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From governors not taking unemployment extension money, to bankers balking at bailout funds, to Rush and his minions publicly hoping for failure.
While the burst housing bubble, the collapsed derivatives market, the skyrocketing defaults on credit obligations and the resulting unemployment are very real, the way forward is most challenged by a crisis in confidence. The greed-fed causes of this calamity, from deregulation to the blatant exploitation of the public, was at its core a confidence game. The bubble was grown not by rational market growth, but by irrational and unregulated greed--which was only made possible by the atmosphere of over confidence created and fostered by the easy credit and hyper consumerism that took hold in the 80s.
Unfortunately, the recovery is dependent on the return to a rational level of consumer and business confidence. Getting to that place is easier said than done, what with 4.4 million more unemployed in the last year, record foreclosure rates, and devastated 401-k and other retirement plans. The republicans know it is an uphill fight and, in order to keep some level of political relevance many of them are taking every action they can to impede progress.
The "hard" RW, of Limbaugh, Coulter, and their CPAC worshipers are blatantly pushing for failure. The governors are a little more subtle in coming up with rational-sounding reasons to eschew the unemployment extension funds. The bankers, who received a wholly unregulated and un-accounted for $350 billion in TARP funds in the waning days of Bush, are now reporting profitability--true or not they don't want to take additional money if someone is going to be looking over their shoulder knowing what they are doing with it.
But it is consumer confidence that will ultimately determine the speed at which America recovers. The administration knows this. The republicans know this. That is why Bill Clinton (who should not have done it publicly) was right to advise the President to be more positive in his public statements.
If the GOP can "Keep-America-Scared" on the economic front--a strategy that worked wonders for them politically after 9/11 on non-economic issues--they have a chance to convince enough moderates of Obama's and the democrats' failure to avoid a total collapse in the next two election cycles. If there is significant recovery, the GOPers will very likely find themselves in the kind of multi-generational wilderness they endured for nearly a half century following the Great Depression.
They already are trying to tank the economy, working hard to undermine public confidence, and taking actions to impede the progress of any administration economic policy--because it is all they have left.
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