Don't forget what I wrote on Monday!

Wednesday – August 10, 2011

Don’t forget what I wrote on Monday!

In my FORUM on Monday I wrote - everything is in the rating! New Presidential tracking polls are showing just that.

The Rasmussen Reports Daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 21% of the nation's voters strongly approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Forty-two percent (42%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -21; the lowest it has ever been.

The Rasmussen Consumer Index, which measures the economic confidence of consumers on a daily basis, fell another point on Tuesday to reach another two year low. At 60.4, consumer confidence is down four points since Standard & Poor’s downgraded the federal government’s credit rating. It’s important to note that confidence had fallen to a two-year low the day before the downgrade occurred, so the S&P action has served to reinforce the underlying trend rather than shift perceptions.

Overall, the Rasmussen Consumer Index is down four points from a week ago, down eight points from a month ago and down 2 points from three months ago. Confidence is now just six points above the lowest levels of the post-9/11 era.

Data for these updates is derived from a series of nightly telephone interviews and reported on a three-day rolling average basis. As a result, today’s update is the first based entirely upon interviews collected after the downgrade.

After falling to new lows for three straight days, investor confidence stabilized on Tuesday. The Rasmussen Investor Index regained just one-tenth of a point on Tuesday to 64.8. Investor confidence is down four points from a week ago, down 12 points from a month ago, and down 31 points from three months ago. Investor confidence has not been lower since March 13, 2009.

In Mondays FORUM I wrote: “Today, our debt rating is a double AA, instead of the triple AAA that the president inherited. “

Rush Limbaugh was quoted as saying: “Let me repeat this as the Media tweak of the Day: ‘What we have witnessed since Friday is Obamageddon, Barackalypse Now. And the only silver lining out there is that as far as 2012 goes, Obama's now Debt Man Walking." He also said “Obama is always running around complaining and whining and moaning about all that he inherited from George W. Bush “Well, he inherited a AAA credit rating and an unemployment rate of 5.7 percent.”

But one person who does not buy into the theory that Obama is deliberately undermining the economy is Donald Trump. The billionaire developer said on Monday that “the president is incompetent, not malicious.”Trump also said: “There is a theory that he is doing it on purpose, but I absolutely do not believe that. He’s just ill-equipped to be president,” Trump told New York’s WOR radio. “Tremendous wrong moves are being made.”

I believe that the truth lies somewhere in the middle of what Limbaugh and what Trump have said. It goes to the point of what I wrote yesterday: do we want glory or failure?

In World War II, we had a triple AAA credit rating. During the Korean and Viet Nam wars we had a Triple AAA credit rating. After 9/11 and during the Iraq War, we had a triple AAA credit rating. During the financial crisis of 2008 we had a Triple AAA credit rating. Today, during the Obama administration we have a double AA credit rating. For what purpose did we lose it? I believe it is because of an ideological hatred of American capitalism and a love of class warfare. This has been building for three years during this presidency and it finally broke the proverbial camel’s back last week. The president has finally managed another major accomplishment on that list he told us he had. On that list he said he'd only done about 70 percent of it so far. Obama and his fellow Democrats have finally been able to convince the world that we are now just another country, after all. There's nothing exceptional about us or our economy any longer.

The president’s only plan forward this week is the old one that democrats always use. The president said we must raise taxes on wealthier Americans and make modest adjustments to popular but expensive entitlement programs.

As Obama said on Monday, "Markets will rise and fall, but this is the United States of America. No matter what some agency may say, we have always been and always will be a triple-A country" – after he spoke these words the market registered record setting steep declines, dropping more than expected, you see “everything is in the rating.” Today he has said nothing and the markets seemed to have stabilized after the Fed announced yesterday that interest rates are expected to stay the same thru 2013.

In today’s world the new trade routes are not found by mapping out new compass points as you circumnavigate the world’s seas as Captain Gray did when he sailed the Columbia around the world in 1790 with our flag on its mast. The new compass points are to attract business with incentives while practicing free trade. When I say free trade I am not saying to give our trade away for free.

Through tax incentives and invoking similar trade tariffs on other countries like they impose on us business will relocate back here as a result of the competitive manufacturing environment that would be created here. There have been 2.9 million jobs lost here while 2.4 million jobs have been created overseas as a result of this imbalance.

Only through competitive regulations and competitive labor cost’s can we start to exploit advantages here instead of losing the trade war and the manufacturing war to the countries that now enjoy a triple AAA credit rating. The problem is our country is not making money off our trade. For example if we impose an additional 5% trade tariff on China our trade deficit would go down with them. Those additional funds could be used to pay back the money we have borrowed from them.

As I wrote on Monday, everything is in the rating. Wouldn’t it be great if we could boast that 2.9 million jobs have been created because we got serious about our economic survival? Wouldn’t it be great if we could get our triple AAA rating back in 2013 instead of the 20 years that is now predicted?

Gregory C. Dildilian
Founder and Executive Director
Pinecone Conservatives

A footnote: The only rating we have to fear is the double AA rating we have now because that could turn into an A rating. Isn’t that enough to create new tactics and isn’t that enough for some new legislation that makes it rougher on the other guy, instead of the old way out of just raising taxes on the guys here?