The Obama Re-Election Clock - One Minute Closer to Midnight
Posted by: admin in Uncategorized, tags: doomsday clock, Obama, re-election, university of ChicagoThere is a doomsday clock that hangs at the University of Chicago that is meant to show how close we are to the end of the world. It doesn’t move much. In fact, it was moved two minutes closer to midnight in January of 2007. Since then we have had no movement and we now stand at 5 minutes before midnight, or the expected end of the world.
Why do I bring this up? Until recently I would have put the chance of Obama
not being re-elected at about the same chance the doomsday clock hits midnight in the next 4 years. After reading the Obama “tax the wealthy” plans, I am moving up the Obama Doomsday Clock by 1 minute.
Let me digress, I have a friendly banter with a Wall Street professional and I have always argued that there is a 99% chance that Obama will be re-elected in 4 years. One, he is the most charasmatic speaker of our generation, if not a few generations. His speech patterns and pauses are mesmorizing and could sell you just about anything. Two, he is inheriting the biggest financial and economical disaster in 70 years. Why is this good? All he has to do in the next four years is just STOP the decline. He doesn’t have to turn anything even around. He just has to stop the bleeding. Get unemployement to stop RISING, and get housing to find a BOTTOM, somewhere, anywhere. That’s it. His re-election is sealed with “I have stopped the greatest disaster in the last 100 years and I can make this country turn around if you give me 4 more years”. Done. He is in.
“Not so fast my friend.” as Lee Corso, ESPN football commentor would say. After reading his budget plans, I was shocked to see how much he is attacking the wealthy. It is is one thing to raise their taxes, but I read in disbelief how mortgage interest will no longer be a tax deduction and how there will no longer be a tax deduction for charitable contributions. As if the charities weren’t hit hard enough by this market and Maddoff, now no tax deduction for contributions? So, we are going to rely on the good hearts of the super wealthy to give large amounts with NO financial gain, just an altruistic pat on the back? Wow, talk about robbing Paul to pay Peter, or better yet, robbing St. Peter to pay Uncle Sam.
Taking the mortgage interest off the table is also just as questionable. We need a housing bottom, we need to encourge wealthy and not-as-wealthy people to pay their mortgages and buy homes, and now you take away the tax deduction for mortgage interest. How is this helping to find a housing bottom? You just made mortgages a whole lot more unattractive to people that have a decent net worth and that can spend some money and get things moving.
I know have to scale my Obama Re-Election Clock back to 92% from its current 99%. Why? Because 5% of the population controls 95% of the wealth in this country and Obama just declared war on them. Like it or not, money equals power in our society. The more money you have, the more power and influence people give you, like it or not. I am not here to start a moral debate over money, power, and influence, but lets just say if you are a big donor to your local and State politicians and you request a phone call with them, they are going to call you back. If you start russling the feathers of enough wealthy people with power and with powerful connections, there tends to be a backlash of somekind down the road.
This opens the door a crack for someone like Mitt Romney to step up in 2012. You can see the slogan as “I ran successful corporations, and American is a big corporation. We need a business and economic leader like myself to turn this country around”. Is it a dead heat right now? No way. Again, all Obama has to do is STOP THE BLEEDING Walled In download download Magicians dvd
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How the Grinch Stole Christmas! buy , and he is in for four more years.
They say in life to never bite the hand that feeds you (or your government in this case) and lets just say Obama has nibbled on a finger. If he attacks the rest of the hand don’t be surprised to see the Republicans start a “he just doesn’t have the experince to get us out of this” conversation in 24 months, and to boast of their big business prowness.
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March 1st, 2009 at 11:57 am
March 6th, 2009 at 12:56 am
The president wants to raise the top tax rate to 39.9 percent starting in 2011 just at the time when the economy is expected to be in recovery. That’s the SAME marginal rate seen at the end of the Clinton administration. From all the uproar, you’d think Hoover was in the white house.
Bush’s tax cuts, which disproportionately benefited the wealthy are being allowed to expire. They were never supposed to be permanent! Obama is not actually raising taxes. He’s letting the Bush tax cuts expire. President Bush and Congress could have made them permanent but did not. The legislation purposely canceled the cuts after 10 years to hide their enormous long-term cost. That’s not Obama’s doing, less I remind everyone.
What’s about the great John F. Kennedy’s tax cuts, you remember, when the top bracket was dropped down to 50%! What a great Republican.. Or Reagan, raising capital gains tax to 28%. Isn’t Obama’s capital gains just 20% in comparison?
Taking the mortgage interest off the table? Won’t this also make people think twice about buying a home they CANNOT afford or shouldn’t be buying as a second luxury home in the first place? Do we really need more people living a unsustainable luxury life built on the backs of others?
Oh the inhumanity of it all.
March 6th, 2009 at 2:44 am
You bring up some good points, I agree with long term tax cuts, I don’t agree with the “economy is expected to be in recovery” statement. Going back to JFK to use a top tax bracket is a stretch since the world and globalizaiton is a much different place, but I like the historical fact.
I do dispute the mortgage interest point. Do you really think people got to big off a home or a second home becuase “we can write off the interest, lets do it”. Yes, that is a benifit but certainly not a “loophole that all these evil people have been exploiting for years!”. On a home you pay real estate taxes to begin with, then, if you have a mortgage you pay principal and interest. The fact you have to pay taxes on that interest since you take away the write off is just unethical. So, if we receive interest from a bank account we HAVE TO PAY taxes on it, but if we pay interest on a mortgage, we have to pay taxes as well? How can you have it both ways?
Very dramtic with the “luxury life built on the backs of others” too. I like the it! Imagine if I had written a blasting article! I can assume you are an ardunt Obama supporter and this article says he is STILL a shoe-in for re-election and that he is just opened the door a crack to Republican, just a crack.
On a side note, just to show you I am not totally “out on an island” on this one, here is a similar blog post that came out after mine..I wonder if he read this one first?
http://www.cnbc.com//id/29510052
At the risk of redundancy I’ll ask it again: Is he? Is President Obama effin’ CRAZY?
President Obama blames the continuing global financial crisis for the unmitigated carnage on Monday, when the Dow fell below 7000 and closed down 300 points (or 4.2 percent) at a 12-year low of 6763.
Bullspit! The man is in denial. By now we know the economy is ailing. The main thing that has changed: The disturbing details of Obama’s tax-and-spend plans are becoming all too clear.
Most of the moves he has made in his first 43 days in office have been bad for the markets, damaging to investors, ill-advised for the economy and detrimental to repairing the financial collapse wracking the entire planet.
Yesterday Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told a House committee the new budget’s “single most overriding priority” is to “stimulate private investment.” Yet Bam proposes to more than double the tax rate on hedge funds and private equity funds, engines of private-sector growth. Can’t be good for firms like Blackstone [BX 5.439 -0.691 (-11.27%) ]
He wants to rescue housing—but aims to cut back on the tax deduction for interest paid on mortgages, targeting anyone who earns over $208,000. Aren’t these the people who could most afford to buy a new home? That hurts homebuilders like Toll Brothers [TOL 14.42 -0.47 (-3.16%) ].
March 6th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
Those on the lower fiscal end buy out of necessity rather than investment. I see home ownership as more of a need for a roof over one’s head than an investment. Buying up houses for the sake of buying just inflates home prices and creates a housing bubble, like we have now. The damage, of which, falls upon all Americans; explaining the “upon the backs of others” statement. Over consumption does not just hurt the over-consumer.
I’m not too much of an ardunt Obama supporter. I’m more of a realist.
March 6th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
I’ve been looking at Darling Int’l, OM Group and other base metal companies myself. : )