If you caught The Daily Show a few nights back, you saw economist Peter Schiff make the same case we've been making since the election (only in a funnier and more coherent sort of way).
"The President said if you're about to go over a cliff, it's wise to change direction," Schiff told host Jon Stewart. "Not only is he not changing direction, he's stepping on the gas to reach the cliff that much faster."
Stewart played clips of Schiff's various television appearances over the past two years, where Schiff warned of the unprecedented bear market to come. Ben Stein, the CNBC hosts and others dismissively chuckled at Schiff's predications, with Stein telling Schiff he was "flat out wrong."
I'm a broken record, and I don't care. If what the Bush Administration did was so wrong, how does increasing their actions exponentially (as the Obama administration is doing) suddenly make it right? I have yet to hear a convincing rebuttal to this glaringly obvious contradiction. The same friends that go red-faced with rage at the mere mention of Bush and his domestic policies now dismiss Obama's hypocrisy as "that's how it's done in Washington," as if that somehow makes it better. The latest flim/flam, flip/flop has to do with the so-called "pay as you go" government accounting method, which The Wall Street Journal notes the President flipped, then flopped, then flipped and has now flopped again. Simply put, pay-go means for every government dollar spent, another government dollar in another area must be saved. Of course, the President is now (once again) for it. What isn't said is that Obama want's it to apply only to new government programs. So after the largest spending spree in American history (and I include World War II in this figure), Obama is now preaching fiscal discipline. Only one thing to say; gimme a break.
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