As Bill Clinton so famously said, “It’s the economy stupid.”
Barack Obama is seriously in danger of becoming a one-term president, by simply ignoring this simple and powerful warning from the past. Dennis Gartman, a financial pundit and publisher of The Gartman Letter, summed up the latest conspiracy theory (the small business community is ganging up to make sure Obama loses in 2012) quite succinctly:
“We are more and more convinced that the unemployment rate is going to remain hard above 9% through next year’s election for the simple reason that businessmen and women have no urgency on their partto add new employees, fearful about health care legislation and other left-ward leaning policies that the Obama Administration might impose. This Administration has shown little reticence about using Presidential edict rather than congressional legislation to impose environmental, health or labour requirements, and business knows that. Rather than increasing employees, businesses are working their labour forces harder and harder, content to pay over-time rather than be exposed to increased health care costs. It is a very, very reasonable decision.”
