal taxes.

It’s unclear why declines in smoking have stalled. Some experts have cited tobacco company discounts or lack of funding for programs to discourage smoking or to help smokers quit.

I would submit to you that there are a certain percentage of us that are going to smoke cigarettes.  They like to smoke. It aint illegal. They know it aint good for ’em. And they don’t give a rip.

In the mean time are we to assume the federal government intends to spend more and more of everyone’s tax dollars until there are no smokers left? Maybe we should just let evolution run its course.

Thank you for the one thing you did for us “shocked” Minnesotans: My license tabs used to be $105-195.

Today I paid $360 for a 2008 model car. The tabs are a very cool color – red – for 2011. It’s a shame to stick them on my plates because I paid enough for them to be jewelry. I’m glad the DMV takes Visa because that way I am able to spread out the payments.

I’m sure that money will be well-spent on our awesome Minnesota streets, roads and highways.

I miss you (at the moment). Say hello to Terry.

That is all.

Former President Bush waxes transparently, assessing his own presidential shortcomings:

The former president said he still feels “sick about” the fact no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. His response to Hurricane Katrina could have been quicker, he said, and he should have landed Air Force One two days after the storm instead of viewing the destruction through the plane’s window. And he said he didn’t see the financial meltdown coming.

Why?

Why?!

Why?!!!!

Why…Mr. President, did you have to do this on Oprah?

PS Don’t feel bad Mr. President. Warren Buffet and a the vast majority of the world of finance didn’t see it coming either.

Bush had nothing negative to say about President Barack Obama, whom Winfrey famously supported in 2008.

“I didn’t like it when people criticized me,” Bush said. “And so you’re not going to see me out there chirping away (at Obama). And I want our president to succeed. I love our country.”

George Bush may not have been conservative enough for many of us, but I believe he was honest in his dealings as President and he remains to this day one of the most respectable, reverent and selfless leaders to have ever occupied the White House.

…in stark contrast with The One there now.

…and sample The Great American Liberal Experiment. How’s that going for you by the way?

You’ve racked up nearly $70 billion in general obligation debt, and that doesn’t include your $500 billion unfunded pension liability. Your own analysts predict you’ll face a hole of at least $80 billion over the next four years.

Your government’s run by a brothel of environmentalists, lawyers, public-sector unions and legislative bums. When they’re not taxing or spending, they’re creating regulations and commissions like the Board of Barbering and Cosmetology and the California Blueberry Commission. Many businesses would leave if it weren’t for your sunny climate.

Which may explain why you’re so obsessed with climate change. If your climate changes, no one, including your Hollywood friends, would tolerate you anymore. So you’ve created a law to tax carbon emissions—no matter that it will kill jobs.

California is broke. Broke broke broke (That’s Renée Zellweger in Jerry Maguire). Most Californian’s think their elected officials are to blame so you’d think a change of course would be in the cards, like the rest of the country…right?

Not a single incumbent state legislator lost re-election this year, including one Democrat who died a month ago (no joke). What’s scarier is that you’ve just given almost all of the keys to statewide offices to Democrats.

So if you want to peer into the future of America, had most if it not changed course last Tuesday evening, you needn’t look so far away to Greece. Go west to “Cah Lee For Nee Uh!”

You think it was fun watching Washington bail out a whole industry? Wait until it’s a state whose economy would be in the top ten if it were a country.

They have a new State Motto: America’s Cautionary Tale.

…fire the Fed.

Yesterday we learned the American economy added more jobs than expected. While it was not enough to budge the 9.6% unemployment figure, it was a surprise to everyone…including the Federal Reserve who had just announced a $600 billion dollar initiative to create economic “stimulus” via buying back government debt. This essentially pushes more cash into the economy by printing more dollars, the theory being cheaper money will jump start lending and hiring.

But!

Interest rates are already at historic lows, banks aren’t lending, real estate continues to fall in value, companies aren’t significantly increasing hiring and consumers remain skittish.

And!

There is already more than a trillion dollars of liquidity in the system, on the sidelines – not being lent or spent – and yet the Fed ostensibly believes that what the economy needs now is more liquidity. The federal government has found many and several ineffective ways to mortgage our future in a futile attempt to create jobs and this is the one that we might regret the most dearly.

