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Press reactions to the first 100 Days and Obama's Economic Policies
Washington, 30 April 2009. The changing of the guard from the Republican Presidency of George Bush (remember when he seemed unassailable?) to Democrat and first black President Barak Obama, was epochal. With the Financial Crisis dominating everything else, however, we soon forgot about that and focused on trying to work out just how bad things were and would get.
The first 100 days of a Presidency is both symbolic and indicative in understanding future direction for the United States of America. With the economy being front and center of the agenda, this is a good time to analyze the emerging theories of Obamanomics, and what the press and analysts have to say about the first 100 days of Obama economics.
Fareed Zakaria of Nesweek.com believes that no previous President has faced challenges so big and yet achieved so much. He reminds us that when Obama first started campaigning in 2007 the Dow was at 14,000 and the boom was still going strong, and asks why Obama has been so successful?
Although his calm leadership style, teamwork and organisational tightness and are all credit, Zakaria believes that the key is that Obama has read the moment and mood of the country correctly. The country has become more liberal, with 41 per cent of Americans calling themselves Democrats, 32 per cent independent and only 24 per cent Republican.
Zakaria is particularly impressed with the ‘don’t let a good crisis go to waste’ strategy. Obama’s team have taken their long-term Obamanomic economic policies, centered around health care reform, clean energy and wealth redistribution, and used the Financial Crisis as a reason and momentum to make dramatic shifts in national policy.
Michael Tomasky of the Guardian says that not much can be achieved in the first 100 days; rather that it is key to understand what tone is being set. He says that the tone has changed from one of a ‘daddy state’ built on fear under Bush and Cheney, to one of citizens engaged in grown up debate.
Tomasky further believes that the effort on Health Care will put Obama into the history books. He describes it as the piece of the New Deal puzzle that Roosevelt didn’t complete. The remarkable defection of Arlen Specter from the GOP to the Dems on Tuesday 28 April means that the 60 votes needed to pass the health care plan is in reach – but with the contentious nature of the bill and intensive lobbying from insurance companies and doctors, reform could still fail as it has 6 or 7 times previously. Tomasky therefore pays particular attention to the fact that the reconciliation process might be used to push through health care reform with a simple majority of 51 in the Senate.
David Paul Kuhn at RealClearPolitics.com has looked at Obama by the numbers. Obama’s approval rating at 100 days is in the mid range of the previous 10 presidents. Obama has polled a 63 per cent approval rating, compared to 83 per cent for Kennedy (the highest) and 55 per cent for Clinton (the lowest).
He has the biggest partisan gap (between Reps and Dems) of 60 per cent, but Kuhn points out that is partly because the GOP has become smaller and more right wing. He also tracks the relationship between the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) and Obama’s approval rating as can be seen in the graphic at the top of the page. There is a partial correlation between the two, although Obama did not go down all the way with the drop to the DJIA low, and has not benefited from all of the bullishness since then.
It is not all glowing endorsements, of course. The Republican-leaning writers and analysts complain that the supposed bi-Partisan/ post-Partisan approach is gloss rather than reality. They also complain that Obamanomics will ‘bury future generations of Americans beneath a mountain of debt’.
David Frum writing in the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research wrote that President Obama has ‘placed at the core of his economic policy an approach to energy that can only be described as fantasy’. He has the idea that the cheapest form of energy, coal, would be replaced not by the next cheapest, which are hydro and nuclear, but the most expensive, wind and solar, is ‘delusional at best, deceptive at worst’.
But perhaps the strongest criticism, surprisingly, has come from left-wing economists. The moral and spiritual leader of this thinking is 2008 Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman. He believes that Summers and Geithner have the best intentions, but have been mesmerised by Wall St. and the view that big banks need to be at the center of the recovery.
Krugman has long argued that the big banks are insolvent, and are now Zombie Banks kept alive by government finance. He believes they should have been placed into temporary receivership, and restructured into good and bad banks, much as the US did at the end of the Savings & Loan crisis. He and similar thinkers say the Public-Private partnership privatizes potential gains (by big financial institutions) but nationalizes loses (thanks to the guarantees that the Fed and Treasury put in place), what they call ‘American socialism’.
If their worst fears come true, then trillions more in government money will be needed, and the high approval ratings that President Obama now has will melt away with US economic prospects. Let us all hope that does not come to pass.
Vladimir Gonzales, EconomyWatch.com
.
