What Part of the Recession Does Obama Own?

Now we're getting down to brass tacks.

Denninger doesn't like Ritholtz' putdown. (Scroll down a bit, unless you want to learn the definition of "Bezzle.")

We have our share of apologists for The Bezzle and its continuation too, including Barry Ritholtz:

The latest idiocy coming out of the usual collection of misfits, dolts and cheerleaders is that the last 20% leg down in the market is pretty much all President Obama’s fault. Now before I explain — yet again — why this is so foolish, I have to point out that just about everyone who is saying this has been pretty much wrong about, well, pretty much everything

Denninger counter-attacks:

Oh really?

I'm one of the people saying this, and have I been wrong about "pretty much everything"? Go back and read some of my earliest Tickers, including my 2008 Prediction Ticker and those in 2007 in which I said that we'd take $2.5-3 trillion in mortgage losses for residential real estate.

The fact of the matter Mr. Ritholz is that President Obama has ratified The Bezzle instead of working to put a stop to it, and as such he both owns and is responsible for the continuation of the slide in the markets since the election.

Now (finally!!) someone's established a time-certain position AND defined the terms which will allow the historians to point fingers. Denninger likes "election day" and wants Bezzlers to be....ahhhhh.....identified and moved into the criminal justice system.

Not a bad first pass. But "election day" is not the same as "inauguration day," and even on the day of inauguration....well, I don't think Holder was confirmed.

But I DO think the 'date certain' is approaching. Whether you like March 31st or June 30th, a failure to begin hunting down the crooks--the generators of "bezzle"--will be a mark against the President.

If you read Denninger's whole essay, you'll understand ... and begin thinking in terms of "who owns what."

Enter Goodwin of the NY Daily News.

...make no mistake: President Obama is putting together an enemies list.

Strangely, though, those on it are not terrorists or foreign dictators. They are mostly Americans lucky enough to have succeeded through capitalism and democracy.

In the President's words, they are guilty of being "special interests" and "lobbyists." The Bush-era tax cuts were merely "an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy" and he will bring fairness by raising taxes on "the wealthiest 2% of Americans."

His barbs flow almost daily, faulting corporate leaders for "greed" and shirking "a sense of responsibility." And sometimes he suggests the problem is criminal, as when he defended his plan for an expanded government push into health insurance as necessary "to keep the private sector honest."

Sounds like Denninger will get his schadenfreude, no?

Well, no.

...Obama has expressed little interest in prosecuting those who cooked the books to make billions and undermined the financial system. Nor is he interested in rebuking Congress, including leading members of his own party, who fostered destructive lending and borrowing policies. He seems comfortable with his aides, including those who saw nothing amiss in their former roles as Wall Street players and regulators.

Instead, Obama's class-war language, most of it written into prepared speeches, looks like selective anger, calculated to stoke public emotion to build support for his expansive agenda. That agenda, which revolves around a dramatic increase in Washington power, relies on tax hikes on the same successful businesses and individuals he denounces.

First he demonizes them, then he taxes them.

Yah, well, if he puts the actual perps in jail, they're no good as whipping-boys any longer, are they? And without boogey-men/whipping boys, there's no sub-surface discontent which one can utilize to proceed with a march to Fascism, right?

That day when it becomes Obama's (bless his name) tarbaby is coming faster and faster.

HT for the update: The Hatted One