…or is it me warming to Jim Cramer, just a little bit.

When I come to work each day, whether as a commentator for TheStreet.com or a host of Mad Money With Jim Cramer, I have only one thought in mind: helping people with their money.

Okay, that part is not entirely accurate if ye be judged by your results. You’re an entertainer whose stock-picking advice at least has been shown to be dead on if one’s goal is to generate losses.

I fight to help viewers and readers make and preserve capital. I fight for their 401(k)s, for their 529s and their IRAs. I fight for their annuities and for their life insurance policies. I fight for their profits, trading and investing. And in this horrible market, I fight to keep their losses to a minimum by having some good dividend-yielding stocks from different sectors, some bonds, some gold and some cash.

Sorry Jim, I’m not a fan. Jim Cramer: A Stream of Uncalibrated Opinion

I work with real clients and real money, and people like you and Suze only confuse my clients more and make my job harder.

…but despite all that, I’m warming up to you of late:

Limbaugh’s dead right. I am a fight-not-flight guy, so I was on my hackles when I heard White Press Secretary Robert Gibbs’ answer to a question about my pointed criticism of the president on multiple venues, including the Today Show.

Well, in case you didn’t know this Jim, Gibbs is a pompous ass and likely knows less about the market and economics than his boss.

“I’m not entirely sure what he’s pointing to to make some of the statements,” Gibbs said about my point that President Obama’s budget may be one of the great wealth destroyers of all time. “And you can go back and look at any number of statements he’s made in the past about the economy and wonder where some of the backup for those are, too.”

Huh? Backup? Look at the incredible decline in the stock market, in all indices, since the inauguration of the president, with the drop accelerating when the budget plan came to light because of the massive fear and indecision the document sowed: Raising taxes on the eve of what could be a second Great Depression, destroying the profits in healthcare companies (one of the few areas still robust in the economy), tinkering with the mortgage deduction at a time when U.S. house price depreciation is behind much of the world’s morass and certainly the devastation affecting our banks, and pushing an aggressive cap and trade program that could raise the price of energy for millions of people.

The market’s the effect; much of what the president is fighting for is the cause. The market’s signal can’t be ignored. It’s too palpable, too predictive to be ignored, despite the prattle that the market’s predicted far more recessions than we have.

Obama has undeniably made things worse by creating an atmosphere of fear and panic rather than an atmosphere of calm and hope. He’s done it by pushing a huge amount of change at a very perilous moment, by seeking to demonize the entire banking system and by raising taxes for those making more than $250,000 at the exact time when we need them to spend and build new businesses, and by revoking deductions for funds to charity that help eliminate the excess supply of homes.

Jim, your stock picks may be right less than half the time, but you are 100% correct today.

Just don’t throw a chair at the President. That’d be bad.

That hope that may now become a reality as the American people come to realize what the WSJ observed today…

The dismaying message here is that President Obama’s policies have become part of the economy’s problem.

Americans have welcomed the Obama era in the same spirit of hope the President campaigned on. But after five weeks in office, it’s become clear that Mr. Obama’s policies are slowing, if not stopping, what would otherwise be the normal process of economic recovery. From punishing business to squandering scarce national public resources, Team Obama is creating more uncertainty and less confidence — and thus a longer period of recession or subpar growth.

I don’t have time today to elaborate but this picture is worth a thousand syllables…

…and why?

[Jimmy Carter II] has chosen to spend his scarce resources on income transfers rather than growth promotion. Most of his “stimulus” spending was devoted to social programs, rather than public works, and nearly all of the tax cuts were devoted to income maintenance rather than to improving incentives to work or invest.

The powers in Congress — unrebuked by Mr. Obama — are ridiculing and punishing the very capitalists who are essential to a sustainable recovery.

That’s Change^® you’re going to lose your job over. Hopefully not you – the President.

US Bank essentially avoided the mortgage crisis and as such had no need for government bailout dollars. What does their CEO think of the government’s efforts to assist less discerning banking organizations?

While government leaders were well-intentioned in setting up the Troubled Asset Relief Program, it’s a “lousy program,” U.S. Bancorp CEO Richard Davis said at a business leaders forum Tuesday.

U.S. Bank was told, not asked, to participate in the program, which is a Darwinian attempt to “synthesize” weaker banks into stronger banks through consolidation, Davis said at the forum.

The problems with the U.S. Treasury Department’s program are that its goals and rules have changed since its inception last fall, it’s poorly defined and it’s caused collateral damage to healthy banks.

Davis said he would be “darned” if Minneapolis-based U.S. Bank would suffer collateral damage from the government’s “sloppy attempt at nationalizing the [banking] industry.”

No, that doesn’t sound like Socialism at all.

Source Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal

First Ford Motor declines the offer. Thanks but no thanks.

Now they are actually re-opening a 58-year-old, retooled manufacturing plant.

