The Economic Uncertainty Caused By Political Uncertaintly

Although every single economic enhancement program launched by this administration has been a failure, you do have to give it credit for trying since the failures happened is so many different ways:

- Failure Type 1 - these failures spent a lot of taxpayer money to incentivize economic behavior that would have happened anyway. Two prime examples are the Cash For Clunkers program and the First Time Homeowner Rebate program. While these two programs created a temporary blip in demand, once the incentives ended, demand fell below a business as usual expectation, indicating that demand was moved up but not created since the uptick in demand during the program was offset by the down tick after the program ended.

- Failure Type 2 - these failures were programs that did not even have the temporary uptick to any substantial degree. Cash For Caulkers, which provided monetary incentives to people who insulated their homes, and Cash For Appliances, which provided monetary incentives for people to buy new, energy efficient appliances, never get mentioned in the administration's list of accomplishments. This implies that they even recognize how lame these programs were.

Another component of this type of failure was the HAMP program which was supposed to get mortgage relief for homeowners in distress and having difficulty paying their mortgages. The program severely underperformed relative to its forecasted participation rate and for many homeowners that did participate, they ended up with worst mortgage plans than when they started, the exact opposite of the intended consequence of this program. The inspector general of the program himself called it a failure and it was quietly put to death without much fanfare.

- Failure Type 3 - This failure is focused mostly on the massive waste of money called the economic stimulus program. Remember, this administration claimed that if this economic stimulus program was not passed, unemployment could go as high as 8%.

Well, it was passed and unemployment has soared to 9% and beyond and has stayed high for months on end. Thus, relative to the stated objective of the program, keep unemployment well under 8%, it was an utter failure.

Recent Congressional Budget Office estimates put the cost of the stimulus program at about $830 billion. The administration believes the program was a success since it claims the stimulus created about 3 million jobs. However, if you do some simple math and divide the 3 million jobs into the $830 billion cost, you end up with a cost of over $275,000 per job created, a ridiculous price to pay, assuming that 3 million jobs were even directly created by the stimulus.

Given what the stimulus money was wasted on, it is no surprise that it was an utter failure from an unemployment perspective and cost per job perspective.

- Failure 4 - this is an interesting and often overlooked type failure since it is self inflicted by the political class on itself. Back in the first quarter of 2010, the political class passed a $35 billion small business jobs incentive program. But listen to the comments after the bill was passed from various politicians (and reported by the Associated Press on March 4, 2010):

• "If that's the only thing that I can vote on, I'll vote on it," said a New Jersey Congressman.
• "It's really not a jobs bill. It's only one small piece," said a California Congresswoman.
• "It's an insipid, weak piece of legalisation," said a Washington Congressman.
• "It's not that good but it's better than nothing," said a Massachusetts Congressman.
• "It simply encourages conduct that would occur anyway," said a Texas Congressman. See Cash For Clunkers  above.

If the people who constructed and passed the legislation think it stinks, what chance does the bill have of being successful? With everybody bad mouthing it and having no confidence in it before it is put in place, $35 billion is wasted since the bill was dead on arrival in the real world.

Wow, who thought that the political class could fail in so many ways? It would be comical if they were not wasting hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars and driving us deeper and deeper into debt without any resultant benefit.

If all of these programs failed miserably, maybe it is time to take a totally different approach to managing the economy. The one area that the Obama administration and the political class has not tried is to do less, rather than more. Every time they do something, given their bungling, they interject more and more uncertainty into the market and economy. The last thing a business owner or operator wants in their business life is uncertainty. You can at least plan in a certain world, you cannot plan effectively in an uncertain world.

With high levels of uncertainty, retrenchment is a wiser business strategy than advancement. Consolidation is a wiser business strategy than expansion. Doing nothing is wiser than taking a risk. Certainty, even bad news certainty, is better than wide open uncertainty.

How has this administration and the political class as a whole contributed to uncertainty?  The ways are many and wide ranging:

- For a year, the two parties viciously debated the merits and downside of eliminating the Bush tax cuts for people earning over $250,000 a year. Within that set of taxpayers are millions of small businesses who file their business taxes within their personal tax returns who could en dup paying more in taxes. Given this uncertainty the political class injected into reality, will small business have to pay more in income taxes, small businesses went the safe route and did not hire since they did not know if they would have extra tax expenses.

