"This was the moment when the rise of the oceans
began to slow and our planet began to heal"
Barack Hussein Obama
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Obama's Rhetoric Is the Real 'Catastrophe' |
Obama has turned
fearmongering into an art form. He has repeatedly raised the
specter of another Great Depression. First, he did so to win votes
in the November election. He has done so again recently to sway
congressional votes for his stimulus package.
In his remarks,
every gloomy statistic on the economy becomes a harbinger of doom.
As he tells it, today's economy is the worst since the Great Depression.
Without his Recovery and Reinvestment Act, he says, the economy will
fall back into that abyss and may never recover.
Obama's
analogies to the Great Depression are not only historically inaccurate,
they're also dangerous. Repeated warnings from the White House
about a coming economic apocalypse aren't likely to raise consumer and
investor expectations for the future. In fact, they have
contributed to the continuing decline in consumer confidence that is
restraining a spending pickup. Beyond that, fearmongering can
trigger a political stampede to embrace a "recovery" package that
delivers a lot less than it promises. A more cool-headed
assessment of the economy's woes might produce better policies. |
©
Copyright Beckwith 2009
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