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Friday, March 13, 2009From Catastrophe to Not so Bad? [Victor Davis Hanson]

Washington is by nature an hysterical place. (Remember those who chest-thumped the fall of Saddam’s statue only soon to claim they never supported the war?)

Still, it is quite striking that in the space of a mere 50 days, Obama & Co. have gone from “We are in 1932 and things are getting worse—unless” to “Things are not as bad as we think,” with choruses from the likes of Larry Summers on the dangers of talking down the economy and sowing fear. This is one of the most schizophrenic moments in recent memory. What in the heck is going on?

a) Premeditation: Talk of the Great Depression was necessary to enact a massive spending bill with a $1.6 trillion deficit; then, once the European-like spending was in place, it was important to flip, drop the gloom and doom, and talk up the economy for the midterm elections to come.

b) Panic: After trashing the rich, Wall Street, the banks, George Bush, etc., promising massive new tax hikes, and shrilly forecasting the likelihood of impending near-depression, Barack Obama was quietly taken aside by his advisers (in response to the worries of now-troubled liberal financial icons) and told to cut it out—lest he create such a climate of financial uncertainty that we really do get the hard times of the 1930s. So he stopped on a dime and suddenly 1981, not 1932, is the new frame of reference.

c) Chaos: No one is in charge; things are made up and cobbled together as we muddle through each day. When the market dives, and banks totter, like the proverbial headless chicken, the inexperienced administration darts about as if we were doomed. Then, with a mere couple of days of good news from Wall Street, or the announcement that a few banks are okay after all, or that GM doesn’t need more handouts right now, suddenly we get “Things are not so bad.”

Or is at all of the above?

03/13 07:21 PM

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Monday, March 16, 2009

Making Orwell Proud [Victor Davis Hanson]

Guantanamo is still open, but there are no longer "enemy combatants" there (Perhaps the name of the camp can be changed next?). The old campaign snicker that a naïve McCain really believed that a then-stronger economy is "fundamentally sound" is now the new Obama gospel about a far weaker one. There are to be no more earmarks in spite of 8,000-plus new ones. A $3.6 trillion-dollar budget is proof of commitment to financial responsibility; the remedy of Bush’s borrowing profligacy is to increase the deficit from $500 billion to $1.7 trillion. Bush’s signing statements bad; Obama’s signing statements good. An end to lobbyists in an administration ensure there are over ten; the highest ethical standards mean the nominations of Daschle, Richardson, etc. The changing meaning of words really does trump memory and reality itself.

03/16 10:13 AM

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Monday, March 16, 2009

Casting the First Stone . . . [Victor Davis Hanson]

I am mystified by Barney Frank's desire to recall the AIG execs' bonuses, not so much over the idea that corporate-welfare recipients should not have grandstanding demagogues chastising them for their hypocrisy, but rather the notion that someone of Frank's ethical past would play Old-Testament railing prophet. Quite aside from his former partners (the gigolo fellow who used Frank's facilities for illegal activities, and the other boyfriend Herb Moses — self-described as part of the "congressional gay-spouse caucus" — who, as an exec, was helping to make Fannie policy at the very time Frank was voting on its appropriateness), Frank received more than $40,000 in campaign contributions from the bankrupt Freddie and Fannie, despite his own role as supposed fiscal watchdog on the House Financial Services Committee.

A modest suggestion? Let us agree on the following: No more corporate fat cats partying, jetting, and bonusing around after their tottering companies got federal cash; and all congressional-people and senators who took any contributions from any corporate or quasi-government entity that is a recipient of federal bailout money, must pay that money back, plus interest, to the government. After all, as in the Madoff mess, these congressional-people usually got the cash at a time when their benefactors were already in trouble, albeit hiding their fraudulent or unethical practices through cooked statements and high living. So please, Representative Frank, Senator Dodd, and all the rest — give back all that campaign cash to our government, and then in silence endure what you helped to conceive.

03/16 01:07 PM