^{Democracy & Technology Blog} A political failure

What we’ve got with this worsening recession is a political failure, not a market failure.
A clueless partial truth from the one man who can do more than anyone to restore faith in the economy or bankrupt the nation:

“You know, the stock market is sort of like a tracking poll in politics. It bobs up and down day to day, and if you spend all your time worrying about that, then you’re probably going to get the long-term strategy wrong.”

Jim Cramer sums it up:

…Obama has undeniably made things worse by creating an atmosphere of fear and panic rather than an atmosphere of calm and hope. He’s done it by pushing a huge amount of change at a very perilous moment, by seeking to demonize the entire banking system and by raising taxes for those making more than $250,000 at the exact time when we need them to spend and build new businesses, and by revoking deductions for funds to charity that help eliminate the excess supply of homes.

Aside from the obvious need to moderate the tax-and-spend impulse, Steve Forbes has some great advice for the politician-in-chief:

If the president really takes Roosevelt’s legacy seriously, he should suspend mark-to-market accounting rules, restore the uptick rule, and enforce the prohibition against naked short selling. If he doesn’t, historians will look back in utter amazement at Mr. Obama’s preservation of Mr. Bush’s worst economic policies.