Obamanomics, In A Nutshell

aka "The Viciousest of Cycles"....

The Panic of 2008 (aka The Democrat Financial Logic Bomb) destroys the housing market and takes the financial sector down with it.  The only way to resuccitate the housing market?  Reverse the ultimate effect of the DFLB.

Let Mort Zuckerman lay it on you:

This is a disturbing development for those who believe that housing is going to lead America to an economic recovery, as it did during the Great Depression and then through every recession since. Each time, residential construction preceded the recovery in the largereconomy. This time, in the Great Recession, a lead weight on recovery has been the disappearance of some $6 trillion of home equity value, a loss that has had a devastating effect on consumer confidence, retirement savings, and current spending. Every further 1 percent decline in home prices today lowers household wealth by approximately $170 billion. For each dollar lost in housing wealth, the estimate is that consumption is lowered by 5 cents or 5 percent. Add to this the fact that we are building a million-plus fewer homes on an annual basis from the peak years of the housing boom. With five people or more working on each home, we have permanently lost over 5 million jobs in residential construction.

That is why housing was such an important generator of normal economic recoveries. To give this context, residential construction was 6.3 percent of GDP at its recent peak in 2005 and 2006. It has fallen to the level of 2.4 percent this year. This is significant if you recognize that a 3 percent top-to-bottom decline in real GDP constitutes a serious recession.

Government programs to stimulate housing sales have not helped. There have been eight of them. One, which expired most recently (in the spring), was an $8,000 tax credit for housing contracts. All of these have done little more than distort the pattern of housing demand and actually pulled forward hundreds of thousands of units at the expense of future growth....

The sad fact is that housing problems never left the recession of the last several years and it doesn’t look as if they are going to leave anytime soon. The ultimate solution remains the same as the solution to the country’s broader economic crisis. That is, getting millions of people back to productive work.

Hogzilla and its trillions in crushing debt have had the precise opposite effect, whatever the Regime's propaganda fantasies.  The only policies that can deliver on Mr. Zuckerman's prescription are better known by the term "Reaganomics": across the board individual AND corporate tax rate cuts and across the board DEregulation of the private sector, PLUS the liberation of those portions of the private sector that languish in public sector captivity (think divestiture of GM and Chrysler and the repeal of ObamaCare).  And given that even with all of the above materializing tomorrow, it'd still take years to dig ourselves out of Red Barry's hole, there's no time to waste.

Which makes the punchline for today's economic journey as telegraphed as a Paris Hilton TV special:

Liberal lawmakers in both chambers had pressed their leaders to schedule a vote on legislation that would make permanent the tax cuts for families earning below $250,000 but allow the rates for families above that threshold to rise. Families in the top brackets would see their income tax rates rise from 33% and 35% to 36% and 39.6%, respectively.

Centrists and Democrats facing tough reelections, however, balked at voting for any tax increases. Republicans have argued for an extension of all of the current tax rates, which became law during the Bush Administration.

End result?  ALL the Bush tax cuts will expire, which means EVERYBODY's tax rates will go up next year (aka the FOURTH year of the Great Recession, aka the FIRST year of Red Barry's Great Depression Reloaded), courtesy of Barack Obama and the Democrat Party.

And then The One will have six dozen or so fewer Donk minions to manipulate, Republican majorit(ies) to scapegoat....and another crisis to exploit.

Perhaps he knows what he's doing after all, hm?