- Continuing with the same insanity, when the political class finally decided to extend the Bush tax cuts for everyone including the rich, they could only agree on a two year extension. More uncertainty. What happens at the end of two years? Why should a small business owner hire more employees when his Federal income tax bill could go up significantly within two years? Better to stay put, business wise, until the uncertainty clears.

- There are not enough days to go into details about the uncertainty that Obama Care has injected into the thinking of all types of businesses but the uncertainty generally falls into four categories:

• Is it more tax advantageous to the business to drop health care for my employees and save money because of Obama Care?
• How many more scarce business resources will I have to devote to just filling out Obama Care paper work?
• How many more different taxes will I have to pay as a business owner under Obama Care?
• How much more in total business taxes will I have to under Obama Care?

The list goes on and on. And the truth is, no one, including the clowns who wrote the legislation, knows the answers to these questions. In the past two weeks we have seen totally unexpected bad consequences of this law arise as people plow through the 2,500 page legislation.

Given the people who wrote and hyped the law did  not foresee the latest snafus, it is highly unlikely that business owners and operators know what is going to happen either. More and more uncertainty.

The House Of Representatives Energy and Commerce Subcommittee had hearings last week on Obama Care. Presented at that hearing was a 3,500 page stack of forms, requirements, regulations, etc. that Oabma Care has already spawned. No one knows what is going on or what will fall out of these 3,500 pages. More uncertainty.

- Boeing wants to move some of its airplane production from Washington state to South Carolina in order to be more competitive. More competitive means more business means more jobs. They do not want to move these jobs to South Korea. They do not want to move these jobs to South Yemen. They want to move them to South Carolina, totally within the continental United States and give them to Americans.

However, the Obama administration via the National Labor Relations Board has intervened and sued Boeing over the move. Why? The real answer is so that Obama can protect some union votes for himself in 2012 since the jobs being moved from Washington to South Carolina will less likely still be union jobs when the move is done. Pure politics, more uncertainty.

Why would a business plan and try to improve its business and expand emloyment when the heavy hand of the government could intervene at any time and stop the plans purely for political gain proposes? Why bother going through the motions to expand when the sword of interference and uncertainly could chop down like it did on Boeing? Better to just hunker down, stay within the current business plan and operations, not hire more people, and avoid the potential government interference.

Given that any proactive economic program this administration has come up with has failed, maybe it is time to change strategies. Rather than continuing to waste taxpayer money we should be looking to remove uncertainty from the market and let the market heal itself? Wasting money has not worked,  no matter how it was spent or intended, maybe trusting the free market and private sector to act for its own good in a more certain business climate would work. There is no downside.

Zachary Karabell, writing in the July 4, 2011 issue of Business Week says the same thing better then me. His article examines the issue of whether government intervention in the market is a good thing. His conclusion:

"The government is one vital element among many, and society will thrive only when neither too much or too little is expected of it. This may not be as stirring as revolutions and crusades, but its better to accept limitations and work constructively within them than pin our hopes on policies such as the massive attempts to juice consumption that the U.S. government has repeatedly tried - and are bound to disappoint. Bold plans with no chance of success won't change employment patterns or make a nation competitive in a global system that is increasing complex and dynamic. Today's leaders need the humility to recognize what they can't change so that they can meaningfully change what they can."

Well said. And what they can change is to stop bickering over voting blocs, stop bickering over tax plans, stop bickering over programs that are doomed to failure, have a little humility, and start injecting some sound long term planning into the economy which would remove the blockade of uncertainty without wasting hundreds of billions of taxpayer money

By the way, repealing the abomination that is Obama Care would go a long way to breaking that blockade.




Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at http://www.loathemygovernment.com/. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.


Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.loathemygovernment.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment.com

It Does Not Have To Be All Gloom And Doom

It can get pretty depressing writing about the American political class. Problems and issues rarely get seriously addressed, never mind resolved. The current set of politicians seem hell bent on driving the country's financial health off a cliff.  Civil discourse over political views and stands is evil and degrading, meant to hurt feelings, not just win a political argument. Our foreign affairs strategy and results seem meager, disjointed and late. Leadership at all levels of government is thin at best.

