Monday, March 23, 2009

Some Hope After All

It appears that President Obama is having second thoughts about the bill working through Congress to tax executive bonuses at AIG and other companies nearly out of existance. From MSNBC.com, reporting on a 60-Minutes interview:
President Barack Obama wagered significant political capital Sunday, signaling opposition to a highly popular congressional drive to slap a punitive 90 percent tax on bonuses to big earners at financial institutions already deeply in hock to taxpayers.

Obama defended his stance by saying the tax would be unconstitutional and that he would not "govern out of anger." He declared his determination, nevertheless, to make Wall Street understand it must shed "the old way of doing business."

Of course he's still baffled about the economy's sharp decline, which isn't good:
"I don't think that we anticipated how steep the decline would be," he said in the interview on CBS' "60 Minutes." "That slope is a lot steeper than anything that we've said — we've seen before."

I think he needs to take some responsibility for the effect his programs (and various gaffs from his administration) have had on the economy. But he always seems to stop short of that.

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