Posted by
Bill Crawford on Thursday, June 26, 2008 12:46:51 PM
One of the first acts of the Clinton administration in 1993 was to formulate a deficit reduction bill. The goal was to accumulate an advertised total of half a trillion dollars.
In the midst of one of their lively Cabinet sessions, the discussions of adjustments in the capital gains tax came up. Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen gave an impromptu lecture on how their plans would end up putting the market in such turmoil that the federal revenue stream would be crimped beyond repair. Clinton's reponse was "You mean I have to cater to a bunch of fu**ing Bond Traders?" Bentsen nodded affirmatively and that part of the discussion was over. Clinton understood that the private economy was the pump that primed his political life, and he moved on. This instinct was what allowed him to campaign for NAFTA over the virulent objections of many in his administration.
Obama shows no such proclivity to date. I realized that when he sat through a debate tete-a-tete with ABC's Charles Gibson. Charlie threw an Econ 101 lecture on Obama, noting how the feds managed to conjure up more cap gains revenue when the rate dropped to 15%, so raising it would do what? Obama responded with a pogrom on how the fund managers of the world were making money by the barrel, and he was looking for something more "fair" (to be determined by Obama-natch).
Now Obama proposes starting up Social Security taxes on every dollar after $250,000 per year. He isn't clear exactly how this would apply- if it is dumped on small business owners, does it apply to both the employer and employee share? He is clear that his $250K is not individual, but household income. This would effectively amount to a top tier income tax rate not seen since Reagan dumped the 71% top rate in 1981.
Why can I live with this? Obama is so out there with this stuff that he is like the Ebola virus- a creature that is so effective at killing it's host that they have no time to mingle in the population and spread the virus. Barrack's ideas are so far out there sometimes that I have trouble fathoming even a Democrat Congress passing it.
It was said of Bill Clinton that he rarely made sustained mistakes, meaning he was a fast learner. I think that doesn't directly apply here. Obama's learning curve on the campaign trail has been impressive. But he is much more of an ideologue than Clinton ever was. Clinton advertised himself as a "third way" in his first campaign, and that instinct morphed into Dick Moriis' "triangulation" four years later.
The truly dangerous thing about a relativist like Obama is his unpredictability. Investors will find a way to live with a Marxist in the White House, adjusting their money to respond to whatever the new economy is- as long as they can predict it. Even Clinton developed a predictable pattern of operation by 1994. This is why the Oval Office is not a train as you go place.