Sunday, June 03, 2012

Obama’s over his head; voters are over their depth

Another dismal job growth and unemployment report with the highest tax increase in history looming. Obama’s response? More of the same.  If Romney let’s this slip by him, maybe we’ve got what we deserve.

“On Friday, the same architects who designed this economy built to stall were calling for one more rescue by the Fed. And gold jumped more than $60 an ounce, suggesting that markets believe that Chairman Ben Bernanke will oblige with some version of QE III. But the lesson of the last four years is that easier money can provide at most a temporary reprieve from otherwise rotten policies. Markets rally for a time, but then they fade when the money-fix is withdrawn.

Far more constructive would be a bipartisan attempt to remove the tax cliff that the economy is rolling toward in January 2013. One of the biggest fears among investors and businesses is that tax rates on capital gains, dividends and personal income are all scheduled to go way up at the same time.

This is an entirely artificial crisis created by the mantra of "temporary, targeted" tax cuts, combined with Mr. Obama's campaign strategy to run against high-income earners with his Buffett rule and attacks on bankers and Bain Capital. If Mr. Obama wants a better chance at re-election, and especially with troubles in Europe and China, he'll call off the class war and call for no change in taxes for at least another two years until there is a larger tax reform. He'd find he'd get little resistance from Republicans.

As for Mitt Romney, the latest slowdown in jobs and growth gives him an enormous opening to offer the American people a better way. Criticizing the results of the last four years and saying that Mr. Obama is in over his head are not enough. “

An economy built to stall

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