Obama: Four More Years!

Obama’s Hope ... And Climate Change

Posted 06/12/2012 06:44 PM ET

Election '12: President Obama plans to make climate change his top priority for his second term. No, that's not from The Onion, a humor publication, but the left-leaning New Yorker. What planet does this president live on?

'Obama has an ambitious second-term agenda," wrote Ryan Lizza in this week's New Yorker. "The President has said that the most important policy he could address in his second term is climate change," supposedly to "improve the world."

So forget about the abysmal jobless numbers above 8% for over three years, or the $15 trillion deficit that threatens to turn the U.S. into Greece. No, amid those very real calamities, climate change is more important.

If this isn't a sign of a president out of touch with reality, what is? If climate change is Obama's "most important" policy issue, then neither the Tea-Party-led victories around fiscal discipline — such as the Wisconsin vote, nor the West Virginia primary, here 40% of Democrats chose a jailbird to protest Obama's anti-coal agenda, made a dent on him.

Like a madman doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, it can only mean Obama intends to double-down on his green agenda if re-elected.

Already no president has ever spent money on "climate change" as he has. The Congressional Budget Office reports that since 1998, $99 billion has been spent among 14 agencies on "climate change." Of that, $35 billion was earmarked from the 2009 stimulus.

The top agency charged with enacting the Obama green agenda — the Department of Energy — has seen its budget soar from $24 billion in 2009 to $38 billion in 2012, the Office of Management and Budget estimates.

But the public doesn't share the love.

Poll after poll since 2009 shows the public considers climate change dead last in importance. In 2012, Pew Research Center reported that 86% of the public considered the economy a top priority, and 82% considered jobs in that slot. Global warming ranked dead last at 25% — and that represented a 13% decline from 2007.

The issue failed even among environmentalists, according to a 2011 Gallup poll, who ranked global warming dead last at 51% in a 2011 poll of concerns.

That coincides well with the fact that climate change is rapidly being exposed as junk science — glaciers aren't melting as claimed, but data are being fudged and contradictory findings repressed in multiple incidents.

Has Obama learned nothing? The economy topped the voters' list of concerns in 2009, but Obama bulled ahead with health care reform anyway. Now this.

The one thing that can be concluded from this policy priority is that on the environment, Obama is planning more of the same — and the voters be damned.

Why the U.S. Can't WORK!

Memo To Entrepreneurs: Obama's Just Not That Into You

Posted 06/08/2012 06:21 PM ET

Regulation: Two studies suggest the "head winds" that President Obama says are holding back employers are of his own making. His policies have sidelined a key job creator: the entrepreneur.

Historically, young startup firms have been a major job engine for the economy, particularly as the nation has emerged from recessions. But new federal data show the rate of business startups continues to fall in this recovery.

According to the Census Bureau, the startup rate, measured as a share of all firms, has plunged to 7% from 9% in 2008 and from 11% in 2006. The pace, moreover, is almost half the 1980s' peak of 13%.

Of all the negative trends tracking this administration, this may be the most disturbing.

As startups have hit an all-time low, we've seen an accompanying decline in job creation from startups, which explains the jobless recovery.

The data, which go back to the early '80s, show that the share of new job creation from startups has fallen from over 40% in that decade, when business formation exploded and the economy saw huge gains in payroll employment, to under 30% today.

The difference is incentives: President Reagan slashed taxes and unshackled entrepreneurs from burdensome government rules, while Obama strangles them with new red tape and threats of tax hikes.

Obama cynically invokes the memory of Reagan, but he doesn't get what Reagan got — that small private businesses, not government, create jobs and household wealth.

And they do so through incentives, not browbeating.

Under the low-tax, low-regulation climate created by Reaganomics, the rate of business formations hit an all-time high of 13.02% in 1987 — nearly double today's clip, the Census Bureau found. Entrepreneurs started 544,109 new firms in 1987 compared with 394,632 in 2010 — a drop of 28%.

Almost 50% of companies back then were young — in business five or fewer years — vs. only 35% today.

And in the 1980s, these young entrepreneurial firms accounted for 20% of total private-sector U.S. employment vs. just 12% now. Entrepreneurs created two-fifths of all new jobs during the 1980s recovery compared with under a third during this recovery.

