Is this the END of America? What about the fallout?

[Hishercar]

President Barack Obama faces a daunting political reality: the world he envisioned in the spring and summer of 2008, when he was formulating his political strategy and building his political alliances, has been replaced by a world in economic danger.

 

 

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His $3.5 trillion budget might make sense if these were normal times, with a newly elected, very liberal Administration wanting to focus on reshaping America and redistributing wealth. However, these are not normal times. We are in the midst of the worst economic challenge in 80 years. (See pictures of the down-and-out economy.)

 

Japan's gross domestic product dropped 13% in the fourth quarter. The Russians are so short of cash, they are signing a lopsided 20-year deal for oil sales to China in exchange for a $25 billion loan. Iceland is bankrupt. The World Bank predicted on March 8 that in 2009 the global economy will shrink for the first time since the 1940s.

 

Here in America, the unemployment numbers keep growing. Such icons of U.S. economic power as Citigroup, General Motors and General Electric are in trouble. The big-spending strategy employed by George W. Bush and now Obama has so far failed to turn around the economic decline. Congressional leaders are talking about the need for a second stimulus package. No one should underestimate the danger posed by these policy failures. Gigantic economic dislocations have gigantic noneconomic consequences. The Great Depression led to the rise of Nazi Germany and a militaristic Japan, the spread of communism and World War II. (See 25 people to blame for the financial crisis.)

 

In this environment, the only two relevant objectives are creating jobs and restoring financial institutions to functional stability. Yet the Obama budget has the potential to do exactly the opposite.

 

If the country's No. 1 priority is to create jobs, then a hidden $1,300-per-family energy-tax increase in the guise of a cap-and-trade system is absolutely destructive. Herbert Hoover raised taxes in 1932, and it further crippled the economy. The war-on-wealth rhetoric (Obama talks about punishing companies that send jobs overseas; Vice President Joe Biden said he wanted to throw CEOs "in the brig"; Senator Claire McCaskill referred to CEOs as "idiots") and policies of this Administration and the Democratic Congress are making it difficult to stabilize the stock market and much harder to get successful people to invest in American jobs.

 

If we want to keep money in the U.S., then sending it overseas for oil and gas is counterproductive. Yet the Obama budget includes a 13% excise tax on offshore oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the domestic oil and gas industry at a time when we should be encouraging it to return resources home to America. The various tax increases in the Obama budget combine to form as great a threat to economic growth as the Smoot-Hawley Tariff

[Newbie_driver]

the era of them being #1 is already over long ago..... just that nobody bothers to tell them....