Josh's blog

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The good news was for President Obama is that he was elected President on September 15, 2008. He’s the only person in the history of the country ever to be elected President before the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.

The bad news is he was elected President on September 15, 2008 in the teeth of the worst recession since the Great Depression, a financial collapse of enormous proportion.

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“ Our government institutions are so dominated by financial elites that the very idea that the former would hold the latter accountable under the law is ludicrous. Indeed, it is impossible—as impossible as, say, an employee firing his boss, a tenant evicting a building owner, or inmates punishing the warden. America’s financial elites have not only stockpiled vast amounts of material wealth but have acquired control over all the government and legal institutions that might stand in the way of their corruption and stealing. ”

“ I had said to be my the commerce minister, and I’ll never forget it, when I was sitting reviewing with him some agenda items for upcoming trade talks. He turned to me at the end of the meeting and he said, remind your people in America that they should not lose their confidence because when they lose their confidence the whole world suffers. And I thought, this is a surreal moment. I’m sitting here being lectured to by a senior economic official in China about America losing their sense of confidence and it all kind of hit home at that point that the dynamics are changing to the extent where you have a senior Chinese official try to lecture the US ambassador on our relative level of confidence and what it means to the world. That — and I think that’s probably reflective of the sentiment of so many — they know America’s a great country, they send their kids here to school, they’ve admired—they admire our ability to assimilate people from all over the world, integrate them into our economy and make it work. I think that is one aspect of American life and society that everyone envies in the world. Second, they envy our innovative spirit, they can’t quite crack the code on innovation. They try, Singaporeans try, they haven’t been able to do it. And when we’ve always had a marketplace—the best in the world—in which we’ve been able to translate those innovations for purposes of job creation and economic success. And that’s where they see that we’re eroding a little bit and they have a chance to pick up the pace. ”

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I’m not smarter than other people. I didn’t invent anything, or build anything, or create lots of good jobs for people to make good lives for themselves in America. I was just lucky enough to be there early, to get my hands around the chokepoint and hold on tight.

There are people who are really hurting across the country. And to say no one knew, or no one’s responsible, or we were all in this game together so buyer beware, is not right. The people who helped create the game., and I’m one of them, should say they’re sorry and start making amends.

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“ Right now, Americans are offered a choice between Democrats who offer a permanently and excessively large federal government as a response to the economic crisis – and a Republican mainstream tragically coalescing upon policies that would make the crisis more cruel and more intractable. ”