As a result, the Reagan recovery churned out 8 million jobs. In just one month — September 1983 — more jobs were created than in the past six months under Obama.

A separate study, prepared by the OECD, reveals that the U.S. has fallen behind most of its global competitors in promoting entrepreneurship.

Based on a ranking of regulations, it's now easier to start a business in Slovenia, Estonia and Hungary — three former Iron Curtain countries — than in America.

Canada, our liberal northern neighbor, is now head and shoulders above America in entrepreneurial friendliness. It requires the least number of procedures to start a business of any of the OECD nations.

The OECD also measured cultural attitudes toward entrepreneurship and found that far more Chinese think starting their own firm is "a good career option" than Americans. The Chinese also think they have more "opportunity" to start their own companies and have less "fear of failure" than Americans.

What does it say about America under Obama when people living under communism are more jazzed about opening a business?

Black entrepreneurs are especially sour on their prospects under Obama.

"When Obama became president, we were all happy about the symbolism—America's first black president," said National Black Chamber of Commerce President Harry Alford. "We didn't really care about his position or views on anything. We just wanted a black president no matter what."

But "we should have been more careful," he added, "as his views on small business are counter to ours."

Complained Alford, as quoted in the new best-seller "The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House": "His view of business is that it should be a few major corporations which are totally unionized and working with the government, which should also be massive and reaching every level of American society."

In short, Obama has little use for entrepreneurs.

The OECD urged member nations to "promote entrepreneurship to exit the crisis," since "startups are an important source of job creation." It singled out pre-socialist France for doing an especially good job.

With new health care mandates and the heaviest bank regulations since the 1930s, the U.S. is going the wrong way. One author of the census study, published last month with the Kauffman Foundation, told us regulations are a factor in the recent drop in startups.

It's plain from federal data that startups are critical to job creation. And their alarming dearth under Obama helps explain why this recovery is so anemic.

If the president really wants to get America working again, he'd stop blaming state budget cuts and congressional Republicans and adopt Reagan's pro-entrepreneurial policies.

Unfortunately, he's a rigid leftist ideologue who'd rather stand in the way of new business formation and jobs.

Obama Decimates U.S. Energy and Economic Policies!

No Surprises There: Obama's USDA Punts On Yet Another Domestic Energy Project

By Erika Johnsen

11/18/2011

If 'investing' Americans' tax dollars for them into new green energy projects, and then watching these 'companies of the future' tank and distort all kinds of market signals along with them, is really all that constitutes the backbone of the Obama administration's energy policy, we've got problems. It seems that his administration is unilaterally opposed to expanding any source of domestic energy that involves any sort of drilling, despite the many jobs these projects would actually create and how well they would fit into our existing infrastructure.


The White House needs to stop acting like a venture capitalist and quit blocking Americans' efforts to supply their own energy. It is painfully ineffectual.

The opposing uproar to all-things-drilling usually comes from the weak, trumped-up, politicized arguments of environmentalists. 


The White House's recent Keystone XL non-decision, to basically delay a final answer on the project in order to address ostensible environmental concerns until after the 2012 election, was made to avoid rousing the greenies' ire.


How, exactly, did environmentalists get so much political clout? The Obama administration might think it's a good strategy to give in to their whims now, but if this keeps up, come election time, I think all of the jobless Americans will have a much more resounding voice.

President Obama's United States Department of Agriculture has delayed shale gas drilling in Ohio for up to six months by cancelling a mineral lease auction for Wayne National Forest (WNF). The move was taken in deference to environmentalists, on the pretext of studying the effects of hydraulic fracturing.

“Conditions have changed since the 2006 Forest Plan was developed," announced WNF Supervisor Anne Carey on Tuesday. "The technology used in the Utica Marcellus Shale formations need to be studied to see if potential effects to the surface are significantly different than those identified in the Forest Plan." The study will take up to six months to complete. The WNF study reportedly "will focus solely on how it could affect forest land," despite the significance of hydraulic fracturing to united proponents of the delay, "and not how it could affect groundwater." ...