.
Press reactions to the first 100 Days and Obama's Economic Policies
Washington, 30 April 2009. The changing of the guard from the Republican Presidency of George Bush (remember when he seemed unassailable?) to Democrat and first black President Barak Obama, was epochal. With the Financial Crisis dominating everything else, however, we soon forgot about that and focused on trying to work out just how bad things were and would get.
The first 100 days of a Presidency is both symbolic and indicative in understanding future direction for the United States of America. With the economy being front and center of the agenda, this is a good time to analyze the emerging theories of Obamanomics, and what the press and analysts have to say about the first 100 days of Obama economics.
Fareed Zakaria of Nesweek.com believes that no previous President has faced challenges so big and yet achieved so much. He reminds us that when Obama first started campaigning in 2007 the Dow was at 14,000 and the boom was still going strong, and asks why Obama has been so successful?
Although his calm leadership style, teamwork and organisational tightness and are all credit, Zakaria believes that the key is that Obama has read the moment and mood of the country correctly. The country has become more liberal, with 41 per cent of Americans calling themselves Democrats, 32 per cent independent and only 24 per cent Republican.
Zakaria is particularly impressed with the ‘don’t let a good crisis go to waste’ strategy. Obama’s team have taken their long-term Obamanomic economic policies, centered around health care reform, clean energy and wealth redistribution, and used the Financial Crisis as a reason and momentum to make dramatic shifts in national policy.
Michael Tomasky of the Guardian says that not much can be achieved in the first 100 days; rather that it is key to understand what tone is being set. He says that the tone has changed from one of a ‘daddy state’ built on fear under Bush and Cheney, to one of citizens engaged in grown up debate.
Tomasky further believes that the effort on Health Care will put Obama into the history books. He describes it as the piece of the New Deal puzzle that Roosevelt didn’t complete. The remarkable defection of Arlen Specter from the GOP to the Dems on Tuesday 28 April means that the 60 votes needed to pass the health care plan is in reach – but with the contentious nature of the bill and intensive lobbying from insurance companies and doctors, reform could still fail as it has 6 or 7 times previously. Tomasky therefore pays particular attention to the fact that the reconciliation process might be used to push through health care reform with a simple majority of 51 in the Senate.
David Paul Kuhn at RealClearPolitics.com has looked at Obama by the numbers. Obama’s approval rating at 100 days is in the mid range of the previous 10 presidents. Obama has polled a 63 per cent approval rating, compared to 83 per cent for Kennedy (the highest) and 55 per cent for Clinton (the lowest).
He has the biggest partisan gap (between Reps and Dems) of 60 per cent, but Kuhn points out that is partly because the GOP has become smaller and more right wing. He also tracks the relationship between the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) and Obama’s approval rating as can be seen in the graphic at the top of the page. There is a partial correlation between the two, although Obama did not go down all the way with the drop to the DJIA low, and has not benefited from all of the bullishness since then.
It is not all glowing endorsements, of course. The Republican-leaning writers and analysts complain that the supposed bi-Partisan/ post-Partisan approach is gloss rather than reality. They also complain that Obamanomics will ‘bury future generations of Americans beneath a mountain of debt’.
David Frum writing in the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research wrote that President Obama has ‘placed at the core of his economic policy an approach to energy that can only be described as fantasy’. He has the idea that the cheapest form of energy, coal, would be replaced not by the next cheapest, which are hydro and nuclear, but the most expensive, wind and solar, is ‘delusional at best, deceptive at worst’.
But perhaps the strongest criticism, surprisingly, has come from left-wing economists. The moral and spiritual leader of this thinking is 2008 Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman. He believes that Summers and Geithner have the best intentions, but have been mesmerised by Wall St. and the view that big banks need to be at the center of the recovery.
Krugman has long argued that the big banks are insolvent, and are now Zombie Banks kept alive by government finance. He believes they should have been placed into temporary receivership, and restructured into good and bad banks, much as the US did at the end of the Savings & Loan crisis. He and similar thinkers say the Public-Private partnership privatizes potential gains (by big financial institutions) but nationalizes loses (thanks to the guarantees that the Fed and Treasury put in place), what they call ‘American socialism’.
If their worst fears come true, then trillions more in government money will be needed, and the high approval ratings that President Obama now has will melt away with US economic prospects. Let us all hope that does not come to pass.
Vladimir Gonzales, EconomyWatch.com
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