With Democrats like Obama, who needs Republicans?

Today President Obama outlined his auto industry policy: business as usual. He intends to continue to try to save a dieing industry that deserves to die. If Obama had been president 100 years ago he would be saving the horse drawn carriage industry.

I am appalled that he is wasting this opportunity to make fundamental change. The change that he campaigned on is apparently not much change at all, just enough to get him elected.

Obama claims that he is concerned not only about GM and Chrysler but also the thousands of small companies that produce and supply parts. Many if not most of those suppliers will remain in business even if the two big pigs do not. Some will supply foreign manufacturers with plants in the United States. Some will produce other stuff, maybe even the stuff that goes into the types of cars that should be created, not the pig-mobiles that will continue to roll off the assembly lines thanks to the lack of courage of the president of the United States of America.

Maybe the worst thing that he announced is a huge tax incentive to get Americans to buy new pig-mobiles this year. This is exactly backwards. It is exactly what I expected Hillary Clinton to do if she had been elected president, which is the main reason that I supported Obama for president. It's not even 100 days and I am already very disappointed in Obama.

He signaled his expedience in his inaugural address. As I pointed out at the time he must have known that he was stating something that was incorrect when he described himself as the 44rd person to take the oath of office. I asked why would he state something that he knew to be incorrect. His policies since then reveal an all too basic instinct for political acceptance by the mainstream media and political establishment.

Barack Obama: half hearted.

If President Barack Obama received conflicting medical advice, one advocating a heart transplant, one opposed, he would choose to receive half a heart.  That is Obama's nature and political calculus.

His policies seem doomed to fail, not because he is dumb, not because he is getting bad advice, but because he is trapped in compromise even when compromise is not an option.

We have been presented with opportunities to make fundamental change but Obama is not capable of seizing them. 

1. The U.S. auto companies General Motors and Chrysler should be allowed to fail.  Obama cannot bring himself to do that.  He knows it is the best option but he chooses  the path to half failure, lingering death, avoiding the inevitable.

2. He knows that the solution to national health care is a single payer system of universal coverage.  He has stated that if we were starting from scratch that's what we should consider.  However, he cannot bring himself to start from scratch.

3. We should nationalize companies that are too big and/or important to fail.  Obama cannot do that.  Then we should let them fail.    Obama cannot do that either.  Instead he chooses a half way, half hearted policy.

4. We need to infuse HUGE amounts of capital into the financial markets to jolt them back into normal operation.  Instead we infuse large amounts but never enough to accomplish the goal, wasting all that money.

The political wisecrack is that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.  Obama is the most wasteful leader we have, because he knows better but he cannot act on his knowledge.  Bush the younger and McCain are dummies who are locked into old thinking.  Obama knows what to do but cannot do it.  Who is more culpable?

AIG bonuses: do NOT pay!

AIG execs and employees are set to receive huge bonuses amounting to millions of tax payer dollars due to the federal government bailout. President Obama and his wimpy Treasury secretary are reluctantly agreeing to pay because the AIG people have contracts.

Do NOT pay! Break the contracts. Let them sue. Then turn over anyone who sues to a new SWAT team of IRS auditors and audit them like their worst nightmares. And audit their spouses, parents, children. Bring down the hammer! Who is going to stick up for them? Only wimps and idiots.

Close the schools.

If we are really in an economic crisis, close the schools.  Nothing is more wasteful than schools.  Ordinarilly, they are closed two months, have many other days off and short hours anyway. 

This would save lots of money.  Let's try it for a year.

A year off might be a nice break for students.  The main argument for keeping them open is the dirty little secret: they are the world's most inefficient baby sitters.  Wherever will parents dump their kids?

I would never have suggested this before the web but kids can learn a lot on their own simply by accessing the web, which is a lot less expensive than keeping those brick and mortar buildings occupied. Busing kids to buildings is really old thinking.

Credit cards for everyone.

OK, not everyone.  Just adult citizens.

The Treasury department is sending out stimulus checks.  However, many people may save the money rather than spend it.  Here's a better idea.

Send credit cards with a money limit and a time limit.  That forces people to SPEND the money NOW.  That's the idea, isn't it?

Plus, if the economy needs another jolt, just reactivate the cards.  Cool.

National health care needs a single payer system.

Barack, enough already with the compromise stuff.  You need to be big and bold.  Nationalize the banks and call for a single payer system for national health care and universal coverage of all citizens.  I know this runs against your natural inclination to be cautious but these times demand much boldness.

Stop worrying about the word game: nationalize, socialize.  Who cares if someone still wants to pretend that it will be construed as socialism?  Call it whatever you want, just do it.

Health care is one of several important issues with obvious solutions that people like you are too timid to advocate.  Your position on health care is that if we were starting from scratch you would want a single payer system but that we need to consider all those special interest groups including insurance that have been preventing the USA from getting universal coverage.

Aside from health care itself, there is a consensus among economists that health care costs are the major problem that must be solved in the long run.  So, solve it!  Single payer system!  Let's go!

Economic policy: bigger, bolder.

I am not an economist and those who are don't really know what to do to correct the financial system, which has been in crisis mode since September 2008, and the more recent descent of the Dow Jones industrial average to 6,763, which was last seen in 1997.  The drop in stock prices undermines confidence in a fundamental way: it hurts those who acted responsibly and saved.

I took early retirement in 1997 and thought that if the Dow reached 10,000 I was home free, that I would have financial security.  While I am not hurting I cannot do anything either.  If I needed a new car and there was one with a plug, I would not buy it.  It makes no sense to sell shares in my stock mutual funds at a big loss.  I would wait until the Dow went well over 10,000 again.

There are fall back positions such as selling my White Plains, NY condo, which has retained value, and relocating to one of the warmer states that have had the biggest drops in real estate: Florida, Arizona or Nevada.  That is not a bad plan to leverage the equity in my home, which is now too large a percentage of my net worth.  I would like to make my portfolio more balanced and have more cash and more reliable investments.  I will not do it by selling stocks.  But taking equity out of my home by either relocating or trading down here is a viable option.

President Obama needs an economic policy that is bigger and bolder.  I do not know what the details need to be but he has got to find them and make them BIG and BOLD!