The stock market is casting a vote of "no confidence" in Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and his Republican opponent is missing an opportunity to slam the freshman senator for an economic agenda that is a rehash of the worst of Presidents Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter.
So argued on-air editor Charles Gasparino in an October 13 op-ed in the New York Post, where the CNBC talent mentioned that even Obama's Wall Street backers are nervously telling him to change course on his economic plans (emphases mine):
Overall, his [Obama's] plan includes some of the most lethal tax increases imaginable, including a jump in the capital-gains rate. He'd expand government spending massively, with everything from new public-works projects to increases in foreign aid to a surge in Afghanistan - plus hand out a token $500 welfare check that he calls a tax cut to everyone else.
This is clearly the wrong way to go in the wake of an economic meltdown - yet Obama, for all his talk of how willing he is to compromise, of how he'd bring people together, is sticking to his tax guns.
I know at least one top Wall Street executive, an Obama supporter from the start of his campaign, who has recently urged Obama to rethink his tax plan - and that was before last week's record losses on the Dow.
But if Obama is rethinking, he's not saying. As his running mate, Joe Biden tells us that it's patriotic to pay higher taxes, Obama remains committed to squeezing businesses even if the recession grows.
Gasparino also noted that "[t]o be fair, McCain hardly instills confidence among the Wall Streeters" he talks to but wondered why the campaign was putting more energy into the William Ayers angle "when it should be hitting Obama's blind loyalty to policies that bring together the worst elements of Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter."
Last week Gasparino slammed the Obama tax plan, likening it to "throwing gasoline on the fire":
"I mean, John McCain – listen, say what you want about his performance – but I’m talking, just looking at that debate rationally – could you literally add up – he wanted to invade Pakistan I thought he said, he wants a surge in Afghanistan, he wants expanded health care, he wants to give a tax break to anybody under – not a tax break, essentially a welfare check to anybody who makes $249,000 or less. By the way, it’s not a tax cut because poor people don’t pay income taxes. You’re not changing the tax rates. And then he wants to tax everybody else."
Gasparino said that despite Obama’s “thin record,” he is much more of an ideologue than McCain, based on his time as a community activist, state senator and in the U.S. Senate.
