Let’s recap the madness of the last couple weeks, shall we?
First on the list and not very often spoken of, per Pakistani approval the Obama administration is continuing missile strikes against camps in Pakistan run by Baitullah Mehsud. This covert CIA warfare is bound to explode into something larger and I would not be surprised if the 17,000 troops that Obama is adding to Afghanistan end up in Pakistan in a land war.
From the New York Times:
Under standard policy for covert operations, the C.I.A. strikes inside Pakistan have not been publicly acknowledged either by the Obama administration or the Bush administration. Using Predators and the more heavily armed Reaper drones, the C.I.A. has carried out more than 30 strikes since last September, according to American and Pakistani officials.
The war drums continue to beat to attack Iran, either through sanctions or militarily. Press secretary Robert Gibbs came out in a statement on Friday, warning that Iran now has enough uranium to make a nuclear weapon and that the international community must come together to stop Iran from enriching uranium. What isn’t stated is that under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, signed by the USA and Iran, Iran is allowed to build nuclear power plants and enrich uranium for that purpose. None of the UN inspections have found that Iran has enriched uranium beyond what is needed for reactor use – it simply is not weapon grade material. However, Obama is beating the same tired drum that Bush did, in claiming otherwise in order to garner support for action against Iran. It doesn’t help the situation any, that Israel is drooling over the prospect of invading Iran and has threatened to go ahead and do so, even if the US doesn’t aid in the initial attack.
On the home front, Obama managed to slide his economic stimulus package, all 1,100 pages of it, through congress and added $787 billion dollars to our debt. Congress passed the measure without reading the bill, as usual, so the only ones who really know what is in the damned thing are the people who wrote it. Stock prices plummeted in response to the bill’s passing and gold is now up to $1,000 an ounce. To give some perspective on this, if you were to get a million dollars a day until this money was spent, you wouldn’t get the last payment until the year 4165.
GM and Chrysler are claiming they will go bankrupt if they don’t get another $14 billion in bailout money. Even with the windfall GM already grabbed, they’re laying off a third of their work force. GM’s stock is at the lowest level in 70 years. Now even auto part suppliers are screaming for $18.5 billion in bailout money.
Even though the banks have received at least $1.4 trillion in bailout cash now, they’re still failing left and right. Citi bank, Wells Fargo and others look to be on the brink. The Federal Reserve in the meantime has add an undisclosed amount of new money out of thin air into the economy, estimated to be about $3 trillion. Miraculously, the dollar didn’t weaken at first, and the price of commodity items fell in turn, so the value of the dollar held and even grew a bit for a couple of weeks. That won’t hold, however. Commodity prices are starting to rise again and the value of the dollar isn’t following suit. On top of this all, home foreclosures are up 400% since last year.
Economic forecaster, Peter Schiff, who predicted the current housing crisis, had this to say about Obama’s TARP stimulus package:
“This week President Obama claimed that failure to pass his economic stimulus bill will have catastrophic consequences for the US economy. The reality is the catastrophe will be far greater with his plan then (sic) without it. If the trends of January and early February of 2009 continue, the rug will be completely pulled out from beneath the U.S. economy, and the full cost of the President’s ‘economic depressant package’ will be apparent to all. If foreign capital does not continue to pour into Treasuries, interest rates and consumer prices in the U.S. will soar. At that point, we will finally be confronted with the real crises that I have long predicted. When the day of reckoning arrives our policy response will be critical. If we continue on the course our new President has mapped out, the catastrophe will far exceed the scope of any he hoped to avoid.”
Just to put the icing on the cake, Greenspan came out in a statement that our current economic crisis will be “the longest and deepest” since the 1930′s and that even more TARP stimulus packages need to be created to keep the economy from tipping over the edge.
Now, if you think things are bad here, it’s worse in Europe. Even so, several prominent individuals have come out in statements, worrying about riots and general civil unrest right here in the USA.
Of course, civil unrest scares the crap out of the government, so you know what the response is: more gun control laws. The current attempt is HR-45, the Blair Holt’s Firearm Licensing and Record of Sale Act of 2009. If passed, it would require a firearm license to own a gun, registration of all guns and whole slew of provisions which make the Brady crowd salivate with delight.
There is one bit of good news in all this. Paul Allen, billionaire co-founder of Microsoft is going to make millions of more dollars off of Obama’s stimulus plan. It’s nice to know that the people in need are getting the help they deserve.
