Friday, December 6, 2013

The Inverse World Of Barack And Ben

     Yesterday, the third quarter Gross Domestic Product rate of growth was reported as 3.6%. If one believes the validity of that number, which is difficult at best in light of recent revelations by an Obama administration insider that the unemployment statistics were falsified the month before last year's presidential election, the uptick in GDP would be a good sign for the economy. The market, however, did not respond with an overwhelming sigh of relief, but rather a fearful groan at the prospect of the cessation of  easy money provided by the Federal Reserve. The market responding negatively to positive news is just par for the course in the inverse world of Barack Obama and Ben Bernanke.
     The Obama administration knows that it can scarcely afford to devalue the currency much more than it already has with its program of quantitative easing in affect over the last several years. They know that they are in a race to rein in the 85 billion dollars a month they have been pumping into the market to keep it propped up, before the bottom falls out of the dollar and it becomes worthless. Hence the fictitious GDP number of 3.6%, which can not co-exist with the worst unemployment since the Great Depression and the doubling and tripling of health care premiums thanks to ObamaCare. The market movers are smart enough to realize that the economy is not growing anywhere near the reported rate of 3.6%, but they also know that if the administration can convince Americans it is, they can begin the dreaded tapering of the Fed's quantitative easing.
     Even if the 3.6% statistic is accurate, it is barely a tick above the average economic growth rate for the U.S. economy since the end of World War II, let alone a supposed recovery from a deep recession. The economy has not shown any signs of conditions resembling a normal recovery since Barack Obama was inaugurated in January of 2009. The economy is like a rubber band, the further it is pulled back, the more forward momentum it will have when it is released. The Great Recession of '08/'09 should have, and normally would have, produced economic growth of 5-7%. During the Obama reign of terror, the economy has struggled to achieve 2% growth. This anemic rate of growth has been in spite of almost a trillion and a half taxpayers dollars being pumped into the economy by the administration, and approximately two trillion dollars of created-out-of-thin-air money being pumped into the market by the Federal Reserve.
     If ever there has been a glaring example of the spectacular failure of Leftist economic policy, it has been on full display with the Obama administration the last five years. The result has been a country on life support and a shrinking private sector in favor of an expanding federal government. A condition that not only spells the end of free market prosperity, but of the individual liberty that it has ensured in this country for over two hundred years.

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