Tomorrow starts a week that, to the extent that news on the economy allows, will be virtually dominated by the federal budget. Monday is the fiscal summit at the White House. Tuesday night is the president's address to Congress durng which he'll reveal the big themes and major proposals in the budget. The budget itself will be released on Thursday.
By Sunday, the summit, speech, and budget will likely be the main topic on all on the talk shows. Although I haven't yet been able to confirm this, my guess is that the Obama administration will probably try to have its director of the Office of Management and Budget appear on one or more of these shows just to show that, unlike the Bush White House, it is happy to talk about the budget.
The Washington Post, Politico, and New York Times published articles this morning on what to expect from the Obama budget. Looks like there's going to be lots to talk about this week.
Big Spending Budget
Accounting gimmicks will halve the budget while spending will double in it. Ah well, that is the norm now, so best get used to it.
PS: Great Blog you have here!
Andy
Accounting gimmicks and shifts
like moving major spending (Iraq) off budget -- these were the tricks used by the previous administration.
Obama is putting an end to that, and he has to, because the whole world now knows that the emperor has no clothes.
You don't resolve a crisis of confidence by continuing to lie to people. They've wised up to the scam that has been run on them, and they won't take any more of it. This administration has only one choice -- come clean to right the ship, or the crisis of confidence only deepens.
They simply can't lie anymore, and to be honest I think Obama ran on a platform of changing that modus operandi . . . this is the change people wanted . . . because more lying would cause more economic destruction. It's time to root out the corruption and bring the crooks to justice (Madoff, Stanford, etc, etc), and that's what they are doing.
Even the Republicans know this, at some level, even if they don't want to admit that "free market" -- their unregulated captialism brought the country to it's knees.
Americans are watching carefully, and they won't tolerate the same old shell games from Wall Street this time.
Next up: restoring the uptick rule. Ben Bernanke commented on it yesterday, saying that the current crisis wouldn't be as deep if the previous administration hadn't ditched the uptick rule. I went 100% to cash before this whole fiasco, in part because of the damage I saw after repeal of uptick in 2007. It was so obvious to anyone who follows the markets that you'd had to have been completely blind and profoundly deaf not to get it. Christopher Cox should be prosecuted . . . he was either colluding with the criminals or was grossly incompetent. What a mess. I'll not get back into markets until this administration fixes what the previous one broke . . . and I'm not alone in this sentiment.