Nero Fiddled While Rome Burned

This Politico article was originally published in 2013, but it is relevant to what is going on today.

Originally published in 2013 as  Who really fixed the financial crisis?

Politico article:   https://www.politico.com/story/2013/09/who-really-fixed-the-financial-crisis-096794#:~

By KEITH HENNESSEY and EDWARD LAZEAR 09/13/2013 07:24 PM EDT; updated 09/16/2013 10:43 AM EDT

Quote:  It is fairly easy to demonstrate that the actions taken in the fall of 2008 mitigated damage and prevented a devastating systemic financial collapse. It is much harder to show that the actions taken in 2009 and later have strengthened a recovery that is slower than any since the Great Depression. Obama did inherit a shrinking economy severely weakened by a severe financial shock, and it takes time to recover from such a shock. But this fails to explain the unusually slow growth rate after his policies took effect. Neither the slow growth since then nor the ongoing weakness today can be attributed to a shock now five years in the past. – article dated 2013

Does anyone besides me remember those shutdowns of federal sites, to “save money”, which included blocking off portions of a federal highway so that people couldn’t see Mt. Rushmore during that administration? Those were just a few of the dumber moves by that administration.  There was more to it than that ridiculous order: people were blocked from going to their own homes because the roads they took to get home were federal property. Planned visits to open-air monuments were blocked.

Under Obama, the economy recovered with zero input from the then Administration, and no, the markets did NOT reach record levels. A 10-year chart of the DJIA shows that it slowly recovered but did not reach new highs until Trump took office. And despite the current recession, it is holding steady.  Unemployment during the Obama administration reached 10.2 million, whereas now, the level is 1.8 million in July 2020. Distinct difference there.

It does not mean that people who’ve lost their jobs are not feeling the economic pinch right now.

So let’s put this next to Obama’s self-aggrandizing statements about the economy, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the shutdowns mandated by state governments (NOT the federal government), and ask ourselves, just how smarmy is Obama, in the final analysis? Well, it doesn’t really matter right now, because more important issues have to be addressed, especially since this economic recession was created by a Chinese virus that got loose in “the wild” and hit us and the rest of the world.

The economic consequences of what can only be termed forced unemployment are getting worse.

The shutdowns for Covid-19 in the USA have been mandated by the states, NOT the federal government. The shelter-in-place and stay-at-home directions are not laws,  nor are the masks we’re all wearing so as to not catch someone else’s bugs. Trump correctly left all of that up to state and local governments.

If you will recall, New York has the worst record of all in this matter and New York City is nearly a ghost town. After those episodes of looting and pillaging in Chicago, people interviewed by reporters on the street, down in the Loop, have said that they are giving serious thought to moving away from Chi-town. And despite the New Zealand government’s complete shut-off of all activities, which allowed that island country to reach a -0- level rate of infections, New Zealand now has a rising infection rate. South Korea was doing quite well, but have now relayed that they have 300 new CV-19 confirmed patients. The infections will come in more than once, so be prepared for it.

If you’re wondering who is holding up the next stimulus relief package, it’s Nancy “the Hammer” Pelosi, who is stubbornly refusing to listen to the 153 members of the House of Representatives who have collectively demanded that she pass the bill. She won’t budge. Referencing the Politico article that I started with, the boondoggle lies in her lap, just as the same boondoggle for recovery during the Obama administration lies in Obama’s lap.  He sat on his bony ass and did nothing, but the USA recovered without him. He was and still is a dilettante, a slacker who looks good in a suit.

Nancy’s doing the same thing: doing nothing, because it pleases her to do so. She isn’t in the right this time, and her base of support seems to be shifting away from her.

If 153 members of the House can’t convince her to pass the stimulus bill – well, you can draw your own conclusions from this, but she can be dismissed as Speaker of the House and replaced. Perhaps it’s time for that.

Oh, what does Xi JinPing have to do with this? Well, this morning’s newspaper has an article about Jimmy Lai, the founder of Apple Daily, being arrested on August 10 under the new national security law which was imposed on Hong Kong by Xi JinPing’s government in Beijing. And while all these overgrown children with online access repeatedly inform the rest of us for their intense dislike of Pres. Trump, and throw online tantrums when people don’t agree with them, they do not seem to understand that Lai’s incarceration can happen here.

 

Oh, yeah – the title? Well, Nero played the lyre harp and sang while the slums of Rome were burned so that he could build his Golden Palace, which was found a few years ago.

Category: "The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves", "Your Tax Dollars At Work"