On top of all of this, there are some major factors going on in the world that sometimes make it seem that we are out of control of our own lives and unable to shape our futures, given the following global trends:

• The average age of many countries' populations is getting older, making it increasingly difficult for government and politicians to write the checks of entitlements that their brethren promised long ago. In the United States, more and more people will be collecting Social Security in the near future but there will be fewer and fewer people to fund the pot of money needed for payouts. The aging U.S. population will quickly collapse the Medicare program unless drastic changes are made soon. So it is in many other countries.
• While the average age of populations in many countries is getting older, throughout the world there are places with a growing class of young adults that cannot find enough quality work, or any kind of work, for themselves and their families, possibly leading to unforeseen societal problems arising from this chronic unemployment situation.
• What used to be slow moving, economically backwards countries are becoming fast moving, economic engines for growth. This growth, while good for those moving up the economic ladder, puts incredible strains on all kinds of resources including food, petroleum, energy sources, water, and ores and minerals. These pressures drive up the costs on all.
• As we see in the Middle East, the drive for freedom is upsetting long established international relationships, making international affairs and alliances much more difficult to predict and optimize. When previously the United States State Department could rely on certain despots for support ("he may be a bastard but he's our bastard" syndrome), those old rules are now gone, placing additional stress and uncertainty into the world around us.
• While some countries are struggling towards freedom, others are still under the thumb of tyrants, bent on their own self gratification at the expense and possibly the lives of anyone or any country that gets in their ways. North Korea and Iran being the two biggest culprits but there are others that would rather move ahead with negative action than positive.
• The world is moving faster via the Internet and wireless communications, making it crucial that decision making processes in government, business, and one's personal life be made quicker and with less confidence then previously, further injecting stress into our lives.
• As the world's population continues to grow, the ability to feed it and the ability to keep the environment in which we live clean becomes increasingly more difficult. More people means higher prices for just about everything as the immutable economic laws of supply and demand kick in.
• In the face of these trends, our political class has been especially inept and developing integrated, strategic and well thought out plans and programs to deal with these global changes and trends. For example, in a simplistic, linear approach to finding a way to address our energy needs, the U.S. government pays billions of dollars a year to American farmers in subsides for the development of ethanol, an alternative fuel source. Unfortunately, the spending of these billions of dollars has had a minimal effect on our energy situation while diverting enough corn volume (40% of U.S. corn productions goes into ethanol production every year) to feed 350 million people a year (Source: the Week magazine, march 4, 2011). Thus, our politicians waste money through subsidies, get no bang for their buck, and contribute heavily to the world food shortage problems.

Yes, the world is a far more complicated, dangerous and fast moving place then it used to be. However, all is  not lost from a United States perspective. Consider some problems in the rest of the world:

- Although China's economy has been growing quickly and strongly over the past few years, it is still not close to the size of the U.S. economy. Its rapid economic expansion has had a devastating effect on all facets of the environment throughout the country. It's fast growth has its leaders grappling with the fact that inflation threatens to derail its economic growth, with recent inflation rates of over 5% a year as measured in late 2010. Many economists see dangerous valuation bubbles in China's real estate, stocks, and commodities sectors.

From a societal perspective, a New York Times article from several months ago reported that while China is graduating more and more students from its universities, the economic need for these graduates' skills is not present in the economy, forcing these graduates to do work far below their education levels. This could lead to long term unrest within these underpaid but highly educated citizens.

With their long term restrictions on the size of families, China is beginning to enter a period where there are not enough young, working people to care for the growing number of older, retired people. Finally, The Week magazine reported in its February 25, 2011 issue that China is faced with an epidemic of lung cancer cases, with one million Chinese dying from the disease every year, putting strains on its medical and health care institutions..

- Japan faces many of the same issues that we and other nations face. The world's third largest economic engine has been in an economic funk for over ten years. Their population is also aging rapidly, placing strains on their retirement programs. They have a crazy nuclear armed neighbor in North Korea that has previously shot missiles over Japanese territory. Tragically, they have seen part of their country devastated today by an earthquake and resulting tsunami, putting further pressure on their country to move forward in the wake of this tragedy.

- Europe has not escaped these global trends either. By being tied to each other via the Euro currency, it has yet to be determined whether this tethering will help weaker European economies to survive or will lead to the drowning of all European economies. Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland are in the worst shape but they threaten to infect the healthier economies also.

All of the above is meant to show that while we have some very serious problems in this country, if we can fix what ails us as a nation, the opportunity to thrive again as a democracy and world economic power is possible, given the huge challenges facing many other nations. However, that is unlikely to happen as long as the same tired politicians with the same priorities, their own re-election vs. leading the nation, are sitting in Washington. I assume that if we had a leadership base that understood the global trends and could think strategically within those trends and the assets and attributes of the United States, we would not be in the position we are in today.

