It’s worse than anyone thought.
Economic growth in second quarter of 2011 is just 1.3 percent – a half percent less than expected – and the estimate for the first quarter of 2011 was revised downward from 1.9 percent to 0.4 percent – essentially no growth.
Technically, a recession is two quarters in a row of negative growth. You don’t have to be a mathematician to see that we are basically in a mild recession, since the economy has ceased to grow. With unemployment at 9.2 percent and growing, I’d say it feels like a recession to me.
Here’s what President Obama should do:
1. Fire his economic team. No letters of resignation. Fire them. They can all go to Harvard to teach.
2. Stop fundraising and campaigning for reelection.
3. Accept a temporary increase in the debt ceiling that Speaker Boehner is offering him.
4. Spend the next several months making drastic reforms to government that slash spending by trillions of dollars so that the deficit is under control and our economy has a fighting chance.
THIS IS BIGGER THAN YOU, MR. PRESIDENT.
What happened to all the nonsense about how you’d be a one-term president if you could just do some good in the world? Please, you’re just another politician, grasping at power like an alcoholic straining for a quart of bourbon.
YOUR POLICIES ARE A FAILURE. YOU MUST CHANGE THEM.
You have ignored the greatest peril to the economy – the deficit – while going about your merry way creating new regulations, changing the health care system at a cost of nearly $1 trillion and counting, and trying to boost the economy with a poorly crafted $800 billion stimulus.
IT HAS NOT WORKED.
Instead of shifting course, the president today spent a few minutes propagandizing on the debt ceiling. I won’t bore you with quotes. You’ve heard it before.
Here’s how Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Austan Goolsbee began his statement on the latest economic figures:
Today’s report shows that the economy posted the eighth straight quarter of positive growth . . .
This competes with “Other than that, Mrs Lincoln, how was the show?” for the prize for delusional avoidance of uncomfortable facts.
These people are are divorced from reality. Goolsbee is actually leaving the White House soon to go back to academia, where he can get some more experience living in fantasyland. Good riddance.
Mr. President, I’m rooting for you to change policies and succeed. Because I’m rooting for the country.
But I just know you won’t.
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