The Ohio Oil and Gas Energy Education Program (OOGEEP) recently estimated that drilling in the Utica shale, which is affected by the suspension of the mineral lease auctions, would produce up 204,500 jobs by 2015.
"The President’s plan is to simply say ‘no’ to new energy production," House Natural Resources Committee chairman Doc Hastings, R-Wash, said to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar during a hearing pertaining to hydraulic fracturing. "It’s a plan that is sending American jobs overseas, forfeiting new revenue, and denying access to American energy that would lessen our dependence on hostile Middle Eastern oil."
Salazar denied that suggestion, noting the sales of mineral leases over the last two years, but he also affirmed environmentalist concerns. "The increasing use of hydraulic fracturing has raised a number of concerns about the potential impacts on water quality and availability, particularly with respect to the chemical composition of fracturing fluids and the methods used."

Erika Johnsen

Erika Johnsen is the Associate Editor for Townhall.com and Townhall Magazine. Follow her on Twitter @erikajohnsen.

2011 Looks A Bit GRIM!

Wake-Up Call: Top 11 Trends of 2011

After the tumultuous years of the Great Recession, a battered people may wish that 2011 will bring a return to kinder, gentler times.  But that is not what we are predicting.  Instead, the fruits of government and institutional action – and inaction – on many fronts will ripen in unplanned-for fashions.  Trends we have previously identified, and that have been brewing for some time, will reach maturity in 2011, impacting just about everyone in the world.

1.  Wake-Up Call  The reputation of Gerald Celente and The Trends Research Institute is based on its willingness to “tell it like it is.”  Neither optimists nor pessimists, no matter whose interests it challenges, no matter whose feathers get ruffled, we are beholden to nothing but the facts … and follow them where they take us.  Though unafraid to call a spade a spade, we do so with as much respect as is appropriate to the matter.

Thus, prevailing conditions and future trends require us to call it the way we see it, and with all due respect, this is what we see: the proverbial “s#%t has hit the fan.”  The chickens have come home to roost, the genie is out of the bottle, and yes, the jig is up.

In 2011, the people of all nations will fully recognize how grave economic conditions have become, how ineffectual and self-serving the so-called solutions have been, and how dire the consequences will be.  Only little kids, ideologues, the uniformed, and the out-of-their-minds will still believe what they are being told by politicians, pundits and experts who have higher-ups to answer to, agendas to fill, and something to sell.

Having become convinced of the inability of leaders and know-it-all arbiters of everything to fulfill their promises, the people will do more than just question authority – they will defy authority.  The seeds of revolution will be sown in the streets of failing nations, on the Internet, and at the polling places.

2.  Crack-Up 2011  Among our Top Trends for last year was the “Crash of 2010.”  What happened?  The stock market didn’t crash.  We know.  We made it clear in our Autumn Trends Journal that we were not forecasting a stock market crash – the equity markets were no longer a legitimate indicator of recovery or the real state of the economy.  We pointed out that the action in the Dow was “merely a reflection of the cheaply borrowed dollars that were being used to gamble.”
 
What we did regard as reliable indicators included the employment numbers, the real estate market, currency pressures, and sovereign debt problems – all of which have bordered between crisis and disaster.  We informed readers, “The Trends Research Institute cannot predict what undreamed-of-schemes Central Banks will dream up this time….”  And dream and scheme they did.  TARP and the Obama stimulus were only the financial props that the government made public.  Just recently has it been revealed that secret backdoor bailouts amounting to over $20 trillion were funneled from the Federal Reserve, by way of “emergency lending programs,” to banks both foreign and domestic, hedge funds, select financial institutions, and favored corporations.

It was no different on the other side of the pond.  The basic treaties agreed upon to establish the European Monetary Union were breached in order to bail out bankrupt banks and float nations sinking in sovereign debt.
In 2011, with the arsenal of schemes depleted, we predict that teetering economies will collapse, currency wars will ensue, trade barriers will be erected, economic unions will splinter, and the onset of the “Greatest Depression” will be recognized by everyone … even if they refuse to acknowledge it.

3.  Screw the People  As times get even tougher and people get even poorer, the “authorities” will intensify their efforts to extract the funds needed to meet fiscal obligations.  The first round of “austerity measures” imposed by European governments provides the first taste of what to expect from recession-plagued nations.  As the Great Recession extends its global reach, those high-flying emerging markets, which “experts” claim are immune, will also be submerged beneath loads of crushing debt and will also resort to austerity measures of their own.
 