The Keynesians finally got their wish. The Federal Reserve plans to inject $600 billion of the most caustic debt imaginable into the economy. This is the Agent Orange of monetary policies that has the potential to wreak financial havoc.

In the hope of generating inflation, the central bank is going to enable deficit spending by buying treasury bonds. You read that correctly: the primary goal is to erode the value of the dollar, and we get to watch our currency and wealth literally dissolve before our eyes.

Only a desperate government would consider debasing its own currency. The resulting inflation will be an insidious tax on every American who will suffer as wages lag behind increasing prices. It is doubtful that countries like China will react favorably to the precipitous drop in the value of the debt owed to them.

One has to wonder, had the Fed waited one more day until the employment numbers came out, if they would have paused their relentless attempts to “thwart deflation” and “create jobs” by further rendering the dollar worthless.

Once again, repeat after me: “The government can’t create jobs.”

That’s not to say they can’t hire citizens to park their flabby arses behind desks and vote for Democrats, but the government can’t create jobs in a pure sense – jobs that actually create net-net wealth and prosperity and in turn revenue for the government.

Consumers aren’t buying and employers aren’t hiring because conditions are uncertain. (yes, I bolded, italicized and underlined “uncertain”)

Conditions in turn are uncertain in no small part due to the fact that those that have the cash, banks, employers and consumers don’t know what the government’s next bumbling intervention will be as it relates most substantially to taxes and health care.

So they wait.

No amount of Fed Quantitative Queasing will change that. In fact most consumers and employers could give a rip what the Fed is doing.

Based on election results this week, one might conclude they would just as soon the government get the hell out of the business of manipulating the system.

So why does the Fed insist on more of the same?

1) Because they can’t not. It’s the nature of government the last few decades. They must justify their existence.

2) Furthermore, they must justify past actions; if flooding the economic landscape with liquidity didn’t work before, that must mean we just didn’t do enough.

3) It’s the only lever they have, given the bent of the current administration, who until this past Tuesday were opposed to any economic prescription other than increasing spending.

4) Irrational fears of deflation; the theory is that once prices fall, the consumer becomes even more fickle: Why buy now when the price will be lower tomorrow? So prices go lower still. The problem with this theory is that history shows otherwise and…consumers just aren’t savvy enough to wait until tomorrow.

Despite the misinformation propagated by these big-spending liberals, deflation has existed during extraordinary periods of economic growth and did not adversely affect consumers or wage earners. In fact, deflation is not only a common occurrence in a free economy, but it is also indicative of a vibrant and healthy economic expansion where the innovations and efficiency that competition engenders lower the costs of production. These lower costs translate into lower product prices benefiting the consumer.

Consumers were not harmed by the significant deflation of personal computers prices over the last two decades, and despite these falling prices, there has been explosive growth and profits. No credible economist could argue that consumers, manufacturers, or the economy would have been better-served if the government intervened and forced computer prices higher. Yet Keynesians propose that our economic woes can be ended by forcing the price of all products higher.

Employers and consumers will not budge until the economy naturally, and in this case excruciatingly slowly, takes up the slack created by the collapse of the real estate bubble, which of course was created by another flavor of government meddling.

The employment numbers show this is starting to happen and that the chances of a double dip are diminishing. The numbers behind the numbers show that average hours worked by those that are employed are increasing as well, further demonstrating capitalism’s ability to overcome even the worst liberal economic molestations.

There is no amount of Federal intervention that can or will change the fact that it is the small business owner, the employer, the risk taker; the capitalist, that can take up the slack. It is the newly-minted GOP’s job to make sure this can continue unabated while at the same time recalibrate America’s fundamental expectations of the Fed’s ability to effectively manage the trajectory of the overall economy.

For if the Fed continues to dabble in economic alchemy, it only increases the likelihood of inviting the as yet unrealized but certainly dire consequences of a nuclear currency war in an ever more global economy.

I watched some of the Obama press conference in my office today and was not surprised in the least that the President, his ass in hand, could not bring himself to answer some pretty pointed questions on whether “what happened last night” was less an endorsement of the GOP and more a damning of he and his policies.

He gave pause, then looked like he was going to cry. For a second I thought he was going to go all “Moss” and say something like “I will axe the questions.”