…without government aid.

Ford is reopening its Cleveland Engine Plant No. 1 to produce the 3.5L EcoBoost V6 for the Lincoln MKS and MKT, Ford Flex and 2010 Taurus SHO. The plant has been idle since 2007, but Ford has invested $55 million in the 58-year-old facility to create a flexible manufacturing system for powertrains. No new jobs will be created by reopening the plant, as Ford will staff it with 250 workers from other facilities on the site, but the job security that comes with being the first in the world to build the automaker’s most advanced engine is surely welcome.

So it can be done.

I wish I were in the market for a new car.

It would be a Ford Motor Company product.

I dreamt that John McCain was President last night.

I know, I know…he’s not the most Republicanny Republican and all, but think about it for a moment.

We’d have three highly qualified candidates waiting in line to be Commerce Secretary instead of Obama’s “sometimes it takes three tries to get it right.”

…yah, I am sure you think that sounds pretty smart Obammy, but I’d like to know what Michelle thinks of that.

I think you meant it takes three tries to find someone desperate enough to put “Obama Administration” on their resume knowing full well what his policies are going to do to with what’s left of “commerce” in America.

It’s why we don’t have a Titanic II. No one would want to be Captain, let alone sail on her.

If John McCain were President, we would have a cabinet packed with people that actually pay their taxes, have actually started business (vs. reading about it in a textbook), hired employees, owned homes and paid mortgages – versus trading favors with a Chicago criminal to put a roof over their head.

There’d have been no speculation of Oprah’s official capacity either.

As for the speech last night, McCain would probably have dissapointed us ala the debates been less inspiring…from a show-business sort of perspective. Not a lot of charisma or flash. Not a lot of big words. Very little emoting.

We’d have his nervous ticks instead of Obama’s sweeping, graceful poise.

…and no Hopey Changey Messiah talk.

But McCain’s math would have been better.

Obama’s Math:

Socialize Health Care

+ Cap and Trade

+ Increase Taxes on Those That Actually Pay Taxes The “Rich”

+ Halve The National Debt Deficit

= Fatal Error. Please Reboot.

Either way, we’d still have Nancy Pelosi’s assenine permagrin dental work burned into our pixels (I actually had coffee with someone this morning that had to put a towel over the right side of the TV screen last night so he could watch Obama’s sermon).

If John McCain were President, Congress would still be hashing out the “Stimulus” bill under threat of a veto, and chances are in the end there would have been less pork hanging on it’s bones – it would still be a terrible mistake, but to a lesser degree.

…and we’d all actually have some true hope for the economy and our dollar.

McCain would be fighting for government policy that might actually have a chance of stimulation, like cutting taxes to corporations, business owners and consumers, and forcing government to do more with less, like the rest of us poor saps that have the audacity to pay our mortgages, live within our means and respect our commitments and responsibilities.

As it stands, the only thing Obama has proposed to cut is military spending – in the era of the only successful terrorist attack on American soil – barely a footnote in Obama’s monologue last night.

John McCain’s speech would have been shorter. He’d be less talky-talky and more worky-worky. He would have ended his campaign once elected. Obama can’t stop his.

John McCain likely would have tackled our nation’s issues like the decorated hero/servant that he is. He’d likely have picked the most urgent, pressing target, (it’s the economy, stupid) trained his sites and directed his resources and political capital in a focused campaign dedicated to it’s destruction, and we’d have some semblance of a plan right now.

Contrast that with Obama’s reckless design to force-feed thirty years of pent up and failed liberal agendas, without regard for the timing or capacity of our economy to absorb the costs or overcome the additional friction borne by the conduct of commerce.

The President and his book-learned liberal turd-squad think you can make a train start moving again by building more track and adding more cars. McCain would feed the boiler with more coal.

In all fairness, neither President would have a clue how exactly to solve an unprecedented, systemic and global financial and credit crisis; but one would have the good sense of what not to do right now.

…but he’s still the Senator from Arizona.

A guy can dream, can’t he?

Since signing up for a forum on “Obama.com” last year, I’ve been indundated with email from various functionaries in the campaign.  Most of it was pretty typical “send us money” boilerplate.
But this past week, they asked me – all of us, really to “Share our about the Economic Crisis”

I figured, how many chances like this does a guy get?  To send my story directly to the President?

I had  to respond!

I work for a company that depends on the free and open flow of commerce, and a robust business market. My “economic crisis”is that, while I’m one of the 93% of Americans who ARE working (knock wood), my company’s business is going to get hobbled by the hiked interested rates and jacked-up taxes the “Obama” (really Pelosi) plan will foist on us all.  The “cure” might be worse than the disease.

Please stop mortgaging my childrens’ future.

That’s my crisis story.  You should put yours up there, too.