In order to change out the current leadership for new leadership that know how to put a strategic plan together, we need to change our political processes. We need some sort of term limit process so that politicians do not serve in office for thirty or forty years. Leadership needs to be refreshed periodically with new ideas.

We need to take the factor of money out of the political process so that politicians are free to lead based on a strategic plan and some sort of long term vision, not based on how much re-election campaign money a corporation, union, PAC, or other organization can throw their way to maintain the status quo. The staus quo of short term thinking got us into this jam in the first place. The world moved on, faster and faster, while our plans never kept up.

We need leaders that know how to leverage assets, trends, and opportunities. Consider Apple computer. Their iPods interact and leverage their iTunes library which is compatible with their iMacs which are compatible with their iPads which share apps with their iPhones which can play iTune selections. That is strategic planning and execution at its finest.

Conversely, our political class comes up with Cash For Clunkers, Cash For Appliances, First Time Home Buyers Rebate, the HAMP program to save mortgages, etc., all of which exist in a vacuum vs. other government programs, leveraging nothing. As a result of not being strategically tied together, they fail as individual efforts to attain their goals.

Edward R. Murrow once wrote:  "Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solutions."  We can get out of our current rut and funk as a nation and thrive again as a democracy and nation. However, we have to be more vigilent in identifying when the political class is pushing only slogans and demand that our election processes and the leaders that come out of it give us solutions. Apple can do it, they broke the code. We need to find a way for our political class it either break the analogous code for governing or step aside for those that can.





Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at http://www.loathemygovernment.com/. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.


Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment

The Twilight Zone World Of Joe Biden

The Vice President has always been good for a quote, or in many cases, a misquote, when it comes to explaining the reality of our world. However, many times you wonder if he and the rest of us are living in the same world and reality or we are stuck in some sort of twilight zone world where reality takes on a distorted sense of truth. This twilight zone image came to mind earlier this week when the Vice president acknowledged that while the recovery from the recession was proceeding slower than expected, there is "no doubt we are moving in the right direction."

If he thinks we are moving in the right economic direction, than he and I are stuck in some sort of distorted reality, given what is happening in my economic world:

• The Commerce Department reduced its estimate of the nation's second quarter GDP growth from 2.4% to 1.6%, a 33% decrease.
• Unemployment continues to linger between 9.5% and 10.0% even though Joe's administration predicted that unemployment would go to 8% unless the President's economic stimulus package was passed. It was passed and we did not go to 8% unemployment, we went 15-20% higher.
• The stock market is down about 10% from its recent 2010 peak in April and does not appear to be ready to rise any time soon.
• This week we heard that the sale of existing houses dropped 27% in July vs. June, the biggest monthly drop in the four decades that the statistic had been kept. Guess the administration's housing incentive program for first time buyers did not have much staying power.
• Also this week in the housing market, we found out that the sale of new homes was down over 12% in July vs. June and was down over 32% vs. the same time period in 2009. The annual sales rate of 276,000 new housing units is one of the lowest levels ever measured.
• This week we also found out that almost half of the people enrolled in the administration's mortgage recovery program had dropped out of the program for various reasons, not the least of which was inefficient and and ineffective paperwork processing procedures. The number of home foreclosures in 2010 could be as high as one million with several credible sources estimating that the foreclosure number could increase 50% in 2011.
• On Thursday we heard that new weekly unemployment claims continue to linger between the 450,000 to 500,000, i.e. about half a million people a week are now filing for unemployment benefits for the first time. Hardly sounds like the economic turnaround we are told is coming even though the Vice President told the Washington Post on April 23, 2010, over four months ago, that the economy would soon be creating 500,000 jobs a month. Not quite there yet.
• The Vice President did not mention that the Federal government has incurred unbelievably high, record setting government spending deficits over the almost four years that the Democrats have had control of both houses of Congress and the almost two years they also controlled the White House.

So, in Joe's world or twilight zone, shrinking economic growth rates, housing industry woes not seen in a long time, high unemployment, feeble private sector job creation, sky high national debt and mortgage foreclosures, and a falling stock market leave "no doubt we are moving in the right direction."

