How Low?

Bloomberg.com

Eugene Volokh has posted a poll asking people: "How Low Do You Think the Dow Will Fall?" The only answer, of course, is nobody knows. What makes the current market decline so scary is the unrelenting steadiness (as opposed to "gyrations," as our president describes it), suggesting no one outside the D. C. establishment has even a scintilla of hope for the near future. Can you blame them?

With each passing day the present administration in Washington, with its cohorts in Congress, increasingly appears to be comprised of hapless bumbling amateurs, utterly clueless to the laws of economics (and foreign policy, too, but that's another rant), who, as our economy continues to collapse, repeatedly trot out the same mindless rhetoric and programs the liberal-left has been flogging for decades: more taxes, more spending, more debt; this despite daily evidence to the contrary they are hardly the answers to our economic woes. I can only see two possible explanations for this behavior:

1) Our president, his cabinet, Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Reid have their heads so far up their ideological asses they are blind to what's happening around them. That might explain, for example, the inane assertion from Treasury Secretary Geithner he will only jack up taxes when the economy is "safely into recovery." Or

2) Our president, his cabinet, Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Reid are fully aware of what is happening around them and secretly cheer it on; believing after our economy is totally wrecked socialist Utopia will emerge from the ruins.

An aside: just yesterday in Washington the nation was treated to the entertaining spectacle of the aforementioned Secretary of the Treasury Mr. Geithner, a tax cheat, pledging to the House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Mr. Rangell, also a tax cheat, he would vigorously pursue "a series of legislative and enforcement measures to reduce . . . tax evasion and avoidance." I wonder how much longer the American people will give a pass to these lowlifes, for their arrogance and the contempt they have for their employers.