Judd Gregg tells Pres. Obama I’m doing my hair for the next four years:

New Hampshire Republican Sen. Judd Gregg withdrew from consideration as Commerce secretary Thursday, saying his differences with the Democratic White House ran too deep.The announcement was a fresh embarrassment for an administration rocked by a number of setbacks. While his recent predecessors each lost one or two early cabinet nominees, Mr. Obama has lost three less than a month into his term. And Mr. Gregg’s withdrawal comes two days after a bank rescue plan was widely panned by financial markets and lawmakers from both parties, partly because of its lack of detail.

Note to Oly Snowe, Arlen Spector, Sue Collins et al:  if he’s smart enough to spit out the Kool Aid, aren’t  you?

You know the US real estate market must be close to bottoming out when the Chinese are coming here looking for deals.

Beijing lawyer Ying Guohua is heading to the United States on a shopping trip, looking not for designer clothes or jewelry, but for a $1 million home in New York City or Los Angeles.

He expects to get a bargain. Ying is part of a growing number of Chinese who are joining tours organized especially for investors who want to take advantage of slumping U.S. real estate prices amid a financial crisis.

The initial in this article, in ordinary times, would seem just a tad premature:

Has Barack Obama’s presidency already failed?

Of course, these are not ordinary times:

In normal times, this would be a ludicrous question. But these are not normal times. They are times of great danger. Today, the new US administration can disown responsibility for its inheritance; tomorrow, it will own it. Today, it can offer solutions; tomorrow it will have become the problem. Today, it is in control of events; tomorrow, events will take control of it. Doing too little is now far riskier than doing too much. If he fails to act decisively, the president risks being overwhelmed, like his predecessor. The costs to the US and the world of another failed presidency do not bear contemplating.

What is needed? The answer is: focus and ferocity. If Mr Obama does not fix this crisis, all he hopes from his presidency will be lost. If he does, he can reshape the agenda. Hoping for the best is foolish. He should expect the worst and act accordingly.

It’s a philosophy I’m comfortable with.

Yet hoping for the best is what one sees in the stimulus programme and – so far as I can judge from Tuesday’s sketchy announcement by Tim Geithner, Treasury secretary – also in the new plans for fixing the banking system. I commented on the former last week. I would merely add that it is extraordinary that a popular new president, confronting a once-in-80-years’ economic crisis, has let Congress shape the outcome.

And that’d be the problem.

Look – I don’t know that President Obama ever was more than a pretty package into which the left poured its energy after eight frustrating years out of the White House.  In normal times – and with the benefit of a little gridlock – that can be a good thing.  It’s what made the ’90’s so relatively tolerable.

But today, Obama seems like nothing so much as Nancy Pelosi’s hired goon bringing the executive branch into line.

I joked for years during the Ventura Administration that if you walked into the governor’s office, you’d see a big curtain in the corner – and behind that curtain sat Dean Barkley and Tim Penny, pulling the strings and pushing the levers that made Ventura do everything (except talk and embarass the state, Ventura’s only real talents and organic duties).

It’s been less than a month, but I’m struggling to see more than that out of The President these days.

Harvard Economist Robert Barro:

This is probably the worst bill that has been put forward since the 1930s. I don’t know what to say. I mean it’s wasting a tremendous amount of money. It has some simplistic theory that I don’t think will work, so I don’t think the expenditure stuff is going to have the intended effect. I don’t think it will expand the economy. And the tax cutting isn’t really geared toward incentives. It’s not really geared to lowering tax rates; it’s more along the lines of throwing money at people. On both sides I think it’s garbage. So in terms of balance between the two it doesn’t really matter that much.

Translation: This bill sucks and won’t work (although you probably didn’t need my translation given the non-Economist descriptors “worst” and “garbage.”)

Clearly Barro recognizes giving money to people that don’t pay income taxes is being fed to us as a “tax cut.”

We are going to borrow 800 billion dollars to no economic effect, although mark my words, Democrats will take credit for the recovery that will eventually come with or without the bill. Because this is still America after all.

…at least for now.

Jim Rogers on the banking “bailout:”

The new financial rescue plan may not work and could even make things worse because it plunges the US further into debt and it is designed by the same people who failed to forecast the crisis and take measures, legendary investor Jim Rogers told CNBC Tuesday.

But Rogers said Geithner, who was president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, “has been dead wrong about everything for 15 years in a row,” and so was President Barack Obama’s economic advisor Lawrence Summers, who acted as Treasury Secretary at the turn of the century.

Translation: This bailout, once it is decided upon, will suck.

“If I were on your show 15 weeks in a row and was wrong, you’d probably never invite me back. These guys have been wrong year after year after year consistently and here they are making the same mistakes again. This is not going to solve the problem, it’s going to make it worse.”

It never ceases to amaze how so many in our country expect the same people that caused the crisis will grow a brain and fix it…and with the same tools that caused it.