Instead he decided not to answer the question and chose to ramble on about the economy and the American people rightfully expecting more progress from their government…blah blah blah.

He just doesn’t get it.

“Some election nights are more fun than others. Some are exhilarating. Some are humbling,” Obama said. “Yesterday’s vote confirmed what I’ve heard from folks all across America. People are frustrated, they’re deeply frustrated with the pace of our economic recovery.”

Some nights are more fun than others? Saywhat? For a man whose sole accomplishment is political in nature, that may be the understatement of a lifetime. Furthermore, I was not aware of the President stooping down to listen to “folks across America.”

Maybe the President, will all due respect (or is that now all done respect), needs a few more days to come to grips with the fact that America has rejected not only his policies on spending, stimulus, health care and his golf handicap, but he himself as a President and a leader – certainly as a folks-listener.

Exhibit A: the outright desertion (the in-bag press read that as “distancing”) of late, if not mutiny, of liberal colleagues that just months before held hands and sang Cumbaya at the signing of a national wealth transfer apparatus called the health care bill. A fatal career move for many a tenured Democrat it turns out.

Exhibit B: what happened last night.

The next two years will be excruciatingly difficult.

…and lonely.

…for him.

I’ll drink to that.

America is afraid tonight.

Afraid that the great recession is far from over. Afraid the government, having pulled every lever in the cockpit, may not be able to save us this time.

Make no mistake, no matter what the results tomorrow, occupational anxiety will persist. High unemployment levels will not soon abate. Waves of foreclosures, bank and insurance company failures will pepper the landscape for months and maybe years to come while Obama administration policymakers chant eenie meenie miney moe.

Small businesses are wondering when the recovery will come in their mailbox. Many Americans are wondering when Obama and his people are finally going to show up and save them from their misery. Those that can see farther are afraid America itself may not be salvageable and that no one can save us from the misery to come.

The numbers are so large and the odds so long…they might be right.

Everybody knows the GOP is going to hand the DNC it’s ass tomorrow but I agree with Rasmussen.

…a fundamental rejection of both political parties.

More precisely, it is a rejection of a bipartisan political elite that’s lost touch with the people they are supposed to serve.

It’s not so much that America sees the GOP as the party that has the secret sauce. No. It’s more like right now they’re the cream of the crap.

Don’t get me wrong. I like Emmer and Paulsen and Hann and Stensrud and will be voting for conservatives across the board out here in the West. But the victories tomorrow night, and there will be many, will be empty for many of us that wonder if anyone anywhere has the stomach to make the decisions that America needs now.

Fact is, George Bush’s fiscal policies destroyed any claim the GOP had on fiscal reserve. And yet, Obama, belying thin hopes that his presidency would be more about ambition than ideology, drove the agenda so far left that it would be a conservative’s dream if it weren’t for the monumental damage it has done to our nation.

It took policies so wasteful, so misguided, so unpopular and on a scale so inconceivable to manifest a contrast with the GOP’s fiscal policies. It is solely stupefied disbelief that will drive Americans to vote for Republicans tomorrow in a proportion that may make statistical history.

To think that the GOP will soon be jettisoned back to 1994 politically was unthinkable just a few months ago.

We must hope – demand – that the opportunity this time won’t be equally squandered.

Picture yourself on a snow-covered lake, gliding smoothly on your new snowmobile at 60 mph and about five miles out you begin to feel the growing sensation of pain and regret as your bladder balloons from the two Grain Belt Premiums you pounded at the last pit stop.

Your two buddies are out ahead of you and without a clue as to the escalating emergency you are about to be a party to.

In your distraction, you miss the snowdrift that your buddies navigated around and when your sled hits it you are airborne. As time slows, as it always does in times like these, gliding through the air with the greatest of ease, you think to yourself  “This is going to hurt.”

You land hard and fast, slightly tipped to the left but a second later realize that your forward momentum has continued unabated. All limbs are onboard and your sled appears to be no worse for the wear.

…and then you feel the warmth.

At first you are pleased because your manbrain usually associates warm feelings down there with great anticipation.

…but when the warmth moves down your thigh and starts to creep out back? Not…so…much.

And so it goes with the liberals among us.