While there will be variations on the theme, the governments’ song will be the same: cut what you give, raise what you take.  Social safety nets will be torn and public services will be cut to the bone.  Getting a lot less will cost taxpayers a lot more.  While corporate tax rates are held sacrosanct and tax breaks and loopholes for the wealthy are maintained or widened, the arm of the revenuers and the arm of the law will reach ever deeper into the pockets of prols.  The dulled minds of bureaucrats, whose own jobs depend on a steady stream of public funds, will shine with creativity as they look for any angle to wring the last penny from working men and women.

Sales taxes, sin taxes, highway tolls, meter fees, park permits, license fees, water rates, and the fines for every minor violation – from nuisance laws to speeding tickets and jaywalking to litterbugging – will go as high as the traffic can bear … before it goes even higher.
 
4.  Crime Waves  No job + no money + compounding debt = high stress, strained relations, short fuses.  In 2011, with the fuse lit, it will be prime time for Crime Time.  With little hope, few options, closed doors, and deep despair, Americans who had never thought of themselves as criminals will be driven to do what they have to in order to survive.

As Gerald Celente says, “When people lose everything and they have nothing left to lose, they lose it.”  Besides, from top to bottom, crime has become institutionalized.  In governments worldwide and from Broad Street to Wall Street, throughout corporate culture, and even at the bottom of the pile – among the welfare cheats and disability frauds – taking a stab at crime was already “as American as apple pie.”

Aside from the “filthy rich,” hardship-driven crimes will be committed across the socioeconomic spectrum by legions of the on-the-edge desperate who will do whatever they must to keep a roof over their heads and put food on the table.
 
5.  Crackdown on Liberty  As crime rates rise, so will the voices demanding a crackdown.  Not only will fighting crime be a major plank in campaign platforms, it will provide yet another weapon in the crackdown on liberty.  Under the rubric of Homeland Security and with the avowed purpose of fighting a “War on Terror,” Americans have already been stripped of critical Constitutional Rights.  Now, with a new front opening up, a national crusade to “Get Tough on Crime” will be waged against the citizenry.  And just as in the “War on Terror,” where “suspected terrorists” are killed before proven guilty or jailed without trial, in the “War on Crime” everyone is a suspect until proven innocent.

Beyond the warrantless wire taps, computer intrusions, GPS monitoring, stop-and-frisk searches, full-body scanning, TSA groping, and CCTVs or Google Street View watching every move – even the skies will know no limit to surveillance.  Added to the satellite images taken from space, military-style aerial vehicles (UAVs) will soon bring the Afghanistan experience to American neighborhoods, starting with the Miami PD’s purchase of unmanned drones to hover over homes, follow suspects, and track enemies of the state.

6.  Alternative Energy  As gasoline prices speed past $3 a gallon and endless arguments about global warming wear on, the world is expecting the “usual suspects” of solar panels, wind and water turbines, geothermal, and biomass to provide tomorrow’s green, renewable power.  But our real energy future lies on the far side of these interim technologies.

In laboratories and workshops unnoticed by mainstream analysts, scientific visionaries and entrepreneurs are forging a new physics incorporating principles once thought impossible, working to create devices that liberate more energy than they consume.  Inventions that manipulate the hydrogen atom, spark low-temperature, radiation-free nuclear reactions, and capture useful power from the energy fields that surround us, are poised for commercialization.

What are they, and how long will it be before they can be brought to market?  Shrewd investors will ignore the “can’t be done” skepticism, and examine the new trend opportunities to determine the winners and reap the rewards.

And rewards there will be.  For those who are ahead of the times and on top of the trends of 2011 – developing, preparing, and planning for what lies ahead – there will be ample opportunities to be seized.  Fortunes, names, and careers will be made by tapping into the newly emerging energy trends that will come of age in 2011.
  
7.  Journalism 2.0  Though the trend has been in the making since the dawn of the Internet Revolution, 2011 will mark the year that new methods of news and information distribution will render the 20^th century model obsolete.  With universal access to publishing and broadcast technology, web news is able to escape the stultifying and elitist agendas of the mainstream media.  With its unparalleled reach across borders and language barriers, “Journalism 2.0” has the potential to influence and educate citizens in a way that governments and corporate media moguls would never permit.  Of the hundreds of trends we have forecast over three decades, few have the possibility of such far-reaching effects.
  
