- KINGSTON, NY, 27 February
2009 -- The wealth of plain, hard facts upon which The Trends Research
Institute's forecasts are based belie the lofty promises made by President
Obama's first address to Congress.
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- "We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United
States of America will emerge stronger than before," said President
Obama.
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- Said Celente, "The government has yet to fix the
levees in New Orleans. There is still a hole in the ground where the World
Trade Center once stood. Washington has started two wars it can't win
and doesn't know how to finish. The massive bank, brokerage, auto and
insurance company bailouts have done nothing to resuscitate the sinking
economy. The Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) that candidate Obama
championed has not "relieved." President Obama's $787 billion
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will not lead to recovery and the
nation will not 'emerge stronger than before,'" Celente continued.
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- Distinguished Men and Women
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- With only a succession of past Executive and Congressional
failures to point to, and with the same people responsible for those failures
still holding high office, the belief that this time around it will be
miraculously different is nothing less than willful delusion.
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- "Tuesday's episode of The Presidential Reality
Show was a prime time exercise in human debasement and self-humiliation,"
said Celente. Some low lights: Congressman Eliot Engel (D-NY) arrived
at 8:30 a.m. to secure a prized spot on the House floor for a chance to
shake the President's hand on his way to the stage. "It's a special
treat for me to do it this year," Engel said, adding, "It's the
office, it's the aura ... but it's also the man."
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- Hillary Clinton, America's new superstar Secretary of
State, regally acknowledged the dutiful cheers of lesser political lights
as she strolled down the House's aisle.
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- Shiny Cabinet members and august Supreme Court justices
were announced in stentorian tones by a pair of Sergeants-at-Arms with
all the exaggerated pomp of a Groucho Marx send-up of British royalty.
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- And, to punctuate the performance, there was the geriatric
pom-pom girl, Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, repeatedly jumping from
her seat, leading her pack of Democratic trained seals in whoops of applause
at every repetition of the magic juju words: "Jobs!" "Prosperity!"
"Confidence!"
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- Across the aisle, Republicans smirked, mugged and scowled
darkly, in their new roles as minority villains. Few GOP hands clapped.
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- That the public as well as the press should take this
three-ring spectacle seriously is as depressing an indication of the state
of the nation as the empty rhetoric of the speech itself.
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- Meanwhile, back on the planet, in the midst of a global
economic crisis, the public continues to pin its hopes on a President,
Senators and Congressmen willingly participating in such obviously orchestrated
buffoonery. How is this even possible? How is such behavior tolerated?
Why would anyone look up to these people?
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- In one sense it is understandable: President Obama's
big show was just another typical political performance. From the excesses
of Democratic and Republican nominating conventions, to photo ops of candidates
sitting on bales of hay pretending they're just plain folks, to staging
whistle stops from vintage trains dragged out of storage especially for
the occasion, to contrived Town Hall meetings, to the slick and vicious
marketing campaigns ... the public has come to accept such antics as "normal."
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- These political rituals, carefully staged, time-tested
and proven, create an illusion of superiority. President Obama made the
distinction clear in Tuesday's speech: "I have come here tonight
not only to address the distinguished men and women of this great chamber,
but to speak frankly and directly to the men and women who sent us here."
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- "Distinguished?" Distinguished for what?
Having the skills to do whatever they have to do -- no matter how ruthless
or degrading -- to win elections? Yet, the honorific is accepted without
question while the implicit patronization of the citizenry slips by unperceived.
They are "distinguished" and the rest are merely the "men
and women who sent them there."
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- Con Game
- This is a confidence game. The elaborate staging is designed
to inspire the nation's people with "confidence" that their distinguished
leaders have the skills to save them from an economic disaster that both
political parties were instrumental in creating.
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- Just days earlier, former President Bill Clinton urged
the new President to play the confidence game. "I just want the American
people to know that he's confident that we are gonna get out of this and
he feels good about the long run," and that President Obama "...
is hopeful and completely convinced we're gonna come through this,"
Clinton said on national TV.
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- "Completely convinced" or not, in his speech,
the newly elected President pitched "confidence," repeating the
word seven times. It worked. Post speech polls, the pundits and the press
gave the President high marks for his performance. And President Obama,
the most distinguished among all those "distinguished men and women
of this great chamber," established his credentials as America's Confidence-Man-in-Chief.
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- Trendpost: What is a Confidence Man and what makes
us say President Obama is conning the public? A con man succeeds by gaining
the confidence of the victim. In this case the victim is the taxpayer
who is being shaken down for trillions to bail out "too big to fail"
businesses. The con lies in Obama's assurance "... while the cost
of action will be great, I can assure you that the cost of inaction will
be far greater."
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- The trillions already spent on bailouts and buyouts make
it clear "the cost of action will be great." It is already great,
and it has failed miserably. Why should anyone believe that pouring still
more trillions into the same bottomless pit will now, somehow, prove effective?
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- And why should anyone believe Obama's assurance that
the "cost of inaction will be far greater"? He doesn't know
that. Why believe the assurance of the man who failed to recognize the
country was in recession until eight months after the recession began?
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- We forecast the recession well before it happened. We
are forecasting the "Greatest Depression." And having analyzed
Mr. Obama's speech, promises and plans, we can forecast, with assurance
of our own, that the cost of action will prove far greater than the cost
of inaction.
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- While the public, both at home and abroad, express high
hopes and great optimism, the global financial markets remain unassured
by the assurances and continue to reach new lows.
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- Trendpost: President Obama's $3.6 trillion budget
and the additional trillions earmarked for stimulus packages and further
bailouts may provide temporary relief, but will ultimately destroy the
value of the US dollar. The global financial system is in collapse. And
neither stimulus nor spending packages will reverse it. We remain bullish
on gold and stand by our prediction of gold at $2000 per ounce. (See Trends
in the News® "Gold $2000," 7 November 2007.)
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