…another reminder that the best thing Congress and Comrade Obama could do right now is simply make sure that unemployment benefits are well funded nationwide and otherwise stay out of the way.

[Despite a tough employment report], stocks traded strong on Friday, with the Dow industrials finishing up over 200 points. Broad stock indexes are up 15% to 20% from their November lows. How can this be?

Well, the stock market is telling us that the economy’s future is a lot brighter than its past. The stock market looks ahead; the employment report looks behind.

Which is to say while this particular recession is a wee bit longer than most, it is otherwise reasonably predictable. Unemployment numbers will peak while the stock market moves up and small businesses and large corporations will start hiring again, usually before they are done laying off all that were slated for release.

By the way, in Friday’s jobs report, wages rose again, and now stand nearly 4% higher than a year ago. With zero inflation, that’s a real increase in worker purchasing power for the 92.4%, or 135 million workers, still employed.

Mr. President? Curious. I thought we were in the midst of a national catastrophe (actually we are – it started on January 20th).

…stocks may now be telling us that the gloom-and-doom crowd — and its pessimistic economic prognostications that cover all of 2009 and in some cases 2010 — is about to be proven wrong.

Or you could believe the President, what with his track record of truthiness and all. It’s going to suck to tell America “we screwed up” again and again.

The commodity markets — among the first asset sectors to respond to [the lowering of rates and increase in the money supply by the fed]  — are stabilizing. Broad commodity indexes are 6% or so above their lows. Ditto for energy.

So, let’s spend a trillion dollars any way.

Barack Obama, a reputed master of the persuasive art, has settled on his central argument for the stimulus bill: I won.

That Obama is reduced to this crude appeal is a symptom of the intellectual collapse of the case for his stimulus bill, a congressional spendfest untethered from its stated goal of providing a rapid “jolt” to the economy.

Is there anything good about the Spendulus Package?

And as Art Laffer has taught us all, taxes also matter — a lot. In fact, the only real stimulative part of the behemoth stimulus package is the simple fact that marginal tax rates will not be raised.

Oh, you mean the Republican version. Gotcha.

So cheaper energy, bundles of new money creation, zero inflation and no tax hikes could very well combine to produce a stronger economy as the year progresses — to the great surprise of the majority of economic pundits.

…and to the dismay of The Little President that Cried Wolf.

Reagan said “a recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A  depression is when you lose your job”.

Recovery, he continued, was when Jimmy Carter lost his job.  Well, we’ll have to work on that in 2012.  But until then, “recovery” really happens when you, the laid-off American, finally job up and get back to work.

And that is a great moment.  My only really significant period of unemployment in my life – my five months of unemployment and six more of subsistence-level contracting – was punctuated by a sudden burst of intense work at the end of ’03 and the beginning of ’04, as the Bush tax cuts kicked into high gear.  The dotbomb was a fairly short recession (depression, for me), and it ended because the economy, recovering fast, needed people, including me, to be getting the job done.

America is a big, throbbing place that needs people to do stuff.  We have incalculable pent-up demand for everything from bread to Escalades (or Priuses, or whatever) to houses to B-2 bombers.

Of course, companies need to feel that the recovery is solid enough to warrant hiring the people to start building all those Mister Coffees and Target stores and construction bulldozers and flavored condoms and everything else that makes up a consumer and capital market.

And they are, at the moment, not hiring.
And, as my radio pardner Ed points out, that’s the untold, scary story of this recession so far.

Why has this recession generated such bad job opening rates? Isidore quotes Robert Brusca of FAO Economics as saying that “fear is running the show right now,” and small wonder. Instead of trying to calm the nation, Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi have transformed themselves into Chicken Littles, abandoning FDR’s “All we have to fear is fear itself” in favor of “We’re all going to DIE!” Why? Their stimulus package keeps losing support, and only fear can propel it to passage, but that same hysteria has employers locking their doors, which creates a self-fulfilling prophecy of economic doom.

Look, even if you leave party identification out of it – don’t bother with “Republican” or “Democrat” labels for now – we need a “Ronald-Reagan”-type personality in this nation to reassure people that the end is not near, that the sun will come up tomorrow, that best thing to do with wolves at the door is go outside and shoot them, tan their hides, and make a fortune on wolf-skin wallets.

Barack Obama, to date, is not that person.

Question for all you Obama supporters; do you think Pelosi, Reid and Frank will allow it?

Russia, the for most of the past century the laboratory for so many bad social ideas, is taking aim at Keynsianism:

Russia signalled a change in its policies to fight the financial crisis on Wednesday, indicating that it would switch from bailing out individual companies to supporting the economy through the banking sector.Moscow also plans huge budget cuts in an attempt to limit its fiscal deficit – rejecting pressure to follow the US and other western countries to try to stimulate the economy with a big boost in public borrowing.

The proposals suggest that Moscow is losing hope it can stave off the crisis with public spending and is instead battening down the hatches for what might be a prolonged recession.