Seriously, this administration has no clue on how to turn around the economy, resulting in one of the longest and weakest recoveries of all time. Their reaction? Spend more money on dismal, failed incentive programs (Cash For Clunkers, first time home buyer incentive, Cash For Caulkers, Cash For New Energy Efficient Appliances, mortgage rescue, etc.), spend hundreds of billions of dollars on bailouts of financial institutions that either did not need to be bailed out (since most have already returned their TARP payments) or who deserved to fail due to their bad management (Citigroup, Bank Of America), spend hundreds of billions of dollars via an economic stimulus program which stimulated nothing (it has gotten so bad with this program that the administration has evolved from estimating how many jobs the stimulus created to how many jobs the stimulus created AND saved to how jobs created, jobs saved AND lives touched by the stimulus program), and the old favorite, blame Bush.

Bush has been gone for almost two years, the Republicans have been in the minority for almost four years in Congress and during part of that time, the Democrats had a filibuster proof majority in the Senate while also controlling the House Of Representatives. The result of this recent history? We are stuck in an economic ditch and to those of us in the real world, we have no doubt we are NOT moving in the right direction.

What is the root cause of our economic distress? Could it be that consumers and business are uncertain of the future and as a result, have hunkered down in the face of that uncertainty? What are we are uncertain about:

• Could it be we are uncertain how much more in health care taxes and health care costs we are actually going to have to spend on employees and ourselves since the majority of America feels that the recently passed health care reform legislation will not solve our health care cost problem but will certainly increase what we pay for our health care?
• Could it be we are uncertain what this administration will do tax wise, with the expiration of the so-called Bush tax cuts being just one area where the tax bite on American businesses and consumers could rise significantly?
• Could it be we are uncertain how much more we will have to pay in energy costs with the proposed onerous and ineffective cap and trade carbon program that could be passed?
• Could it be that we are uncertain if Social Security and Medicare will be saved from insolvency and how much that might cost?
• Could it be that we are uncertain when Washington politicians will actually get down to tackling the major issues of the country as opposed to just calling each other names and worrying only about their own re-election?
• Could it be we are uncertain that Washington politicians are actually able to solve a real problem (especially since they have never really solved a major problem) when one of the leading members of the Federal political class thinks everything is fine and moving in the right direction despite every indication it is not?

This administrating has introduced so much uncertainly into the market and economy that people and businesses have decided to hunker down and protect their assets rather than go out and invest or spend their assets. And given this mind set, interest rates cannot go low enough stupid sales incentive programs cannot be rolled out to failure fast enough, and no amount of stimulus spending, especially the ridiculous programs from the first stimulus program, will solve the credibility, faith, and uncertainty problems we all currently have with Washington. That is why these incumbents need to be sent home in November and hopefully we can replace them with people that have the skills to remove the uncertainty in the country today.

Until November, consider the words of Rod Sterling, the creator of the TV show, "The Twilight Zone" in light of Joe Biden's view of his world:

You are about to enter another dimension. A dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land of imagination, next stop, the twilight zone.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEBN30I5Voc&feature=related

Joe, indeed, must live in a wondrous land of imagination in another dimension where good is bad, dark is light, and we are all moving in the right direction despite all economic indicators.




Our new book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Also visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/

Economic Amateur Hour In Washington D.C.

A new round of bad economic news has been spewing forth this week, ranging from the poor housing market to the stagnant stock market to rising first time unemployment claims. After two years of very uneven and unpredictable economic performance, it makes you wonder whether it truly is economic amateur hour in Washington. Consider what we have endured from Washington over the past few years:

• Cash For Clunkers - we have reviewed this program a number of times, pointing out how it was a failure in so many ways. The major bottom line is that the program did nothing to incrementally spur sales in the downtrodden new car market. All it did was cause prospective new car buyers to advance their purchase in order to get the free government rebate money. Once the Clunker rebates ended, the car market tanked for several months since the sales that would have occurred in those later months just occurred a few months early. Thus, there were little, if any, increment sales and all the program did was provide free taxpayer money to people who were going to buy a new car anyway. In addition to this one obvious and fatal flaw were the other mini disasters. These included people using the program to buy low gas mileage trucks and low gas mileage cars, contrary to the other objective of Clunkers which was to increase gas mileage of the U.S. car fleet and that perfectly good used cars, that were traded in under the program, were destroyed, robbing the less affluent citizens of our country the opportunity to purchase a good used car at a reasonable price.
• A similar experience occurred with the government's attempt to spur the housing market. Until the spring of this year, first time buyers of homes could get a cash rebate from the government if they signed a home purchase by a certain day and closed within a few months of signing that contract. Well guess what happened, once that program ended? The National Association of Realtors announced this week that sales of existing homes fell by more than 27% in July. It was the largest monthly drop on record since 1968, resulting in an annualized total home sales estimate of just 3.83 million, the lowest annual number in 15 years. A quote from the article reads: "The weakness follows a strong spring, when now-expired government tax credits sparked sales, especially among first time buyers of lower priced homes." Thus, the same economic principle that happened with Cash For Clunkers happened here: all the government program did was accelerate forward some home sales without incrementally growing the market. Once the incentive went away, sales dipped dramatically, resulting in a net effect of virtually no incremental business. All the program did was give away taxpayer dollars to people who were going to buy a home anyway.
• More bad news from another Washington housing industry program came to light this week, this one relative to the Obama administration's mortgage relief program. According to an Associated Press article, almost half of the homeowners enrolled in the program to help avoid foreclosure have fallen out of the program. The AP reported that the $75 billion program to help owners lower their monthly payments is failing to stem the flow of foreclosures in the country (in a separate article in The Week magazine from August 27, 2010, it was reported that recent monthly foreclosure levels are up year over year and that over a million more homes will be foreclosed on in 2010 vs. 2009.) The article quoted Mark Zandl, chief economist at Moody Analytics, as predicting that the program will eventually help out only about 500,000 homeowners even though another 1.5 million homes will likely fall into foreclosure in 2011. If Zandl is right and the $75 billion program will only help out 500,000 homeowners, then the government would have spent about $150,000 per successful homeowner saved ($75 billion divided by 500,000), certainly a pathetic return on investment from an economic perspective.
• Another government program, Cash For Appliances, was supposed to be designed to incrementally increase the sale of energy efficient appliances for the home. Since absolutely no one in any part of the government is talking about how successful this program was, one has to assume that it performed as badly as Cash For Clunkers and the first time home buyer credits: it likely resulted in no incremental sales and just wasted more taxpayer dollars.
• The Obama administration warned us two years ago that unless the administration's economic stimulus plan was passed, unemployment could go as high as 8%. Well, the econ mic stimulus plan was passed and we have not seen unemployment less than 9.5% or so for lord knows how long. Does that mean if we had not passed the economic stimulus plan that unemployment would be 8%, 15-20% lower than it is today?
• Many times we have spoken about Washington's inability to foresee the gathering economic storm clouds even though there were tens of thousands Federal employees working in economic related government entities including Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Treasury department, the federal reserve, HUD, FDIC, Senate and House banking and finance committees, etc. Of all these people and all these organizations, no one saw the economic mess that has engulfed us until it hit them in the face.
• The current administration has introduced so much economic uncertainly into the market, e.g. what will the health care reform bill actually cost business and consumers, will the Bush tax cuts go away or be renewed, will other taxes be raised and how much, will it be inflation or deflation that we all have to deal with, etc., that both businesses and consumers have reduced their from spending due to this uncertainty/fear factor, with the uncertainty locking up the economy.

Combine these failures with the fact that the political class is spending so much money that our national debt is approaching alarming levels, having just exceeded $13 TRILLION, you really have to wonder what economic novices are running the country today. Economic programs that do not increase economic activity, economic programs that are wasteful and inefficient, and government economic resources that do not see economic trouble before it occurs: certainly looks like amateur hour in Washington.

Obviously, a few major steps and changes have to occur in order to get the amateurs out of Washington, many of which are outlined in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government:"

• Step 1 - start downsizing government functions by 10% a year for five years. This step would reduce the number of insane and wasteful program such as Cash For Clunkers and get the political class focused on fewer but more impactful economic policies and programs. In other words, less people and less bureaucracy should result in less stupid economic policies that government entities launch to protect their turf and justify their existence, all of which are failures.
• Step 34 - systematically but fairly relieve all Congressional members of their committee posts if those committees fail to execute their jobs satisfactorily. In this area, all Congressional members sitting on House and Senate committees responsible for housing, finance, and Treasury should have been relieved of their committee posts for their amateurish handling of the recent economic crisis.
• Step 39 - term limits, as provided under this step, would ensure that the same economic hacks currently sitting in Congress would be gone in a relatively short time and not be allowed to continually perpetrate these stupid and failed economic programs and policies on the American taxpayer.

While 'American Idol", for this generation, and "Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour", for the older generation, may prove entertainment, the economic amateurs in Washington are not entertainment, they are economically destructive and wasteful. Time to get some pros involved and dump the incumbents in November.

Our new book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Also visit the following sites for freedom:
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/