What Obama's tire treatment teaches us about his administration

Bush: steel: 2002. Are we angry just because its Obama? Lets keep some perspective, here. Yes its stupid. But its stupid all the time, with every President. Please, lets not be too surprised when a Democrat is trying to maintain his base. Last I checked, Republicans pander to their voters, too. Its how Republican congressmen in Nebraska and Iowa can propose and vote for agricultural and ethanol subsidies.

This weekend I was in an REI store (not by choice) and while waiting for an out of town relative to select a pair of hiking boots, I happened to notice that all of the products on offer were made in China.  ALL of them.  At last, I found a flashlight made in the good ol' USA, albeit with a caveat attached:  "Some" of the parts "might" be imported.

I'd like to see much larger country of origin labeling mandated.  I, for one, am going to look a lot closer at the labels of the few things I am buying these days.  No more goods from China!

I am glad the President slapped a tariff on tires from China.  And, if there are American companies making the tires in China, as I heard on radio yesterday, then they should suffer for not producing the tires here.

...The President is applying a little pressure to our chinese creditors, in pursuit of a larger economic goal? Like, I dunno, getting them to open up their domestic markets a bit? I know, it sounds wacky, but theres a chance that the "Bend over and take it so we can keep buying three dollar t-shirts at WalMart" strategy (the "internationalist " position, pardon the pun) isn't in our long-term interests. When I say "our", I of course mean actual human Americans with economic concerns beyond capital-gains tax rates.

  As for the "...real contempt for China...", umm, yeah; I totally have that.

You make me laugh Mr. Dayton!!! Your understanding of economics and finance is truly stunning! (Please remind us that you are a mortgage guy—wow)

First, let’s review; this whole financial mess can be boiled down to the simple fact that many years of excessive leverage and speculation in housing, financial, and banking created phony wealth in the economy (not to mention the world) and really caused the financial meltdown.  Very similar to the lead up of the 1929 crash and depression, just using different financial instruments. From the perversion of the Black–Scholes financial modeling equations to the use of derivatives for everything under the sun to the leveraging up of bank balance sheets and the use of 100s of billions of dollars of off balance sheet holdings for banks, nothing was off limits when it came to gaming the system. And the most egregious of these excesses were done under the Bush Administrations preview and the SEC (Mr. Cox should be in jail for his dereliction of duty). 

Now fast forward to March of 2009, the Stock market bottomed and has had one of the best six month periods in history up about 40% from the bottom.  The economic cycle typically starts with a stock market recovery prior to the economic recovery and usually last in the cycle is employment recovery. This could be a very long and slow recovery due to the fact that so much deleveraging is taking place. So those of you who are crying about the unemployment rate do not understand the normal economic cycle process (Mr. Dayton.)

Finally, few people really know how close we came last fall to a complete financial failure when commercial paper and short term financing froze up. Had we not flooded the system with money and given huge lines of credit to banks and financial institutions we were days away from having a financial run on our banking system. And instead of having a 10% unemployment rate like we have now we would have a 40% or 50% unemployment and most likely civil unrest.  And a lot of those losers that are participating in the “Tea Bagging movement” would be in soup lines and unemployment lines.      

Well the President has given a time to prove himself. And he is still in the process let's give him a chance.

I love how Obama said that he was in favor of free trade- which is something all candidates say, but none have thus far practiced.  In essence, they have only practiced trade favoritism.  Reagan through to Bush (Jr.)  gave TITANIC favors to their buddies (more like bosses) in the finance industry, and Obama right now is trying to favor the auto industry (unions), which as we all are well aware, are located mostly in the Midwest. 

As a tangential aside which is entirely (en-TIRE-ly...ha! Unintentional, but I'll run with it anyway, even if it isn't a WHEEL good pun.)  unrelated, and completely a coincidence.  We went into Vietnam essentially at the behest of the French, the reason why was because we were saving their plantation system, which was mostly in rubber plantations.  One of the largest plantations there belonged to a family named Michelin - yes, THAT Michelin.  So, in essence, our government started one of the costliest and stupidest wars in the history of mankind to keep rubber from that part of the world flowing, and now our government is trying to keep it away. 

This is obviously a move away from free trade, and towards protectionism and most DEFINITELY to placate the United Auto Workers.  I do see a point to unions - labor, after all, is a commodity and they have a right to form a concern in order to set a fair price for the product or service they render, and let us be entirely honest that, left to their own devices at times, corporations CAN be abusive.  That said, the UAW has done as much harm as good, but at least have been cooperative with the companies that employs their workers so that the company can stay afloat, but that is something any and all unions should do, if they continue to exist. 

Obama isn't now, and never really was committed to free trade.  Part of what makes for free trade is a lack of government intrusion that does anyhthing other than enforce contracts or other legal violations.  In other words, the definition of free trade is that no party is given advantage by legal status over any other party - that's the defining characteristic of freedom.  And just because he's giving unions favors doesn't mean that this clown is working for the same people as Bush Jr. - he's surrounded by a vicious cabal of the same Wall Street dunce types that did nobody any good with the last guy. 

"Meet the New Boss, Same As The Old Boss."