“…battening down the hatches”, or has merely figured out that extended, pronounced Keynsianism doesn’t work.

(more…)

At least one company is expanding manufacturing in America:

Firearms maker Heckler & Koch announced today that it will manufacture two new rifle designs in a newly opened US factory in 2009. The new rifles, the MR556 and MR762, are inspired and influenced by the HK416 and HK417, two highly acclaimed models designed and produced by Heckler & Koch’s Oberndorf, Germany plant.The rifles will be produced at a new HK manufacturing facility in Newington, New Hampshire. The facility is co-located within an existing 70,000 square foot facility. HK began manufacturing pistols in the U.S. facility in late 2008.

“We’ve reached a major milestone in our objective to establish a production presence in the US,” said Wayne Weber, executive vice president of the US business unit of Heckler & Koch. “The new HK45 pistol is the first HK product officially ‘Made in the USA’. It is our goal to strategically transfer production of select HK products to the U.S., with the HK45 Compact being the next product to come off the U.S. production line and shortly thereafter, the MR series rifles.

I wonder if the Obama Administration is as proud of this expansion of manufacturing jobs as it should be?

Because he’s largely responsible for the demand.  He was, in fact, the “stimulus“.

An enema with a sandblaster or a foot massage by a Pittsburgh Steelers Cheerleader?

Coming home to a raging house fire or arriving at your cabana on the beach replete with a fully stocked mini-fridge?

A hijacked jetliner crashing into the ocean off the coast of East Africa or a skillful landing on the Hudson River?

Five minutes in the ring with a folding metal chair in the hands of a steroid-ridden Jesse Ventura, or a playful moment in a pile of fallen leaves with your little girls?

Last one…don’t let me influence your choice:

A bloated pork-ridden stimulus package of some eight hundred billion (soon to be worthless) dollars including billions for liberal pet projects and paybacks or

$430 billion dollars on tax cuts.

$114 billion for infrastructure projects.

$138 billion for extending unemployment insurance, food stamps and other provisions to help “Americans in need.”

$31 billion to address the housing crisis ($11 billion for a loan modification program, $20.4 billion in tax incentives for home purchases, $50 million to temporarily increase loan limits for Freddie, Fannie and FHA)

For those of you that can’t do math (sorry Mr. President, yes I am including you) that’s over one hundred billion dollars less than the current proposal.

…and

…it actually sounds like a real stimulus package – the lesser of two evils version at least.

Sadly, Barack Obama’s flavor of bipartisanship means we probably don’t have a choice.

…and they can’t all be Republicans.

45.6% thought the [stimulus] plan was a bad idea. Meanwhile, 29.7% thought it was a good idea, and 24.7% were unsure.

“I think most of us are opposed to it because it’s a bailout in nature, and people are concerned about how it will be allocated,” said Eric Toya, vice president of Trovena LLC of Redondo Beach, Calif., which manages $400 million in assets. “It’s so anti-free-market-capitalism, which is what most financial advisers and the public believe in.”

…until they were told that they don’t believe in that any more by rockstars, the media and The Messiah.

“The fact that the size and price of the plan keeps growing should be a major concern,” said Greg Zandlo, president of The Zandlo Financial Group of Minneapolis, which has $50 million in assets under advisement.

What’s the difference between The New Deal and The New New Deal? Scale. Scope.

There’s only one thing worse than a liberal that doesn’t know what to do. A liberal that doesn’t know what to do and does it any way.

The survey also found that 36.4% of advisers did not have much confidence in Mr. Obama’s ability to fix the economy. Meanwhile, 31.5% said they had a “fair amount” of confidence, and 12.2% said they had a “great deal” of confidence.

About 15.5% of respondents said they had no confidence in Mr. Obama’s ability to fix the economy, the online survey found.

Which can only mean another “Fairness Doctrine” aimed at financial advisers is on it’s way.

…unless it’s ours.

Glenn Beck explains the folly that is our Stimulus habit…using the Al Gore method.

To:  President Barack Obama

From:  Mitch Berg – American, Citizen, Accidental Constituent

Re:  Geese and Ganders

Mr. President,

As a person with an innate notion of common sense and right and wrong, I don’t disagree that it’s really, really bad PR for Wall Street firms and banks that are asking for government bailouts to be giving out nearly $20 billion in bonuses.

The tongue-lashing you gave them…:

Summoning reporters after a closed meeting with Mr. Geithner, Mr. Obama blasted earlier news that Wall Street had paid out $18.4 billion in bonuses, calling it “the height of irresponsibility” and “shameful.””There will be time for them to make profits, and there will be time for them to get bonuses,” he said. “Now is not that time.”

The tough talk suggested a firmer stand from the administration in its oversight of banks. But it also had a political purpose: eliciting support for an expensive and unpopular bailout program that will likely require more cash from Congress.

