China Shows Who the Real Boss Is at USA Inc.

"With its huge ownership stake in the American economy, China is beginning to extract concessions from a humbled U.S."

Best Comment of the Day

"I posted this yesterday. It's worth posting again. The stock market is toast and Obama is engineering a freight train towards national bankruptcy and the demise of the dollar. The outcome was never more certain.

"A warning to the credulous who think this economy has bottomed or is near it.

"1. No nation ever advanced its real economy by creating more units of paper money. Real wealth can only be created by savings and production.

"2. No nation ever advanced its real economy by holding interest rates below their natural market rate. In every case, it launches a credit expansion that continues until the level of debt becomes unsustainable. Then it crashes. In essence, it's one massive Ponzi Scheme.

"3. No nation ever advanced its real economy by deficit spending. Eventually, the debts become unmanageable. That's the path Obama is careening towards.

"4. The GDP is at $14 Trillion and and bonded debt, $11 Trillion. A 1:1 ratio brings the US in line with third world nations.

"5. From the time the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, the cost of gold went from $20 to $900, a 98% depreciation. 2% to go before the dollar is worthless.

"Sorry Obamamaniacs. Jesus hasn't returned in the form of Obama to save you. You're on your own."

No Hope for This Change

"You can hardly pick up a paper or listen to a newscast without hearing how inflationary Uncle Sam’s bailout efforts are. 'Money out of thin air' is a phrase never so popular as it is these days. And, indeed, every bit of the money going to bail out the administration’s political cronies on Wall Street and fatten Obama's constituency everywhere else is being created out of thin air.
 
"The Federal Reserve recently proposed what may be the most inflationary policy in it’s history, directly buying government securities to the tune of a trillion or so. Thin air again is the well from which all the Fed’s funds are dredged up."

A tip of the cap to AIG

"The highly publicized executive bonuses and retreats are galling, but they account for such a small percentage of the total handout, it's really a non-issue. Don't get me wrong; ragging on AIG employees and their families is just as much fun as listening to people as they attempt to mask their massive disappointment and buyer's remorse in President Barack Obama, but it solves nothing.

"Before you get on me for disparaging the omnipotent Obama, let me defend Obama because he wasn't in power while AIG was making backroom deals and its stock split more times than Nina Hartley's legs. However, Obama is responsible for continuing the failed policies of the most recent Bush administration.

"George W. Bush, a very gullible and impressionable person, was duped and swindled by AIG, and the company is taking Obama on the same ride. To be fair, the economy isn't Obama's strongest area.

"Cutting check after check without question to the insurance giant makes as much sense as appointing someone who cheated on his taxes to be Secretary of the Treasury."

Why Risk Threatens Obama

"If President Obama inherited the greatest recession since the Great Depression, his policies, lack of action, and wrong headed decisions have now surged the nation passed it."

San Francisco Examiner Editorial: Banana republic budgeting should shame Obama, Congress

"[...] It was surely an act of hubris for President Obama to ask Congress to approve a $3.6 trillion federal budget for 2010 that runs a trillion-dollars worth of red ink its first year and then projects half-trillion deficits every year thereafter for a decade. Congress has never before been asked to consider spending of such magnitude, not even during wartime. Obama's budget proposal also included provisions committing the nation to far-reaching policy changes that are certain to drive federal taxes higher, send gasoline and electricity costs soaring, socialize doctors and patients by putting Washington bureaucrats in charge of health care, and make Uncle Sam the Daddy Warbucks of college tuition for everybody. The ultimate result will be a doubling of the national debt, a burden that will fall on our children and grandchildren. In short, this was a budget proposal of historic significance to every living American and for millions yet to be born.

"So how did Congress deal with this landmark legislation? The House of Representatives gave opponents exactly 20 minutes to present an alternative, then gaveled the Obama measure to approval. The Senate approved it after considering a handful of amendments. But note that even before the 2010 budget was approved, this Congress had approved spending more than $1.2 trillion, or $24 billion per day. That's $1 billion every hour since the 111th Congress convened in January."

NYTimes: Obama's Economic Ideas Great... Just Like Hitler's Were?

"For The New York Times economic scene section for March 31, David Leonhardt came across with one of the most amazing admissions about Obama that I've ever seen in the Times. Namely that Barack Obama is just like Hitler. Now, many of you may be solemnly shaking your head in agreement, but in so doing you would be missing why the Times was comparing Obama to Hitler. You see, Leonhardt didn't mean it as an insult. He was saying that it was a good thing that Barack was being like Hitler at least in an economic sense.

"Here Leonhardt is taking the trains-on-time track with his Hitler angle by saying that, despite that whole Holocaust and World War II business, Hitler's policies were good for Germany. So good, in fact, that he celebrates the ways he sees that Obama is emulating the mustachioed mad-man's economic prescriptions with the massive takeover of the economy and bloated government spending on "stimulus."

"You know the left has lost it when they are invoking the 'success' of Hitler to prop up The One!"

The Ship is Sinking: Quick, Add Water

"President Obama has reminded us countless times that he inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit. Even if he were about to propose the most responsible, prudent, visionary budget imaginable, that complaint would still be petulant and unseemly. But considering what Obama’s own spending will do to the deficit, it’s jaw-droppingly galling. He now proposes to increase that deficit to $7 trillion in ten years. And that $7 trillion is probably a low estimate (the Congressional Budget Office estimates that it will be $2.3 trillion higher). When the new spending for programs like Pell grants, education for handicapped children, and so forth comes up for renewal in a few years, Congress is not going to let it lapse. So, to review, it was terrible for President Bush and the Democratic Congress (the president neglects to mention the latter) to saddle him with all this debt. His answer is to triple it. That’s showing ‘em!"

'Stimulus' tab: $12.8 trillion and climbing

"The tally works out to $42,105 for every man, woman and child in the U.S. and 14 times the $899.8 billion of currency in circulation. The nation's gross domestic product was $14.2 trillion in 2008.

"The combined commitment has increased by 73 percent since November, when Bloomberg first estimated the funding, loans and guarantees at $7.4 trillion.

"Federal Reserve officials project the economy will keep shrinking until at least mid-year, which would mark the longest U.S. recession since the Great Depression."