Dear Mr. President: 'Soaring' Rhetoric Not Going to Cut It

You've got to do a little more than give inspiring speeches and promise the moon, Mr. Obama, if you expect to actually accomplish anything. Sorry to disappoint you, but all the income redistribution, economic justice, environmental justice, and education justice you were dreaming about ain't gonna happen, because there ain't no mounds and mounds of money lying around for you to suck on. You're going to have to actually sit down and figure this mess out and actually do something about it.

Words of love, soft and tender
Won't win a girl's heart anymore
If you love her then you must send her
Somewhere where she's never been before
Worn out phrases, and longing gazes
Won't get you where you want to go - No!
Words of love, soft and tender won't win her...

You oughta know by now,
You oughta know, you oughta know by now,

Words of love, soft and tender
Won't win her anymore.

"She" is the economy, and she's not going to respond to mere words, and certainly not to worn out phrases. I must admit I was tired of your rhetoric after the first 20 seconds I first heard you speak, but you're really wearing out your welcome across the heartland.

Newsflash: We didn't elect you so that you could spend hundreds of billions trying to educate the uneducable; we didn't elect you so you could magically invent energy sources that despite decades of sky-high energy prices Europe and Japan never managed to develop; or to bloat the size of government during a period of deflation. No, we voted for you because the country is a mess and the last guy was a dope and the guy you ran against was a bigger dope. We expect you - Mr. Smart Guy - to figure out what's going on and do something sensible. Hey, wha' happened?

This is what I would do if I were you. You summon Larry Summers to the oval office for a special meeting. Sure, Geithner's going to sulk because he wasn't invited, but that's ok because he's on his way out - please, tell me he's on his way out...And you ask him to lay it out for you. He starts babbling, you let him go awhile, then you interrupt him. "No, I mean how much money is out there? Exactly how much of these assets are any good, how much are done for, what's actually salvagable?" Then when he answers "Well no one really knows..." You lean over,pick up the phone and say "Get me Napolitano!"[she's your Homeland Security chief, in case you forgot].

You let Larry go on a bit, then when the phone rings, you say "Janet! [her first name is Janet] - get in touch with that geek in charge of Google. Tell him I'm commandeering his programming department - Larry Summers has a job for them." Then you hang up. Sure, Google could fight you, but you're the president, and they'd have to go all the way to the Supreme Court to stop you. No sweat, you only need them for a month. "Larry, you and your boys need to talk to these Google guys and tell them how to figure out how much money we have out there. I need an answer in a month. If they hem and haw, tell'm we'll call Yahoo. It's a bluff, but they'll get the message."

Then you go out and deliver a little talk to the nation. No bullshit this time. Plain and simple. You tell us your going to get to the bottom of our nation's financial system. "In one month, we will have a full and public assessment of every registered asset in this country. Names and social security numbers will not be revealed, but everything else will be published and identified - account numbers, addresses, serial numbers along with an assessment of their market values. Every derivative will be traced back to its underlying real asset. Fraudulent arrangements will be dissolved and their perpetrators prosecuted.

"We will then assess the health of every financial institution. Of course this is a free country, and each of these assets can actually be bought and sold for more or less than our initial assessment, but make no mistake, within 30 days insolvent institutions will be shut down and their assets sold. The healthy will survive. The days of bailouts and empty promises are over. This crisis will be ended and we will recover, but not until we uncover the truth, and that quest begins today." [You can then throw in some bullshit about not letting people starve if you feel you must].

Well, I can dream, can't I?

[As usual, little of this is original. The idea of a wiki-like public accounting of assets I got from Steve Sailer. Commandeering Google programmers to figure out our true asset-base I stole from Mencius Moldbug. The need for Obama to stop the BS and get down to business is pure Denninger. And, of course, the Words of Love are from John Phillips.