Emperor Obama Fiddles While the U.S. Economy Burns

Ominous signs.

Yesterday, long-time Obama supporter, and richest man in the world, Warren Buffet trashed the Obama administration’s handling of the economy thus far. The complete transcript is available from the Everything Warren Buffett Blog, but here are some of the highlights:

JOE: I want to–you just said something interesting, Mr. Buffett, and that is it depends on the wisdom of our policies. And I understand, you know, in a time of war everyone rallying behind the commander and chief. But, obviously, there are differences on what the wisdom of our polices should be from here on out. Now, the “loyal opposition” is going to be about, as it’s called, will be behind the president, but certainly you could see that if we–if people think there’s some wrong-minded policies that are being rushed into law at this point because of the crisis, I mean, that’s–it’s the loyal opposition’s duty to say what they feel, right?

BUFFETT: Right. And, Joe, it–if you’re in a war, and we really are on an economic war, there’s a obligation to the majority to behave in ways that don’t go around inflaming the minority. If on December 8th when–maybe it’s December 7th, when Roosevelt convened Congress to have a vote on the war, he didn’t say, `I’m throwing in about 10 of my pet projects,’ and you didn’t have congress people putting on 8,000 earmarks onto the declaration of war in 1941.

BUFFETT: So I think–I think that the minority has–they really do have an obligation to support things that in general are clearly designed to fight the war in a big way. And I don’t think you should–I don’t think before D-Day on June–on June 5th you ought to have–or June 1st, maybe, have a congressional hearing and have 535 people give their opinion about where the troops should land and, you know, what the weather should be and how many troops should land and all of that. And I think after June 6th you don’t–you don’t have another hearing that says, `Gee, if we’d just landed a mile north.’

JOE: Yeah, but you might–might not have fixed…

BUFFETT: But I say…

JOE: You might not–you might not have fixed global warming the day after–the day after D-Day, Warren.

BUFFETT: Absolutely. And I think that the–I think that the Republicans have an obligation to regard this as an economic war and to realize you need one leader and, in general, support of that. But I think that the–I think that the Democrats–and I voted for Obama and I strongly support him, and I think he’s the right guy–but I think they should not use this–when they’re calling for unity on a question this important, they should not use it to roll the Republicans all.

JOE: Hm.

BUFFETT: I think–I think a lot of things should be–job one is to win the war, job–the economic war, job two is to win the economic war, and job three. And you can’t expect people to unite behind you if you’re trying to jam a whole bunch of things down their throat. So I would–I would absolutely say for the–for the interim, till we get this one solved, I would not be pushing a lot of things that are–you know are contentious, and I also–I also would do no finger-pointing whatsoever. I would–you know, I would not say, you know, `George’–`the previous administration got us into this.’ Forget it. I mean, you know, the Navy made a mistake at Pearl Harbor and had too many ships there. But the idea that we’d spend our time after that, you know, pointing fingers at the Navy, we needed the Navy. So I would–I would–I would–no finger-pointing, no vengeance, none of that stuff. Just look forward.

Today, hotair.com reports that thus far the White House has only filled 1 of the 18 senior positions at the Treasury Department—namely, Tim “Turbo Tax” Geithner. The other 17 positions do not even have a nominee yet. Apparently, finding Democrats who have paid their taxes is harder than you might think. Moreover, these vacancies are not a hypothetical concern. The Brits report that they cannot even get anyone in the Obama administration to return their calls about the upcoming G20 economic summit.

Of course, while all this is going on the President focuses on national health care, cap and trade, and stem cells. He’s starting to remind me of a certain Roman Emperor.  -1% for sheer incompetence.

UPDATE: Hotair.com has an update on this. Another one of the Administration’s nominees (technically a nominee-to-be) withdrew today. The fires burn brighter every day.