…makes political sense.

On the other hand, the bonuses are attempts to retain top “talent” at firms that do drive this nation’s economic engine.  Right?  Wrong?  I’m not sure.

But it’s certainly no worse than the hundreds of millions – billions – your administration is planning to give to ACORN, the National Endowment for the Arts, global warming cultists, unions, and Trojan-brand condoms – none of which brings a single job to this nation (other than, I suppose, at Trojan – although I suppose you know that recessions actually help the market for contraceptives, among other less-clinical goodies).

If I didn’t know better – and as a bitter, gun-clinging Jesus freak, you just know I don’t, right? – I’d almost thing you were trying an FDR-like bit of populist displacement, to focus the people’s attention on these (ill-timed) bonuses via the lens of your friends in tingly-leg media, to drown out questions about the pork your “stimulus” plan is shoveling.

Please get back to me.  Thanks.

That is all.

How bad is the stimulus?

Look – I’m a Friedman guy; free market uber alles.  The only justification for any Keynesian frippery in this sort of situation is if it creates jobs, directly or (not very) indirectly.

Plenty of better bloggers than I have covered the overdose of pork that the stimulus provides; my associate editor Johnny Roosh has done a good job of that as well.

How bad is it, though?  When you hear people saying “aren’t artists’ paychecks just as important as factory workers’ paychecks?”

No, they are not.  Art is a good thing; I can even justify some public purchase of art on some level (say, public architecture).  But art as a rule isn’t a job creator – certainly not in any major numbers.  (And let’s not jobs at Broadway theatres, here; Broadway isn’t art, it’s commerce).

The good news?  At least the Republicans sacked up and voted unanimously against the stimulus bill yesterday, for all the good it did.

But even some Democrats get it:

Senate Transportation Chair Steve Murphy has some big problems with the federal stimulus package working its way through the U.S. House of Representatives. The Red Wing Democrat said it spends far too little on transportation, while funneling money into education and health and human services, which will not generate the jobs needed to jump start the economy.

“That bill that came out of the House of Representatives is a pile of donkey dung. It’s not going to do any good,” Murphy said. “They’ve got their priorities bass-ackwards. The majority of that money should be for infrastructure.”

He’s pretty smart for a DFLer.

I bet he has an interesting time at his next convention…

Cato has published a full page ad from a swarm of serious economists who aren’t jumping on the stimulus bandwagon:

Notwithstanding reports that all economists are now Keynesians and that we all support a big increase in the burden of government, we do not believe that more government spending is a way to improve economic performance.

 

More government spending by Hoover and Roosevelt did not pull the United States economy out of the Great Depression in the 1930s. More government spending did not solve Japan’s “lost decade” in the 1990s. As such, it is a triumph of hope over experience to believe that more government spending will help the U.S. today. To improve the economy, policy makers should focus on reforms that remove impediments to work, saving, investment and production. Lower tax rates and a reduction in the burden of government are the best ways of using fiscal policy to boost growth. Below you’ll find some recent Cato work on “stimulus” packages.

Click through.  Read.  Show it to your friends at the water cooler.

There are two ways to react to financial crisis:

1. Like I suspect people like my Norwegian grandma reacted to things like the depression; by trimming the fat, by spending even less than normal, by developing new ways to be frugal.
2. Like someone who thinks their Gold Card is never going to max out.

Bartel Schmidt at Truth about Cars compares GM and Toyota’s responses to the financial crisis:

General Motors hasn’t made money on its core auto business since 2004 – and did nothing. Same cars, same talk, same mismanagement. GM is in the government’s intensive care, hangs on a the tax payer’s money drip, and still hasn’t changed.

Contrast that to Toyota. Toyota will announce its first operating loss in its history – approx $1.6b, less than GM’s monthly cash burn – and Toyota went to battle stations months before the announcement.

And that involves choices much tougher than “Do I take my corporate jet to DC to beg for a bailout, or do I take a Caddy?”

While GM was betting on SUVs and available credit, Toyota aims to take the lead in the industry by introducing not only the most environmentally friendly cars but also budget vehicles for emerging countries and (yes) slick models that can spark young people’s interest in cars.

While GM was fleecing its suppliers and even drove its own Delphi into bankruptcy, Toyota is worried about the health of its suppliers. Toyota has conducted an emergency poll of around 50 parts suppliers, to grasp their fundraising situations. The upshot is that their financial health is rapidly worsening. “We will possibly need to help them secure necessary funds,” said Senior Managing Director Atsushi Niimi, who is in charge of procurement.

While GM coddled the UAW, Toyota slashed most temporary workers, and may let unionized workers go also.

The results?

Toyota officially replaced General Motors Corp. as the world’s No. 1 automaker in 2008. At Toyota, this is already regarded as an embarrassing non-event. Everybody knows that the reason is GM’s poor performance, rather than Toyota’s strong results. There were no celebrations at Toyota.

