Hugh Hewitt, in his August 27, 2010 article, called the Obama approach to economics "placebo economics." His point is that his plan was never intended to cause a cure for the economic ills of the country so much as to rick Americans into feeling like the country was past the fallout of the housing bubble and the panic. This feeling would lead investors to resume their pattern of investment, risk, and return that fuels democratic capitalism. It would be the equivalent of a "sugar high" fueled by $850 billion in "stimulus" as well as the massive hikes in baseline spending from 2007 forward was supposed to trigger real economic growth. Therefore, it did not matter that census jobs and spikes in federal and state employment are not the sort of jobs that raise real national GDP. Basically, such placebo economics was supposed to induce recovery through a sort of mass psychological pumping up. It did not work. It never could have worked. People do not invest for sentimental reasons. They invest and take risks in order to make real economic advances. Investors are looking at the massive tax hikes that the nation will experience in 2011 and the weight of "Obamacare" in the near future. Cap and Tax, the program that Obama wants to deal with supposed human-caused global warming, is a further weight.
It reminds me of what Abe Lincoln once said, "You may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you cant fool all of the people all the time." Deception can't revive the economy and keep it going. We need to face reality some day and deal with the real causes and issues.
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