Obama Scores Early Victory of Historic Proportions

A wet daydream

I saw a Washington Post headline today that read: ”Obama Scores Early Victory of Historic Proportions". Now there may be all sorts of political agenda's among reporters and editors, and people may genuinely see things in different ways, but that headline is nothing but a huge pile of horse nonsense. The stimulus plan is a blunder of historic proportions, not a victory. The article touts the speed with which is was set up and pushed through, but that in reality is not exactly a positive aspect. It makes it all worse, not better. There are many voices among economists who have said the plan lacks substance and detail; a large part of the reason why lies in the haste with which it was concocted. Tim Geithner was attacked by his peers yesterday in the G7 meeting for the same reason.

Moreover, we now know that virtually no-one in the Senate and Congress has actually read the plan. You don't get to celebrate $787 billion victories because you're fast, you do that because you're good. Obama has nothing like that to show for the plan, which is a victory only for Wall Street and other corporations that get to profit from it. About 25% of the original TARP funds were completely wasted, and there is zero reason to presume it'll be different this time around. In fact, it's guaranteed to be as bad, simply by the fact that it has been prepared too hastily and with scant attention for details.

The first warning of Obama's upcoming darkest hour will likely not come from the financial sector, however. General Motors today announced a sort of ultimatum for the administration: give us more money, or we'll file for Chapter 11. I have warned about this throughout 2008: Obama should have solved the Detroit situation before becoming president, in order to not let the Formerly Big Three go down on his watch. GM and Ford are stronger symbols of America than any other companies, and their bankruptcies will be held against the president who allows them to fail, in a big way. Detroit needs a minimum of 15 million cars sold in the US market to stay viable. Forecasts for 2009 are 10 million sales, but I bet that is way too high, even as Washington has started handing out cash for car-buyers. Subsidies or no subsidies, sales may fall to as low as 5 million this year.

It's over, dear people, the dream is broken and cannot be mended. Gerald Celente predicts tax revolts and "another evolution" in the US. Listen to what he has to say in the video below. He is not an idiot, he expresses my views and fears to a T. The way things are going today, I don't see how he could be proven wrong. There are many people who say that European models are no better, or even worse, than the American one, but they fail to acknowledge that the American model is gone, forever. It's over. Until and unless we recognize that, and implement measures to make sure there will not be millions of US citizens thrown into the sort of misery we see on TV reports about Somalia and Ethiopia, we are sure to lose out. There will no longer be an American society, and probably not even a country.