Having peed their pants with stimulus, government make-work projects, census jobs and the like, the only remedy is to keep peeing your pants so as to fend off the chills that come when your wet snowsuit becomes a cold wet snowsuit.

…and George Soros is chief Pisser.

Billionaire investor George Soros said the U.S. economy should pursue more fiscal stimulus instead of joining international efforts to reduce budget deficits.

Soros said spending cuts are the “wrong consensus” in the current economic environment. He said the global economy is still not at equilibrium, even though financial markets are functioning again, and U.S. fiscal restraint is limiting the recovery.

My neighbor, a liberal, thinks the government is spending too much and getting too big. My liberal colleagues (as few as they are) also associate “stimulus” with “failure”. Even democratic legislators are disassociating themselves with Obama and stimulus spending to save the shredded remnants of their political careers.

But George Soros persists with this notion of a continued flow of urine as a prescription for restoring our financial future as a nation.

Why?

The U.S. has been “driven to quantitative easing because the political debate has been won basically by the Republicans, who argue for balancing the budget and no more stimulus.”

…because it wasn’t his idea.

Piss off George.

As much as many of my colleagues and clients revere the dissertations of Larry Kudlow, I think he may be extrapolating a wee bit too much at this early juncture.

Sometimes you have to take out your political lenses and look at the actual statistics to get a true picture of the health of the American economy. Right now, those statistics are saying a modest cyclical rebound following a very deep downturn could actually be turning into a full-fledged, V-shaped, recovery boom between now and year-end. Conservatives shouldn’t trash it.

I’m aiming this thought especially at many of my conservative friends who seem to be trashing the improving economic outlook — largely, it would appear, to discredit the Obama administration.

To assert that Republicans may deny that Obamanomics is working at their own peril misses at least a few critical points. It’s also premature.

Capitalism recovers, that’s what it does. Free enterprise by definition, finds a way over, around or through whatever obstacle is thrown at it; be it world wars, epidemics, market bubbles and even an administration hell bent on putting it on a short leash.

The economy is showing signs of recovery no doubt, but it lacks a few factors key to a V-shaped recovery and I think Mr. Kudlow, with all due respect, is suffering from premature jubilation.

Let’s begin with the March employment numbers recently released by the Labor Department. Those numbers were solid. People say small businesses are getting killed by taxes and regulations from Washington, but the reality is that the small-business household employment survey has produced 1.1 million new jobs in the first quarter of 2010, or 371,000 per month. If that continues, the unemployment rate will drop significantly.

But it probably won’t continue, Larry.

On the contrary, politically speaking, unemployment will ultimately be the Achilles heel of the Obama administration.

I could stop right there.

Growth of the GDP and the Dow may serve to buoy consumer sentiment but high unemployment will continue to weigh heavily and a couple months’ reversal does not a trend make.

Much of the “recovery” to date is simply a regression to the mean of sorts, which is to say that much of the crisis was manifested in a national overreaction, by employers cutting inventory and staff more severely than was necessary and by the stock markets overselling. The recovery thus far is simply employers and the markets seeking equilibrium.

For a V-shaped recovery there will need to be found a new rung on the ladder and right now I don’t see it.

Past recoveries, at least of the V-shaped ilk, had catalysts. In the case of the Great Depression, it was World War II, the and the young entrepreneurs that survived it.

More recently, In the nineties, it was computers, the internet, and the wireless industries who created jobs and at the same time bolstered productivity.

After the recession of 2001-2002 it was the housing boom then bubble and the leveraging-up that it afforded the consumer eager to fill those homes with stuff. Alas, maybe that one was a false recovery in retrospect.

This time around, that catalyst has failed to materialize. Apple’s release of the new iPad isn’t quite enough, not to mention the fact that sales have been sub-par. This era of “green jobs” the president keeps talking about is a distraction at best; political bullshit at worst. Moreover there are still factors that could hold us at this rung on the ladder and possibly even knock us down one or two in what could be the dreaded “W” recovery.

The biggest fear among business leaders, save a protracted 30’s style depression, is 70’s style inflation, which will hide in the wings until the consumer starts spending. To say that Obamanomics is working at this point belies that fact that the extreme monetary policies implemented to pull our system from the brink have not yet been retracted to any semblance of normalcy.

