Newt Gingrich:
Charles Krauthammer:Ronald Reagan understood that if you wanted to encourage jobs and you wanted to encourage economic growth, you had to encourage the people who invented jobs and the people who created economic growth.
And he understood that liberalism's effort at big taxes, big regulations, big litigation were just wrong….Now what are we seeing today? First of all, in a way that should really bother people, this administration is turning out to be very systemically dishonest….
We're told on the one hand we're at the edge of catastrophe which by the way I think we could be with these policies. We're told on the other hand the economy is going to grow next year. They can't both be right, and I'm afraid that what's right is the bad warnings because the Obama plan is so destructive for those who want to create jobs.
Everywhere I go people who are successful say to me they do not think this administration has any idea the level of damage it's doing to the market, to jobs, to investment, and — now let me give you an example. Would you want to live in a country where Chris Dodd is the guy, the senator from Connecticut, who decides what the salary cap is?...Where John Kerry, the senator from Massachusetts, gets to say he doesn't like golf outings so businesses shouldn't do them, where President Obama, I think without any realization of what he was doing, drove a Goldman Sachs conference out of Las Vegas.
Now, if you're the restaurant workers, if you are the hotel workers, if you're the people who are going to make a living with that conference, you've got to wonder what is this administration thinking as they go around doing this?
I think what's really scaring the markets is a lack of confidence, obviously, in the financial system, but also, a lack of confidence in the Obama administration.
Looking at last year, they said the Bush administration was running around with its hair on fire, bailing out here and there, without logic, without—extremely ad hoc-it saves a Bear Stearns and lets Lehman go down. It proposes a TARP, a rescue on the basis of purchasing toxic assets. It changes its mind. It ends up injecting the money in banks.
It's running around without a plan, and yet, the system held together.
What was hoped was that there would be a new team, new people, fresh ideas, who have a year, '08, in which to study and learn what went wrong and would have a plan in place. It is what Obama had said he had, they knew what to do and would do it.
It looks as if they have no idea what to do, and they won't.
Dick Morris:
Dick Morris tells Newsmax TV that President Barack Obama is essentially throwing the prospect of American prosperity under the bus in order to achieve his own ideological agenda.
Morris, a political commentator, author, and Newsmax contributor, notes that every time Obama speaks, he sends the markets down and the stocks crashing. On Monday, the Dow plunged below 7,000 for the first time since 1997.
"Obama's theme, unfortunately, is the "The War on Prosperity," Morris tells Newsmax, drawing on the contrast between Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty" theme of the 1960s.
"He is the enemy of prosperity. He, literally, favors redistribution of income as being more important – and more a function of the president – than the creation of wealth," Morris says.
"It amounts to, literally, a war on the business community."
Morris rips Obama for his massive spending bill, his $3.6 trillion budget, and the $1 trillion tax hike, and says Obama "is eviscerating the impact of his stimulus spending by his tax package. He, in effect, is going to people and saying: 'Spend a lot of money now; invest a lot now, and don't worry about it. In two years, I'm going to cut your head off.'"
Morris says the tax increases Obama proposes now are only a precursor to increases he plans later.
"[Obama] wants to stimulate home construction because that's the core of this economic problem that we are facing," Morris offers as an example. "So, he passes a bill for credits to first-time homebuyers to get a tax credit. Then he says: 'If you make more than $200,000, you won't be able to take the deduction.' And then he says: I'm going to raise the capital gains tax five points.' So, one set of policies completely obviates the other set."
Morris believes there will be a massive backlash to Obama's policies that will allow the Republican Party to retake control of Congress in 2010, as it did in 1994.
"I think he's headed right over that cliff right now," Morris says. "I think it is going to become increasingly obvious that Obama's economic policies are failing. It'll be increasingly apparent with the daily toll of the stock market crash, layoffs, and companies closing. That will be the drip, drip, drip that will erode Obama's popularity."
Investor's Business Daily:Barack Obama won the presidency by vowing to bring "hope and change" to America. We've seen the change as the economy's deterioration accelerated. Now where's the hope?
In the three months since the election, the broadest measure of the stock market's value, the Wilshire 5000 Index, has plunged more than 30%, slicing over $3 trillion from Americans' wealth. Investors have walked away from investing, while businesses shut down factories and offices and slash jobs.
This is both highly significant and dangerous. Capital, bluntly put, has gone on strike. Those who own wealth are pushing it to the sidelines, as a young and inexperienced president tries to jam through the most sweeping economic changes in over 70 years.
The prospect of these changes becoming law has already radically altered our nation's economy. Entrepreneurs and CEOs who once created new products, new services, jobs and trillions in wealth for America's workers and retirees now find themselves vilified and punished for their success.
ABC News reported this week that many upper-income taxpayers already are planning to cut back on work and investments to stay under $250,000 in income — the point where Obama's punitive taxes kick in. No one wins from this, yet Obama seems oblivious.
This isn't the only warning sign. A new study asserts that some 100,000 highly educated, well-trained Indians now living in the U.S. will return home in the next few years. Ditto China.
Immigrant entrepreneurs are highly sensitive bellwethers of economic and social conditions. They know where the opportunities are — and where they aren't. They're voting with their feet.
As our stock markets melt under a barrage of new taxes on incomes, estates, capital gains, dividends and energy, it's good to recall that more than 100 million people own stocks or mutual funds. And that the stock market is the main wealth- and growth-creating mechanism in our capitalist society. But when taxes go up, regulations proliferate and the rule of law and private property protections are weakened, the economy will invariably suffer. This is a universal lesson of economic history, one we ignore at our peril. And yes, this is what's happening now. No, we don't blame all our current ills on President Obama. He came in at a tough time, when many bad decisions had already been made. But he is responsible for what he's done since. His stimulus package is little more than a down payment on a socialist economy. It raises taxes on the successful, brings back the welfare state, hands out favors and cash to friends of one political party, while imposing government control over the entire free market in ways that just a year ago would have seemed unimaginable.
There's my two cents.
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