Obama and Democrats Anti-Business and Pro-Recession

U.S. investors overwhelmingly see Democrat US President Barack Obama as anti-business and question his ability to manage a financial crisis, according to a recent Bloomberg survey. It is not a surprise then to this humble blogger that the Great Recession continues- the unemployment rate 'only' stayed at 10% in December because 661,000 people gave up looking for a job and quit applying for unemployment benefits.

The global quarterly poll of investors and analysts who are Bloomberg subscribers finds that 77 percent of U.S. respondents believe Obama is too anti-business and only one-out-of-five are confident of his ability to handle a financial emergency. Since the Great Recession began in 2007, some 8.6 million jobs have been lost and small businesses, the normal source for new jobs, are still shedding workers. Fewer than 10% added employees, while more than 20% cut back— and the cuts averaged nearly twice as many per firm as the hires at the expanding companies (source here).

Democrats took control of Congress in 2007 the recession started, although Republican lame-duck President Bush can be tagged with 2 years of the recession, and President Obama has now overseen an additional year of recession, with no end in sight. We've had recessions before, but most have only lasted 2 years before we recovered- this one is different because it has gotten worse in the last year and now looks to go on several years longer.

Bloomberg reports:

“Investors no longer feel they can trust their instincts to take risks,” said poll respondent David Young, a managing director for a broker dealer in New York. Young cited Obama’s efforts to trim bonuses and earnings, make health care his top priority over jobs and plans to tax “the rich or advantaged.”

To recover from this recession could take as many as five years or even more to recover all of the eight-plus million jobs lost since March 2007. That's because we would have to create an additional 1.7 million jobs annually beyond those for the 1.3 million new people who enter the work force every year. And jobs will not be created in a high regulation and high tax environment overseen by an anti-big-business President who's most stirring rhetoric can be summed up as 'business is bad.'

According to the Washington Post, the top 20% of the nation's households account for 40% of all spending, and now are facing a President who is determined to 'spread the wealth' and 'soak the rich'. These households, in the face of the threat of government, are now hoarding their resources and cutting back on spending, leading to a dramatic drop in economic activity in our nation.

The issues might come and go, the personal politics might come and go, and politicians will come and go, but in the end, the most important factor to consider when voting is whether to elect a President or Congressman or Governor or Commissioner who is going to encourage job creation, encourage business, and make people feel good about making money (and spending and saving and investing money). And usually, these people are not Democrats.