Maxine Waters is a true liberal's liberal, in that her willingness to say anything, regardless of self-contradiction, is simply unbounded. We in the intelligent right need people like Mrs. Waters, an almost 80-year-old congresswoman from, of course, California. After all, liberals who say utterly stupid things are a good part of the reason that Donald Trump is about to become the president of the United States.
As cited in this article, Mrs. Waters had this to say last week on the meaningful uptick in the Dow Jones Industrials. “I’m appalled that the reaction to Tuesday’s election on Wall Street is record highs for bank stocks. Short-lived increases in the stock market are not the same as real, hard-earned economic growth, and the demise of the regulations Wall Street is cheering are the same regulations that have made our consumers, investors and economy safer and more resilient.” She added, "Does he mean letting the Wall Street banks he’s so indebted to write their own rules?"
Let us dispose quickly of the second part of the quote. I will be happy to remind you that Wall Street is hardly indebted to Donald Trump. Their campaign bribe dollars were contributed overwhelmingly to Hillary Clinton, not Trump; I can assure you that Mr. Trump does not see himself as "indebted" to Wall Street bankers, given that they gave him little to nothing and dumped billions on Hillary.
So, Mrs. W., in your view it is OK if the market goes up because of what a Democrat, Barack Obama does, but not OK if it goes up because of what a Republican, Donald Trump, promises to do when inaugurated. Sure, Maxine.
Now, I want to try to avoid revisiting what I wrote recently in regard to why the market was responding to the incoming Trump, and why it had reached such an unwarrantedly lofty height during the Obama years. But in essence (you should read the link anyway, though), the Dow's life in the 18,000 range before the election was simply based on there being nowhere else to put one's investment dollars, given that Obama's heavy manipulation of the interest rate had driven savings percentage returns down to nothing.
Now, to give Mrs. Waters her due, we should point out that she seemed to be referring to the heights in bank stocks specifically, not necessarily the entire Dow, or the entire stock exchange.
Still, those bank stocks were doing quite well under her sainted Mr. Obama. Citigroup's share price has exactly doubled in the last five years, under you-know-who's presidency. Bank of America has almost quadrupled in that same period. JP Morgan Chase is right at about two-and-a-half times its November 2011 share price.
So perhaps Mrs. Waters thinks that those gains were a result of "hard-earned economic growth"? I don't know that I can say, but I bet that you can attribute that stock increase to a combination of strategic layoffs (cutting expenses), hoarding cash and using it, among other things, to buy back its own stock (raising demand lifts prices), switching employees to part-time to avoid Obamacare hikes, and moving money offshore to try to get a better return than Obama's Federal Reserve has driven it down to, and avoid oppressive taxation.
Taking effective, corporate-wide steps to increase profitability could, I suppose, be reckoned as "hard-earned economic growth" by these banks, or it could be simply making business decisions that are forced on them by Obama's strangling policies.
Either way, it is impossible not to sound like a hypocrite when you declare that it is OK for share prices of companies to rise because a Democrat president imposes regulations that stifle hiring and force them to cut personnel expense, but it's not OK for the prices to rise when a Republican promises to eliminate those same regulations to where industry can actually invest in itself (i.e., employees) to make products and deliver services again.
That, as I have written ad nauseam, is simply the way the left operates. Just "say it -- anything, no matter how absurd", their mantra goes, "since the press won't call you out on it." And liberals go out and say whatever they want to, unfiltered and uncorrected. Say it often enough, and someone will believe that it might be true.
But the tide may be a-turning, as this election pointed out. Eventually, the electorate will simply say that it has had enough, and they want more intelligent solutions to the problems of the nation, solutions that actually can work. Solutions, I would add, that avoid going back again to the same failed leftist policies that give us insanely entrenched poverty in big cities, education strangled by far-left teacher unions, and murder rates there beyond belief.
Maxine Waters is a relic of old, failed liberalism. It failed 50 years ago and still fails today. And it's not just the failed policies, but the failed hypocrisy that tries to rationalize it. She will go bye-bye, sooner or later.
I just hope the lesson we learn from not tolerating that hypocrisy stays with the electorate for a long, long time.
Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here? There's a new post from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving new meaning to "prolific essayist." Sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.
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