So deep down I’m okay with President Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize. The peace prize has lost its prestige long ago when the likes of Carter and Arafat and Gore received it. The peace committee is obviously agenda driven, and that agenda has no relation to peace.
At least President Obama didn’t win the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Today’s new unemployment report paints another bleak picture as companies continue to lay off workers and remain reluctant to hire even though the administration claims there are signs of recovery:
The Labor Department said Thursday that new jobless claims rose to a seasonally adjusted 531,000 last week, from an upwardly revised 520,000 the previous week. Wall Street economists had expected only a slight increase, according to Thomson Reuters.
Just yesterday the pay czar decided to cut executive salaries of Wall Street and government-controlled automakers by up to 90%. I’m sure they’re floating their resumes by now. President Obama claims that Kenneth Feinberg acted alone and only informed Treasury officials, without advice from the White House:
But on Wednesday night, administration officials said that the president of the United States didn’t have all that much to do with a decision that will, in many ways, come to define his relationship with Wall Street.
In fact, sources within the administration say the decision to cap corporate pay was Kenneth Feinberg’s, and his alone. A senior administration official tells POLITICO that Obama did not sign off on the pay master’s decision. Feinberg didn’t even brief the White House on it, the official said, but he briefed Treasury officials instead.
This is a no win for the White House. Is it saying that it has a pay czar who is going rogue, or a pay czar who is clearly anti-capitalist? Or worse yet, he’s both? Clearly Mr. Feinberg wishes complete failure of these institutions, perhaps with the goal of complete nationalization of them?
Can you stomach more gloom? It’s time for the Senate to raise the national debt ceiling (again):
The Senate must soon increase the national debt limit to above $13 trillion — and Democrats are looking for political cover.
Knowing they will face unyielding GOP attacks for voting to increase the eye-popping debt, Democrats are considering attaching a debt increase provision to a must-pass bill, possibly the Defense Department spending bill, according to Democratic and Republican sources.
Adding it to the defense bill would allow Democrats to argue that they voted for the measure to help troops in harm’s way — and downplay that their vote also expanded the limit for how much money the country can borrow.
The Democrats are under pressure and would definitely have to come up with something “creative” to raise the debt ceiling without much attention. They know very well that the stimulus package isn’t working so well, contrary to the White House’s propaganda. But being the majority they will have all eyes and criticism on them. The American people should not easily give the Democrats a pass.
It’s clear that the stimulus did nothing positive and only burdened our nation with more debt and unemployment. Yet President Obama and the Democrats in Congress still want to pass a health care bill with public option. How is that going to help us?
