The good news about the carnage on Wall Street -- another 634 points on Monday, with signs overnight pointing toward even more decline on Tuesday -- is that we pretty much know what's causing it: The market has decided that the prospect of meaningful economic growth in the near future is bleak.
The bad news is that we may be powerless to stop it.
This is the bottom-line of life under the 112th Congress. The current majority party in the House is at the mercy of rank-and-file members who, either because they believe it themselves or because the constituents they will answer to in their next primary election do (or both), approach every issue with the assumption that President Obama, even if what he is saying or doing actually meshes with what once passed for Republican orthodoxy, is totally and completely wrong. Thus do we now have the spectacle of Obama trying to calm the markets and goose the economy by calling for an extension of a payroll tax cut -- and one of the most influential Republicans in the House suddenly declaring that a tax cut isn't a good idea because it would increase the deficit.
Basically, what he's talking about is the fact that no one in Washington seems willing or able to admit that the deficit fetish currently going around is not only a fucking waste of time but actually quite harmful to our economic health. Obama is now a moderate Republican and the Tea Party has made the GOP completely batshit insane. Nixon would have been a Democrat now.
Fuck.
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