The Worst State of the Union Address in Modern Times

Calling last night's state of the union address the worst in modern times, Jim Crum just sent me this link to Politics Daily, which offers a useful analysis of the spectacle:

"What made the speech a bit bizarre, and somewhat alarming, is how detached from reality the president is. After having spent much of his time blaming his predecessor for his own failures, he said he was "not interested in re-litigating the past." Barack Obama lamented waging a "perpetual campaign" – even though that is what the president, David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel, Robert Gibbs and others in his employ do on a daily basis. He said, "Washington may think that saying anything about the other side, no matter how false, is just part of the game" – yet his White House has played that very game with zest and delight."

Ann Coulter Is a Right-On Woman

Don't worry, I'm not drawing any analogies to Sappho. Rather, I am referring to Coulter's outstanding post on World Net Daily yesterday about the Democrats' cozy relationship with Wall Street. Obama's recent pretense of criticizing Wall Street amounts to crocodile tears. Some sources put the dollar value of the Bush-Obama welfare subsidies to the Street at $14 trillion, an order of magnitude greater than any other corrupt subsidy in the history of the world.

Coulter quotes a book that I am putting on my to-be-read list: Peter Schweizer's "Architects of Ruin". Coulter notes that the Dems bailed out Wall Street with respect to Mexico's debt defaults:

"Clinton's treasury secretary, Robert Rubin, former chairman of Goldman, demanded that the U.S. bail out Mexico to save his friends at Goldman. He said a failure to bail out Mexico would affect 'everyone,' by which I take it he meant 'everyone in my building.'"

On the other hand:

"At congressional hearings on Clinton's proposed Mexico bailout a decade later, Republicans Larry Kudlow, Bill Seidman and Steve Forbes all denounced the plan to save Goldman Sachs via a Mexican bailout."

But let us not get overly partisan. Recall that it was George W. Bush who proposed last year's and 2008's massive bailout, the biggest in history. And it was Richard M. Nixon who was responsible more than anyone else for the inflationary late 1970s.

But Coulter is showing considerably more anti-Fed spunk than I've seen from any mainstream commentator since my days with Andrew Jackson's Democratic Party (just kidding, my students think I'm that old).

Let us hope that Fox News, which applauded the bailout in 2008 when it mattered, will take a fresh look at its policies on money and the Fed.

Four Degrees of Separation: More on Wall Street and Obama

World Net Daily reports that an advertisement on Craig's List offers to pay anti "tea bagger" activists $24,000 per year to work for a group called Grassroots Campaigns. It would be interesting to learn who funds Grassroots Campaigns.

The real grassroots campaign is the Tea Party. The people who work for the Tea Party don't receive salaries from George Soros or similar kinds of Wall Street-linked sources. Calling a group "grassroots" and then offering salaries from unspecified sources is something of a contradiction. I would like to know where the money funding grassroots campaign comes from, and how many transactions separate it from the Fed. I would guess no more than four.

The WND article states:

>"Help-wanted ads are appearing on Craigslist that offer to pay citizens $24,000 a year, plus health insurance, to "counter the hysteria and lies of Glenn Beck and other talking heads" and "stop the tea-baggers!"

"The ads are being posted by Grassroots Campaigns, a canvassing group that has performed services for the Democratic National Committee and MoveOn.org. Its postings can be found among Craiglist listings in Chicago, Ill.; San Francisco, Calif.; Boston, Mass.; Philadelphia, Penn. and Austin, Texas."

More on Reappointment of Bernanke

I received the e-mail below from the Campaign for Liberty. As I previously blogged, although I have been concerned about the Fed for many years (blogging on this issue as long as six years ago) I am not convinced that the Democrats are able to produce a responsible chairman. I may be wrong. It is true that it was Carter (not Reagan, as many people mistakenly think) who appointed Paul Volcker. The shift to conservative monetarist Fed policy was under Carter, not Reagan. I remember very this clearly. I was an MBA student at UCLA then and I had somehow gotten an informal position at the UCLA Business Forecasting Project. I think I was the TA of one of the economics professors. Larry Kimball ran the project and a guy named David Shulman who later became the chief equity strategist at Salomon Brothers from 1992 to 1997 and is now director of the UCLA forecasting project was an advisor. I recall very clearly Shulman's exclaiming that the St. Louis Fed was breaking out champaigne because of the shift in monetary policy in 1979, which was my first semester there.

My point is that the Democrats can potentially come up with a decent Fed chairman but given the current crop of maniacs in the Senate (witness the recent health care bill) I remain dubious. I sent this note to John Tate:

>Dear John--I'm with you in spirit, but I'm not convinced that the Dems will come up with a better chairman. I can imagine Harry Reid's pick for Fed chairman will not be Paul Volcker. Do you have any evidence on this? I'll be glad to blog it.


>January 25, 2010


Dear Mitchell,

After a full year of rope-a-done and refusing to have his Federal Reserve audited, Ben Bernanke is on the ropes and could be knocked out for re-nomination.

Campaign for Liberty activists are in the lead insisting "No Audit, No Bernanke." Please immediately call Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and Senator Chuck Schumer at the numbers below and tell them (again, if you've already called) "No Audit, No Bernanke."

Here's what's going on:

Campaign for Liberty launced a nationwide fight against a bailout for Bernanke last week. Now we are following it up with phones, email and banner ads targeting over a dozen swing-vote senators.

The Senate is boiling over with outrage about the Fed's abuse of the TARP program, bailouts, and money supply, as well as its refusal to submit to a full and complete audit.

Now is the time to deal the knockout blow!

Please call your senators at the numbers below and join in the fight:

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: 202-224-4451
Senator Chuck Schumer: 202-224-6542

Tell them that Ben Bernanke must not be confirmed without an up or down roll call vote for Audit the Fed on the Senate floor.

This fight is really coming to a head, and the decision could will likely come in the next few days. Please call now.

In liberty,

John Tate

P.S. Thanks to the efforts of patriots like you, Ben Bernanke's days of secrecy at the Federal Reserve may be numbered!

That's because his confirmation is being held up until the Senate votes on Audit the Fed. Please call your senators at the numbers above and tell them plain and simple: "No Audit, No Bernanke."