Don't You Love It When Nutjobs Open Their Mouths and "Dumb" Farts Through Their Teeth?

Barack Obama owes Phil Gramm a huge chunk-of-change. Seriously. Pay the man, Barack. You owe him big.

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A fat check to Gramm could be Obama's best-spent campaign money yet. How many zeros do you offer a man for possibly handing you the Presidency during the course of a single interview?

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Just in case you're living under a rock, Phil Gramm is John McCain's top economic adviser who basically said that Americans took a long drag-puff on some good ish and hallucinated our current economic problems during a bad acid trip. The Washington Times quotes Gramm:
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"You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession," he said, noting that growth has held up at about 1 percent despite all the publicity over losing jobs to India, China, illegal immigration, housing and credit problems and record oil prices. "We may have a recession; we haven't had one yet."

"We have sort of become a nation of whiners," he said. "You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline" despite a major export boom that is the primary reason that growth continues in the economy, he said.

"We've never been more dominant; we've never had more natural advantages than we have today," he said. "We have benefited greatly" from the globalization of the economy in the last 30 years." [full article here]
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Mental depression. Hmmm.

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I guess he's not talking about that sinking feeling I get every time I put gas in my car.

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I guess he's also not talking about the sour grapes Americans feel over losing their homes in record numbers.

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And he couldn't possibly be talking about the sadness I feel every time I look at a dollar and realize:

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1. The value is no longer backed by gold. Okay, maybe a tiny insignificant portion.
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2. The value is worth poop in other countries that once worshiped the US Dollar.
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3. I couldn't send my son to France with US Dollars last week because unlike my European trip many years ago, he won't receive a better deal or increased consideration for flashing American green-stuff.
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4. The dollar wont last long in my pocket because gas prices, food prices, and the d*mned cost to simply breathe leave my actual pay rate/increases in the dust.

Is that the kind of mental depression you were talking about, Mr. Gramm? No. None of the above. By "mental depression," Gramm meant this nation of whining babies simply imagined that things are bad and getting worse. Yeah. That opinion carries a lot of weight coming from  a rich white former Texas senator who is now vice chairman of UBS, the giant Swiss bank. So how's that job working out for you, Mr. Gramm? I bet you don't stress over the dental plan.

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To put rank icing on a foul cake, Gramm blamed the media for the mass hallucination:
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Mr. Gramm said the constant drubbing of the media on the economy's problems is one reason people have lost confidence. [...]

"Misery sells newspapers," Mr. Gramm said. "Thank God the economy is not as bad as you read in the newspaper every day."
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Mr. Gramm, The media couldn't inspire a loss of confidence via a mass hallucination if things weren't actually.... so.... bad. Are you going to tell me that we have a strong dollar and a stable, vibrant economy? Are you going to tell me that banks are doing great and discussions about "bail outs" were just my imagination? What can you tell me about disposable income? How does that income keep shrinking - right along with the size of the middle class, which is a class you can't pretend to know? How do you explain the careful analysis of other quality economists like Robert Reich?

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Forget it. Don't answer that. You can't explain it, because you're the vice chairman of a Swiss bank. You don't worry about disposable income, food prices, gas prices, college funds. I'm sure as vice chairman, you use the services of the Swiss bank to keep your stacks warm and ready. Unfortunately, your loss-of-touch with the average American voter could cost McCain the election. If you're the best he could do for an economic adviser, what hope does the shrinking middle class have for a remedy? According to your assessment, we all need a prescription of Zoloft. The problem is not that we hallucinated the recession. You simply hallucinated that there there isn't one.

Comments

[GC]

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that perhaps he defines recession differently than we do. Perhaps for him recession is synonymous with depression (ie 1930s) and since the parking lot at the red lobster is still full, we're doing just fine.

[rawdawgbuffalo]

he cant help iot
he got loot
and aint hurting

[blujewel]

Speechless! Uhm, maybe it's because I'm having hallucinations or am suffering from mental recession?!

*signs off SHM*

Love!

[Byrdeye]

Yup, typical BS politician...trying to maintain the grand illusion.

$9 trillion in national debt = "whining" and "mental recession?"

In his dreams!

[Hawa]

@GC: Ha! I hear a crackling sound... Is that your limb snapping? LOL

@Raw Dawg: Exactly. How we keep trusting the wealthy (and corrupt) in office is beyond me. We elect these idiots.

@BluJewel: Better get your Zoloft before the store runs out.

@Byrdeye: I would love to see him forced to live off of an "average" salary for a year and THEN tell me how the current economy is (1) in great shape and (2) not hindered by the corrupt wealthy (corporations and government).