Monday, June 08, 2009

Hecukva Job, Barry - Part III

Once again, the Chinese are showing that they are not fools when it comes to buying U.S. debt.  As I have been saying over and over and over, if our creditors stop allowing us to use our currency to borrow for the massive Obama deficits, we are in for a world of hurt.  The fact that this shot across our bow comes only a week after Geithner was laughed at in Beijing for suggesting that China's dollar-denominated assets were safe should give us all pause.

In related news, Obama is out talking about how he is going to ramp up the stimulus spending to create 600,000 jobs.  Let's leave aside the fact that those will necessarily be short-term jobs.  What I cannot understand is why this is only happening now when we were told in February that Congress needed to pass the stimulus package without reading it because action was needed then.  But Obama had to make some kind of announcement because unemployment is already rocketing past the worst case assumptions for his budget plan (and, incidentally, the bank stress tests), all of which makes even more massive deficits than projected more likely.  Remember that this is the Obama who was calling for a "net spending cut" in the campaign.  

Of course, this doesn't even include the trillion or so dollars we will need for the new healthcare plan.  How will that be financed?  Most likely through a VAT, which is nothing more than a stealth tax increase on the middle class.  And the concept of taxing health care benefits is now popping up, something that Obama categorically dismissed in the campaign.  But hey, why criticize the guy for doing the exact opposite of almost everything he said in the campaign?

It's going to be an interesting summer.





1 comment:

Tony Alva said...

This health plan thing is about the dumbest idea EVER at this juncture. Shouldn't even think of addressing it until some real semblance of stability returns to our economy.