HAGERSTOWN, Maryland — They don’t teach economics at Harvard
Law School. That’s the only explanation I’ve been able to offer for
President Obama’s consistently wrongheaded policies for the past
three years. Of course, we’ve never seen any of Obama’s
transcripts, so we can only speculate what courses he took at
Occidental College, Columbia University or Harvard Law. Being
therefore compelled to judge his familiarity with economics based
entirely on his record and public rhetoric, we are reminded of
Ronald Reagan’s famous quip: “The trouble with our liberal friends
is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that
isn’t so.”
Whether the result of ignorance or misinformation, Obama’s
economic incompetence has made him a laughingstock. Yesterday, the
Senate rejected his budget by a 99-0 vote. The joke might be
funnier, were it not for the 23 million Americans who can’t find a
job. The pathetic blunder that is Obamanomics — record deficits,
an inflationary monetary policy and an alleged “recovery” that has
scarcely dented persistently high unemployment — undermines our
international prestige. If the United States can’t get its fiscal
house in order, what claim can the president make to world economic
leadership?
America’s weakness in the Obama era will be on display Friday as
leaders from seven nations arrive at Camp David for the G-8 Summit:
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minster David
Cameron, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Japanese Prime
Minister Yoshihido Noda, Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti and
France’s newly-elected president, Francois Hollande. Russian
President Vladimir Putin won’t attend the summit, sending Prime
Minister Dmitri Medvedev in his stead. Putin’s absence is widely
viewed as a
deliberate snub, evidence of worsening U.S.-Russian
relations.
The economic crisis that threatens to engulf Europe will be the
prime topic of discussion at the G-8, but there isn’t much the
United States can do to help. Instead, Obama is expected to urge
Merkel to support a policy of “growth,” which is liberal-speak for
the sort of Keynesian deficit-spending measures that the U.S. has
pursued under Obama’s administration. Merkel’s Germany is the most
solvent economic power in the European Union. If the euro is to be
saved, German bankers will be crucial to the deal. As opposed to
Obama’s Keynesian “growth,” Germany has steadily demanded a policy
of “austerity,” which is to say fiscal responsibility through the
reduction of government spending.
Europe’s crisis has been caused by out-of-control government
debt in the so-called PIIGS — Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and
Spain — whose feeble economies threaten to take down the entire
European financial system. Patient Zero in the fiscal epidemic is
Greece, which has been bleeding currency at the rate of
$5 billion a month since 2009. Terms of a bailout loan backed
by the European Union, the European Central Bank and the
International Monetary Fund imposed stiff austerity requirements on
the Greek government, provoking angry and occasionally violent
demonstrations by Greeks accustomed to living at government
expense. Last week’s elections in Greece saw gains by a
radical-left coalition whose demagogic leader, Alexis Tsipras, has
called
austerity a “disease” for which he blames Merkel. Another round
of Greek elections is scheduled for next month, and the possibility
that it will bring Tsipras to power has frightened those already
worried about Greece. Depositors reportedly
withdrew $890 million from Greek banks Monday, raising concerns
of a possible all-out panic.
Even if Greece’s woes don’t trigger a complete collapse, the
ongoing European crisis continues to undermine prospects for a
genuine recovery in the United States. With the presidential
election less than six months away, the troubling economic picture
is bad news for Obama’s re-election prospects, as
James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute
explained Wednesday.
This year’s G-8 had originally been scheduled for Chicago, but
was moved to the more secluded Camp David — a move for which
leaders of the “Occupy” protest movement claimed credit. Yet if
U.S. officials thought they could escape the rowdy Occupiers
altogether, they reckoned wrong. While the Camp David compound
itself is carefully guarded,
Occupy protesters have announced plans to descend on the nearby
town of Thurmont, population 6,098. The police chief in this tiny
burg in Maryland’s rustic Catoctin Mountains has expressed
confidence that local, state and federal law enforcement will be
able to cope with the Occupy demonstrations at the G-8. “We’ve got
our plans together and we’re ready to deal with it,” Chief Greg
Eyler
told Baltimore’s WBAL-TV. Occupy movement leaders insist that
their protest plans are entirely peaceful. “We’re not looking to
come in and cause trouble,” one Occupier
told the Baltimore Sun.
Having witnessed an Occupy mob in raging frenzy last year
(“The
Mob Who Came to Dinner,” Nov. 7), I have no more confidence in
such pacific promises from the protesters than I do in Obama’s
economic competence. Much like the president, the Occupiers don’t
want to let a crisis go to waste.
