Democrats have been crying for the last few weeks because the official bank of the Obama administration, JPMorgan Chase, lost $2 billion dollars in a hedging strategy that will likely get a few more folks fired from the firm.
Democrats have used their deepest Vox Populi to decry loose bank regulations that allowed this outrage to happen.
Their argument would be especially good if the bank regulations they are criticizing weren’t the result of large Democrat majorities and signed into law by President Occupy Wall Street himself just as the Democrat majorities unwound.
As Reuters notes “The 2010 Dodd-Frank financial oversight law was enacted in response to the financial crisis includes the Volcker rule, which bans banks from making speculative bets with company money. But it includes an exemption for trades done to hedge risk.” Nice loophole there guys; must have raised a ton on money for Democrat campaigns on that exemption.
House Republicans meanwhile are taking a more pragmatic and ultimately correct position that these losses are best left to shareholders and board of directors to figure out.
"There's no law against stupidity. No law against stupid trades," said House Speak John Boehner.
Because here’s where Democrat logic really falls apart: If there were laws against stupid investments, we could have used it the last three years to protect the taxpayers from Obama.
How come Dodd-Frank is silent on the stupidity of a president whose past investment management expertise consists mostly of ordering t-shirts for the marches he conducted in Chicago neighborhoods?
If you want to talk about really solving too-big-to-fail, or systemic risk in financial markets, you can start at the White House.
Obama’s been the Typhoid Mary of the investment business since Democrats gave him an unlimited check book.
It’s just possible that because of Obama the solar industry won’t recover from his government-imposed investment strategy for a decade. Solar investments- like the Guggenheim Solar ETF- which once traded above $250 before Obama was elected, trade very close to an all-time low at $17.74 during this historic, green Renaissance that Obama has ushered in.
Looking only at the high-risk/no reward green company investments Obama’s made, he’s lost about $6.5 billion so far out the $34 billion in Department of Energy loans, according to CBSNews via Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey.
Most of these loans were less than 24 months old. It could be even worse for the administration if the $2.1 billion loan that they approved had been accepted by Solar Trust of America before they went into bankruptcy in April.
Imagine almost $9 billion in loses- close to one dollar out of every three dollars that was committed gone bad- just in that one program…and counting.
Or how about the TARP bailout that the government’s own Inspector General estimates will cost taxpayers $60 billion in losses? Or the $24 billion loss on the automaker and auto union bailouts?
Oh; and here’s my personal favorite: “More specifically, the total cost of federal regulations has increased to $1.75 trillion,” writes the federal government’s own Small Business Administration.
And as we predicted, even more Democrats are abandoning the president now that the administration’s investments chickens have come home to roost and laid eggs by the hundreds of billions.
Appearing on Meet the Press, an Obama surrogate- yes, a surrogate who is supposed to speak on the president’s behalf- indicted Obama’s attack on Mitt Romney’s investment record at Bain Capital.
Obama contrasted his job of Investor-in-Chief and Great Constitutional Law Giver with the job of private investor that Romney had: “And so if your main argument for how to grow the economy is, I knew how to make a lot of money for investors,” said Obama “then you’re missing what this job is about. It doesn’t mean you weren’t good at private equity, but that’s not what my job is as president.”
Exactly Mr. President: You’re missing what your job is about.
Just because you can squander trillions of dollars, doesn’t mean you’ve done a good job as president.
Your job as president quite OBVIOUSLY is not to invest money is it? If we needed a reminder of it before you were president, we’ve certainly gotten one now that you’ve blown $9 trillion with no economic growth or jobs to show for it.
Because even if your job was to invest taxpayer dollars, face it: you suck at it.
And Romney did quite a good job at investment in both public and private life.
Moreover, it’s really stupid for your campaign to pick investment expertise as something to contrast with Romney.
"I have to say from a very personal level I'm not about to sit here and indict private equity,” the industry where Romney worked, said Mayor Cory Booker (D-Newark, NJ) who speaks on behalf of Obama. “To me, it's just, we're getting to a ridiculous point in America. Especially, I know, I live in a state where pension funds, unions and other people are investing in companies like Bain Capital. If you look at the totality of Bain Capital's record, they've done a lot to support businesses, to grow businesses, and this to me, I'm very uncomfortable with" Obama’s attack against Bain and Romney.
And he’ll go on being uncomfortable until someone passes a law preventing Obama from “investing” in stupid campaign messages.