Oh the humanity of a $2 billion trading loss suffered by J.P. Morgan shareholders! President Obama and his press secretary Jay Carney were self-righteously indigant yesterday. Apparently because this bank wasted a lot of money on a bad investment. Ironically, the president is afraid the taxpayers “might” be on the hook if Morgan keeps doing stupid things with shareholder money. Fair enough. We will get back to that part of the discussion in a paragraph or two.
One investment arena that was not the target of Obama’s criticism yesterday, when the president was ripping on J.P. Morgan, was the dumb bets his administration has made on eight different solar companies. For the record, Solyndra is not the only company that received fast track approval by the federal government to receive taxpayer guarantees. The U.S. Department of Interior also got involved in fast tracking the lease of federal lands in no-bid processes to: Abengoa Solar, BrightSource Energy, First Solar, Nevada Geothermal Power, NextEra Energy Resources, Ormat Nevada, and SolarReserve. Naturally there was no Keystone XL pipeline-like slowdown or turn down on any of these dubious investments by the Obama administration. Oh and yes, and these companies also received loan guarantees worth billions from the Department of Energy under its renewable energy loan program. They also received renewable energy grants from the Treasury Department.
Of course, Solyndra has already filed for bankruptcy. And it seems that First Solar, teetering on the edge of collapse, was caught selling solar panels to itself to circumvent rules related to its government grants and loans earlier this year.It is time to get real. The idea that President Obama is suddenly upset because J.P. Morgan’s stockholders got the news that the bank made some bad decisions is laughable. The president needs to clear the hypocritical plank from his own investment eye and should stop throwing away billions of taxpayer dollars. The idea that he is instead contemplating the possibility of a bailout of J.P. Morgan tells us all we need to know about what a second term might look like.
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As usual, the president embraces a double standard when it comes to exercising one's right to make STUPID investment mistakes free of public criticism. J.P. Morgan? Naturally, these kinds of blunders are worth of political demagoguery. The president's blunders? The rich need to pay MORE of their fair share to cover the costs of his expensive ON THE JOB TRAINING in Capitalism 101. Finally, It's about time the political polls have begun to reflect how informed voter's are reacting to the anointed one's preposterously failed economic policies and amateur investment savvy. I couldn't help but laugh when at a graduation ceremony the president was beckoning listeners to ignore the media reporting of how bad the economy has become. It reminds me of a scene from the "Wizard Of Oz" when the wizard is screaming into the microphone, "...pay no attention to that man behind the curtain..." The president may very well be a "nice man" but he's an awfully bad president. Absent a change in the White House, Americans will be doomed to spend another four years asking themselves HOW they could have been duped a second time by this very incompetent wizard.
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