I think everyone’s frugal, pragmatic Norwegian grandma would approve.
(Via Peg Kaplan)

When the price of something drops, sales eventually rise.

Whether that item is big…

Resales of single-family homes increased 7 percent to an annual rate of 4.26 million. Sales of condos and co-ops rose 2.1 percent to a 480,000 rate.

The rebound last month was led by a distressed-property related jump in the West, including California, Nevada and Arizona, the NAR said. Sales of distressed properties accounted for about 45 percent of all sales last month.

Home sales have been falling since 2005 and prices peaked in 2006. Property values are down by about 23 percent, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller index covering 20 metropolitan areas.

…or small:

US fast-food giant McDonald’s said Monday its 2008 net profit soared 80 percent from a year, lifted by growing demand from consumers seeking low-cost meals in a deepening global recession.Net profit for the full year totaled 4.3 billion dollars, compared with 2.3 billion in 2007, the Oak Brook, Illinois-based company said in a statement.

World War II wasn’t won with a bunch of Dunkirks, and an economic recovery won’t be built on 99 cent cheeseburgers or fire-sales of foreclosed homes.

Still, down markets are not just a time for “creative destruction”; they are a good time to hatch new plans.  On NPR’s “Marketplace” a few weeks ago, it was noted that much of the hiring in IT in Silicon Valley is coming from small startups.  Down markets are a great time to be in startups; if nobody is making money, they there’s less pressure to turn an immediate profit, which makes the inevitably-lean gestation period for a startup a little more bearable than when the Joneses you’re keeping up with are lighting their cigars with $100 bills.

Conservative Republicans in Congress may out-numbered but they may still be in the majority.

The real fiscal policy battle is going to be among liberal and conservative Democrats, the “Blue Dogs” as they are known, and they seem to think Barack Obama is one of them.

“Barack totally gets it . . . He is smarter than Bill Clinton and disciplined.” So says Tennessee Democratic Congressman Jim Cooper on the Thursday before Mr. Obama’s inauguration.

Sitting in his office a stone’s throw from where the festivities will take place, I ask about his role in the big transformation coming to Washington. He’s one of the leaders of a gang of moderate Democrats called the Blue Dogs. They’re meeting their first Democratic president in a while, and Mr. Cooper may have a big effect on the agenda. He smiles gently and says, “If we were to ally with the Republicans, we could swing any vote in the House of Representatives.”

The Blue Dogs gang is growing and is made up of a number of Democrats that didn’t vote for the first Stimuless Package, or the Big Three (…Two…One) Bailout, are against tax increases and actually favor “targeted” tax cuts.

So far they want to play nice with Lefty Pond Scum like Frank ‘n Beans, Pelosi and Reid, but this could be the makings of a surprise and possibly epic battle for the high ground.

If they are inclined to wrangle with Nancy Pelosi and the more liberal contingent in the Democratic Party, they will drive policy, especially as a check on spending. “Ideally the White House will see things our way, so they will present legislation on the Hill that we find acceptable,” Mr. Cooper says. “If they stray too much from that or if a certain part of Congress strays too much from that, then we may have to object.”

But is Barack one of them?

Obama To Hold Fiscal Responsibility Summit

Obama said that he has made clear to his advisers that some of the difficult choices–particularly in regards to entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare – should be made on his watch. “We’ve kicked this can down the road and now we are at the end of the road,” he said.

The question is whether Obama actually used the perjorative “entitlement” and whether his idea of “choices” is cutting benefits and/or forcing Social Security and other entitlements to do more with less…or just raising taxes.

If the Blue Dogs are right, we might actually have another Bill Clinton on our hands, one that won’t dip his pen in the company ink (Michelle would rip his head off I surmise), which given the fiscal policies of GWB, might be Change^© we fiscal conservatives can live with.

…albeit given the lack of choice in the matter for the next two to four years.

But what of the monster stimulus package? What doth the Chien Bleu say of that?

“…I think there are infrastructure things that are legitimate to spend money on,” like the interstate highway system. “For the stimulus package to work in the economy, you have to have long-term credibility. If people think we are inviting inflation back in, or if we’re not going to prudently manage the nation’s finances, the stimulus package is largely a waste of time.”

A great thing about Mr. Obama’s plan, he says, is the tax cuts. “I think stimulus can come in a variety of forms, but I think the key message is Democrats are not for tax increases. Democrats can be for tax cuts when appropriate, when needed, when targeted. We can argue about the type of cut, but the key element of this proposal was facing the payroll tax. That is the most regressive, most antijob tax in America and very few presidents in American history have touched it. And Barack is touching it in this package. That is an achievement of immense proportions in and of itself.”

I’m still not convinced this stimulus will stimulate anything and I remain skeptical of Barack Obama’s definition of a “tax cut.”

