Don't come home, Mama

I was on my home from work one day when I received a call on my cell phone telling me that I needed to go somewhere else. “Don’t come home, Mama. I’ll call you when it’s okay.”

My daughter and two granddaughters were living with me at the time. It seems that my granddaughter had spilled chocolate syrup on the floor and had used some lipstick on the wall. It doesn’t take long for a small child to get into trouble. It only takes a few minutes without supervision. Small children have a great need to do things themselves and to experiment.

When my daughter discovered the mess, she knew I was on my way home from work and that my stress levels would go up when I saw the mess. So she called me and told me to go get a cup of coffee or margarita, go shopping or do something and give her time to clean up the mess.

I went shopping and about an hour later I received a call that I could come home. By the time I arrived back at the condo, the mess was cleaned up.

There is no doubt that President Obama has a mess to deal with also. In fact, he has several situations that are messy. One is the economy. He has placed his confidence in an advisory team that doesn’t seem to know what to do to fix things. Unemployment is still high, people who are employed are making less money, mortgage foreclosures are still high and people have quit spending on anything that is not an absolute necessity.

The minimum wage increase that was voted on before Mr. Obama became president, the uncertainty of health care costs and an unwillingness to invest capital have contributed to the recession.

President Obama has an economic team in place that is not able to clean up the mess. Economic models do not support the policies that have been placed in effect since he became president. His stimulus program has been called “schlock economics,” and “his Chicago colleague John Cochrane says they’re based on discredited fairy tales.” They sound good to people who are not aware of how the economy works, but they do not work.

Mr. Obama hasn’t received a call to come home yet. It might be a while before it happens unless he changes his cleaning crew or at least seeks suggestions from new sources that might lead to economic growth.