Our economy is still lying in a gurney with a big federal IV bag pushing meds into it’s wrist and the patient, now trying to get up out of bed, is a bit dazed. Soon she will realize she can only walk so far down the ICU hallway without taking it with her lest she pull the needle out.

Assuming we get our economy out of the ICU, we have escalating energy costs, due in part to the weak dollar, and soon to be multiplied by a return of demand as the global economy struggles to recover.

Also there are to be continued and excruciatingly persistent pressures on real estate values, which have always been an emotional, if not substantive, source of consumer confidence and optimism as well as the de facto basis for most personal wealth and the ability to obtain credit. Once real estate values begin to recover in earnest, which is to say an increase in the proportion of non-distressed transactions, there will be a wave of baby boomers, nearing retirement and divesting themselves of homes too large, too expensive and that represent too much of their illiquid net worth. They will take advantage of the $500K capital gains deduction before Obamanomics forces closure of the loophole.

Next up, we have the President’s health care “reform”; nobody wants it but everybody will have to pay for it. To what extent this will undermine the economy is not known but insurers and providers alike are scrambling to figure out what needs to happen when the first elements of the assault come ashore in September. Many large employer’s cost estimates do not bode well for jobs growth.

Lastly, we have the nearly unbearable weight of a federal government hell-bent on gorging itself under the guise of a crisis, the long-term deleterious effects of which have long since reached a fatal tipping point. Taxes must go up and anyone that thinks higher taxes lead to sustained economic recovery surely isn’t paying them and is suffering from the same form of delusion that put Obama in the White House.

So Larry, it’s too soon to be calling this a “V”, and I’m glad to see that later in your piece, that you agree:

…at some point, monetary policy will tighten, with higher interest rates on top of higher tax rates. That, too, could slow growth markedly next year.

…hence the “W” moniker.

…then there’s the dozen tax hikes in the Obamacare health takeover, and a possible VAT attack from Paul Volcker, all of which will work against growth in the out-years.

Clearly, we are not operating a supply-side, free-market model today. What I wish for is sound money and lower tax rates, which would promote sustainable economic growth. Instead, we’re getting easier money and higher tax rates, which could mean a temporary boom today and disappointingly slow growth after that.

We have become an economy unto ourselves; an economy driven by service industries and consumption and right now consumers are not yet convinced that the Obama administration has solved everything and that they should go back to what they were doing. Even if they if they did, they haven’t the means or the desire to do so and are not yet prepared for what is coming.

As long as unemployment stays high and the consumer suffers malaise, Republicans, if they so chose, will have plenty of legitimate economic fodder to lob at the Obama administration for years to come.

…so why does America think we lost…and lost big?

Nearly two-thirds of Americans say the health care overhaul signed into law last week costs too much and expands the government’s role in health care too far, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, underscoring an uphill selling job ahead for President Obama and congressional Democrats.

Is it the Pareto Principle? Are one-third of us smarter than the other two thirds? If so, is that how Amerika works now?

“They’re going to have to spend substantial time convincing people of the concrete benefits of this legislation.”

Isn’t that supposed to happen before a law is passed?

Interestingly, regarding the post-passage “violence” on the part of “opponents” to the bill, what say ye Amerika?

And when asked about incidents of vandalism and threats that followed the bill’s passage, Americans are more inclined to blame Democratic political tactics than critics’ harsh rhetoric. Forty-nine percent say Democratic tactics are “a major reason” for the incidents, while 46% blame criticism by conservative commentators and 43% the criticism of Republican leaders.

Is that tacit approval for the acts of defiance?

First the Obama administration blasts Wall Street for not following the rules…and also when they do. AT&T discharges it’s duty to shareholders by quantifying the hit they will be taking as a result of Obamacare.

This wholesale destruction of wealth and capital came with more than ample warning. Turning over every couch cushion to make their new entitlement look affordable under Beltway accounting rules, Democrats decided to raise taxes on companies that do the public service of offering prescription drug benefits to their retirees instead of dumping them into Medicare. We and others warned this would lead to AT&T-like results, but like so many other ObamaCare objections Democrats waved them off as self-serving or “political.”

…when in fact what they are is simple math.