Obama Has No Leverage

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Written By:
pino

Jul 24, 2011
8:35pm

Big deal this.

Very soon, without an agreement, the United States will be unable to borrow anymore money.  It’ll be forced to spend what it takes in.  And THAT is gonna be tough.  See, we’re obligated to pay on certain things and programs.  And after those bills are paid, there isn’t ,uch left.  Not much at all.

That leaves the government in a tough situation; and Obama in a tougher one.

See, I think that Obama has two motivations.

1. He wants to be re-elected.
2. He honest to God thinks that the government needs to care for the needy.

The problem for Obama is that his plan isn’t working.

The way the economy works is that it takes growth higher than a 3% rate before good things, like a sustained decline in unemployment, even start to happen. Anything in the 2.5%-to-3% range is just treading water.

Growth has averaged 2.8% over the past seven quarters. And at this point, economists would welcome a 2.5% growth rate.

This is Barack’s economy.  He’s had it for virtually 2.5 years now.  We’ve seen him push his agenda, we’ve heard him preach on about his vision and we’ve lived  him signing his bills into law.  He’s had his way and the results are in:

Economists polled by MarketWatch now expect growth to actually decelerate to a 1.6% annual rate in the second quarter from a tepid 1.9% rate in the first quarter.

This is a far below forecasts as late as May for a 3.6% growth rate for the April-to-June quarter.

Growth will be disappointing because “the economy is not firing on all cylinders,” said John Canally, economist at LPL Financial.

I like that, “the economy is not firing on all cylinders.”

To say the least, right?

Which brings us back to the point; the debt ceiling talks.

Obama is out of his element.  He has no real plan, he has no real strategy.  He isn’t capable of driving unity and consensus.  Mostly because he’s never had to do so in the past.  But his biggest problem is that his ideas, his agendas, his visions, aren’t working.  The economy is not taking off.  The economy is not moving forward.  The economy is stumbling.  The economy is worse off than it otherwise had to be.

Obama has no leverage.