In the mean time, check out these quotes…from a Democrat no less…Blue Dog Cooper:

[The deficit is] even worse than most people think, he says, because of dodgy accounting used by the federal government.

“The U.S. government uses cash accounting,” he says. “That is illegal for any enterprise of any size in America except for the U.S. government. Every for-profit business, every not-for-profit business, every state and local government has to use real accounting except for Uncle Sam.”

Barack Obama is inheriting over $60 trillion of problems. This is not counting the bailout, or Social Security or anything.”

Standard & Poor’s reported that the U.S. Treasury bond would lose its AAA rating by 2012 because of the way Washington has been carrying on. America would have the same credit rating as Estonia and Greece, and then the same as Poland and Brazil, and then it would be like . . . Mexico. “Yet no one knows about this,” he says.

We will be watching Congressman Cooper and his Dogs.

Let the battle begin.

Barack Obama has a dream of affordable broadband internet for every American household and six billion dollars of the Democrats stimulus package is earmarked to that end.

Broadband carriers say it’s too little and it will be too late.

“I was incredibly impressed how quickly the House moved,” says Shirley Bloomfield, senior vice-president for federal relations at Qwest Communications (Q), a Denver-based communications provider that serves 14 Western states. “They’ve got some good concepts. But $6 billion is not going to get you to ubiquitous broadband.”

…some communications providers warn that the package as designed in the House bill may get bogged down by too much government bureaucracy, and fail to create jobs quickly—a key objective of the federal stimulus.

…the House bill is focused on using grants, loans, and loan guarantees, but it doesn’t use tax incentives at all. Grants would likely take many months to be distributed, whereas some companies say they could act much more quickly if they knew they could receive tax credits for their investments. “With grants it is eight months of bureaucracy before any money gets to its destination,” says an official for a large communications provider. “If you are looking for a quick stimulus hit, tax credits would be better.”

Do you mind if I repeat that?

“If you are looking for a quick stimulus hit, tax credits would be better.”

Just as giving free money to banks doesn’t guarantee they will lend it out, internet network providers may not be interested in stimulus money conditioned with government mandates, further diminishing the stimulus’ potential impact on growth.

However, some organizations such as Public Knowledge are hopeful that open access will mean that network builders—such as Verizon Communications (VZ), AT&T (T), Time Warner Cable (TWC), and Comcast (CMCSA)—must allow rivals to use their networks at wholesale prices.

“You would be required to lease space over these networks the way we used to do.”

If this is the case, ITIF’s Atkinson warns that many broadband providers would not participate in the program. “You’ll effectively have a boycott,” he says. “You’ll see very, very few takers.”

Internet access is a boon to the free flow of information, education and free enterprise, but high-speed access is not a right of every American citizen. Spending billions of dollars so more Americans can access their email, update their Facebook page and surf porn more efficiently has dubious value for the incremental creation of jobs.

…and finds the government stopped paving it, in favor of the low road.

General Motors and Chrysler flew their private jets to Washington to beg for some cheese.

Congress said “No.” George W. Bush said “Yes.”

So they got it, along with all the “strings.”

Ford said “No, thanks” and sent in their offense, announcing new energy-efficient and technologically-advanced models and boasting of higher quality and industry publication endorsements.

And now they want to kick some Detroit rear quarter panels. They want the Big Three to become The Big Ford.

Company insiders say the overarching goal was to separate Ford in the public mind from General Motors (GM) and Chrysler. As the crisis afflicting the auto industry has deepened, Mulally & Co. have gone out of their way to convince car buyers that Ford is stronger, greener, and more technologically advanced than those other guys. Executive Chairman William C. Ford Jr. sees an advantage if “people view us as a company that pulled itself up by its own bootstraps.”

At a time when GM’s and Chrysler’s financing arms have been hard-pressed to make loans to potential buyers, Ford has been using television, online, and radio ads to remind the world that it has money to lend. And executives have been falling over themselves to promote Ford’s kudos from Consumer Reports, which this month noted that of eight new Detroit cars it recommends, six are Fords or Ford brands.

In a dismal fourth quarter, it notes, only Ford, Honda (HMC), and Toyota increased their market share among the top six carmakers.

And yet?

This is why the President should have respected Congress’ and the people’s rejection of the bailout:

But GM, in exchange for federal help, likely will swap equity for debt and may emerge with a stronger balance sheet. By taking the high road, Ford could find itself at a competitive disadvantage.

President Bush in one fell swoop turned the American automotive industry upside down by rewarding failure and inadvertently but predictably penalizing success. Contrary to President Bush’s assertions otherwise, in the long run you can’t protect capitalism by abandoning free-market principles; especially to this magnitude.

GM and Chrysler should have been allowed to fail.

Ford Motor may find this out the hard way thanks to President Bush. Our nation may found out the hard way thanks to the President-Elect.