8.  Cyberwars  Just a decade ago, when the digital age was blooming and hackers were looked upon as annoying geeks, we forecast that the intrinsic fragility of the Internet and the vulnerability of the data it carried made it ripe for cyber-crime and cyber-warfare to flourish.  In 2000, even while downplaying the severity of the risk, governments and e-commerce titans boasted that they could provide ample defenses.

In 2010, every major government acknowledged that Cyberwar was a clear and present danger and, in fact, had already begun.  Stuxnet, WikiLeaks and a host of “Anonymous” battles have disrupted infrastructures, compromised government secrets, planted malware (secret digital agents) deep in the most crucial government, military and control centers, and closed down e-commerce at will.
  
The demonstrable effects of Cyberwar and its companion, Cybercrime, are already significant.  Equally disruptive will be the harsh measures taken by global governments –  in the name of Internet Security and fighting the “War on Terror” – to control free access to the web, identify its users, and literally shut down computers that it considers a threat to national security … however they define it.

9.  Youth of the World Unite  University degrees in hand yet out of work, in debt and with no prospects on the horizon, feeling betrayed and angry, forced to live back at home, with time on their hands and testosterone surging through their bodies –  young adults and 20-somethings are mad as hell, and they’re not going to take it anymore.
  
Educated enough to understand that they will ultimately have to shoulder the debt burden acquired by their governments, as well as suffer from austerity measures, they are also savvy enough to know that if they don’t fight “against the machine” now, they will be run over by it for the rest of their lives.  Filled with vigor, rife with passion, but not mature enough to control their impulses, the confrontations they engage in will often escalate disproportionately.
  
Anyone wondering about what happened to the protest spirit of earlier decades, will discover that all it takes to get youth back into the streets is a developed sense of the personal price that is being exacted from them.  
Government efforts to exert control and return the youth to quiet complacency will be ham-fisted and ineffectual.  Each small success and perceived incidence of government “caving” will lead to intensified protest.  The Revolution will be televised … and blogged, YouTubed and Twittered.

10.  End of The World!  Get ready for Armageddon. The closer we get to 2012, the louder the calls will be that the “End is Near!”
 
Of course there have always been sects, at any time in history, that saw signs and portents proving the end of the world was imminent.  But 2012 seems to hold a special meaning across a wide segment of “End-time” believers.
  
Among the Armageddonites, the actual end of the world and annihilation of the planet in 2012 is a matter of certainty.  Some point to scripture, be it Revelations or Luke, as the source for their prophesies.  Others say it was written in stone over a thousand years ago, in the detailed and sophisticated Mayan/Hopi calendar.  These believers pinpoint the coming of the “end” to occur on 21 December 2012.

Even the rational and informed who carefully follow the news of never-ending global crises, may sometimes feel the world is in a perilous state.  Both streams of thought are leading many to reevaluate their chances for personal survival, be it in heaven or on earth.

For the non-religious/non-prophesy prone, who fear economic, social and military chaos, “Survivalism” – and all that it entails – is a trend that will dominate in the year to come.
 
For the others, repenting, converting, doing penance and praying will take up much of the energy that could otherwise be directed toward securing their safety in the here and now.

11.  The Mystery Trend ... will be revealed the second week of January. 

Rest assured if there are any major developments or events that transpire between now and when the Trends Journal comes out, you will be notified via a Trend Alert.

Best wishes for a joyous holiday season and a healthy and prosperous new year.

Gerald Celente


CC: MMX The Trends Research Institute

Obama's Green Jobs Do Harm - Not Good!

Obama’s Green Jobs Plan Will Do More Harm Than Good

• Posted January 8th, 2010 at 4.14pm in Energy and Environment.

On the campaign trail Barack Obama promised if he were elected president, he wouldcreate 5 million “green collar” jobs. Today President Obama announced $2.3 billion in tax credits for a clean energy economy will ostensibly create 17,000 jobs. “Building a robust clean energy sector is how we will create the jobs of the future,” he said in a speech this afternoon.

Make no mistake; this government-run plan will kill more jobs than it aims to create.

There are a number of serious problems with the goal to create green jobs, and Europe’s unfavorable results with renewable energy should raise red flags in the United States. And cap and trade, which is sold by President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, among others as the ultimate jobs bill, is in reality the ultimate jobs destroyer.

