McCain Clueless On the Economy

With a swirl of devastating financial and economic news all around him, John McSenile is demonstrating that he's utterly clueless on the dire straits of the U. S. economy. As brokerage house/investment banking firms go under and AIG teeters on the brink he makes stupid statements that everything is fundamentally sound. As the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports, pension funds and retirement plans are likewise being devastated. Here are some highlights:

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The Dow Jones industrial average lost more than 500 points, more than 4 percent, its steepest point drop since the day the stock market reopened after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. About $700 billion evaporated from retirement plans, government pension funds and other investment portfolios. . . . We are in the middle of a deep, dark recession, and it won't end soon. Here it is, and it is pretty nasty," said Barry Ritholtz, who writes the popular financial blog The Big Picture and is chief executive officer of research firm FusionIQ. And the fallout was far from over. American International Group, the world's largest insurer, was fighting for its very survival.

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Someone, please tell me what planet Mr. McCain is inhabiting. It's obvious that he's totally out of touch with the reality of what's happening. Worse yet, his ridiculour running mate is even more clueless and a pathological liar by all appearances. The New York Times has a timely editorial on McCain's cluelessness. I can only ponder how anyone with intelligence can be supporting McCain/Palin. I expect that things will get much worse before they get better. I hope that I am wrong, but suspect I won't be. Here are some editorial highlights:

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John McCain spent Monday claiming as he had countless times before — that the economy was fundamentally sound. Had he missed the collapse of Lehman Brothers or the sale of Merrill Lynch, which were announced the day before? Did he not notice the agonies of the American Insurance Group? Was he unaware of the impending layoffs of tens of thousands of Wall Street employees on top of the growing numbers of unemployed workers throughout the United States?

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On Tuesday, he clarified his remarks. The clarification was far more worrisome than his initial comments. He said that by calling the economy fundamentally sound, what he really meant was that American workers are the best in the world. In the best Karl Rovian fashion, he implied that if you dispute his statement about the economy’s firm foundation, you are, in effect, insulting American workers.

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[T]he economy is stressed to the breaking point by fundamental problems — in housing, finance, credit, employment, health care and the federal budget — that have been at best neglected, at worst exacerbated during the Bush years. And as a result, American workers have taken a beating. In clarifying his comments, Mr. McCain lavished praise on workers, but ignored their problems. That is the real insult.

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For decades, typical Americans have not been rewarded for their increasing productivity with comparably higher pay or better benefits. The disconnect between work and reward has been especially acute during the Bush years, as workers’ incomes fell while corporate profits, which flow to investors and company executives, ballooned. For workers, that is a fundamental flaw in today’s economy. It is grounded in policies like a chronically inadequate minimum wage and an increasingly unprogressive tax system, for which Mr. McCain offers no alternatives.

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The regulatory failure is rooted in a markets-are-good-government-is-bad ideology that has been ascendant as long as Mr. McCain has been in Washington and championed by his own party. If Mr. McCain adheres to some other belief system, we would like to hear about it.