Less Bang for your Buck: Sure, the government can create jobs. They can use our taxpayer dollars to hire workers to dig holes and fill them back up. But if there’s no net gain in productivity and wealth, the job is a waste. For instance, we could replace all of the world’s mechanized agriculture equipment with hoe wielding farmers, and that would create jobs. But it would also significantly reduce productivity and efficiency. The economic reasoning for switching from more efficient machinery to less efficient human capital is such a baseless plan any politician suggesting it would be laughed out of office.

Yet that is the exact premise of the green jobs boondoggle. The government wants to mandate and subsidize labor intensive, inefficient, and expensive power sources. But the problem is that if it takes more labor and capital to produce renewable energy, there is a net cost to the economy. Proponents of wind and solar argue this is a good thing. Apparently they forgot the there’s-no-free-lunch-lesson you learn in Economics 101. Government spending will create some jobs to build windmills and solar panels and work at biomass plants but this diverts labor, capital and materials from the private sector that could be used more efficiently to create even more jobs. In effect, government subsidized green jobs destroy jobs elsewhere.

Cap and trade, while not part of the green stimulus, is being marketed as such. Because of higher energy prices, some jobs will be destroyed completely while others will move overseas where carbon capping isn’t in their country’s agenda and therefore the cost of production is cheaper. The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis found that, for the average year over the 2012-2035 timeline, job losses will be 1.1 million greater than without a cap and trade bill. By 2035, there is a projected 2.5 million fewer jobs.

Green Stimulus Already Failing: Thus far, the effort to create or save jobs with a green initiative hasn’t been very successful. In Baltimore, for instance, stimulus dollars have been spent to patch roads, install newer furnaces and painting rooftops white to conserve energy. According to the Washington Post’s Alec MacGillis, none of these projects, as well as others, have created a single job. Another example is in the state of Indiana, where companieshave “weatherized 82 homes out of its three-year goal of 25,000, and reported zero new jobs from the spending.”

Learning from Europe’s Mistakes: A research institute located in Germany recently released a study on the economic impacts of that country’s green energy initiative. Commissioned by the Institute for Energy Research (IER), the report finds with per worker subsidies for solar industry jobs are as high as $240,000.

Spain is a country President Obama says the U.S. should replicate when it comes to energy policy, saying, “they’re making real investments in renewable energy.” But real investments aren’t necessarily good investments. Another IER-commissioned study coming out of King Juan Carlos University in Madrid by Gabriel Calzada found that, for every green job created, 2.2 jobs in other sectors have been destroyed. Furthermore, Spain’s government spent$758,471 to create each green job and used $36 billion in taxpayer money to invest in wind, solar, and mini-hydro from 2000-2008. The country’s unemployment rate is currently at 19.4%.

The economically rational way to create jobs and expand green energy is to allow them to compete freely in the market, end dependence on the government, and eliminate regulatory barriers to entry. Like all energy sources, green energy should be able to live or die on its own two feet.

In time and with the proper policies in place, renewable energy might be inexpensive and efficient. If the private sector can create wealth by hiring green laborers for renewable energy projects (absent federal handouts), it will do so. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s “Project No Project” lists all the renewable energy plans not moving forward and the groups that are opposing them. The NIMBY, regulatory litigation problems make it difficult, not just for renewable sources, but all sources of energy stifle real job creation and economic growth. To fix this Congress and the administration should:

1.) Peel back regulations. Reduce the unnecessary regulatory red tape that holds up renewable energy ventures and makes them prohibitively more expensive and deters investment. Establishing regulatory certainty would allow businesses to plan financing for the future rather than to be hit unexpectedly with unforeseen costs.
2.) End energy subsidies. Subsidies create complacency within the industry and direct money that could be used more efficiently elsewhere. The private sector investment in energy research is actually larger than many might think. True breakthroughs in energy technology take time but the private sector has been generating marginal improvements in efficiency for decades.
3.) Limit Litigation. Creating a manageable timeframe for groups or individuals contesting energy plans would avert potentially cost-effective ventures from being tied up for years in lawsuits.

We’ve heard the green jobs rhetoric before and we’ll likely hear it again, but that doesn’t make it a good idea. It’s a profoundly wasteful use of taxpayer’s money and will do much more to hurt the economic recovery than to help it.