White House of Mirth

Barack Obama and fellow fat cat Jeffrey Immelt yucked it up in Durham, North Carolina Monday. Why shouldn't the merrymakers be laughing? In 2008 the catchphrase "shovel-ready projects" lured Congress into bilking $800 billion out of taxpayers.

Obama, Dec. 2008: We've got shovel-ready projects all across the country. And governors and mayors are pleading to fund it. The minute we can get those investments to the state level, jobs are going to be created.

Obama, Dec. 2009: The term 'shovel-ready' - let's be honest, it doesn't always live up to its billing.

Obama, June 13, 2011: Shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected.

But Obama's levity about not producing jobs shows callous disregard for unemployed workers, and a severe pattern of "misjudgment."

The President's economic house of mirth has been harboring fools ever since tax cheat Timothy Geithner became Treasury Secretary.  Speaking at the American Society of Newspaper Editors in April 2010 Geithner elicited a big laugh when asked if he planned to be a little more cautious when he filed his taxes. He stated that he was set on doing his taxes "slightly different" and that he had "an excellent accountant" this time.

Larry Summers, Obama's former head of the National Economic Council, was quite a prankster himself before 2008. The Nation exposed Summers' mischief in the small republic of Lithuania circa 1990. The country hired the financial whiz to advise them on transforming its economy.

The results were literally suicidal: in 1990, when Summers first arrived, Lithuania's suicide rate was 26.1 per 100,000 and falling. Just five years after Summers got his hands on Lithuania's economy, life became so unbearable under the economic transition that the suicide rate nearly doubled to 45.6 per 100,000, worse than any other ex-Soviet republic in transition. In fact, it was the highest suicide rate in the world, suggesting something particularly harsh and brutal about the economic transition in that country as opposed to the others, where suffering and pain were common. Things got so bad that in 1992, after just two years of Summers-nomics, the traumatized Lithuanians voted the communist party back into power, the first East European nation to do so--even though just a year earlier Lithuanians actually died on the streets fighting communism.

Christina Romer, as the former White House-appointed chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, played it straight when she jested about breaking up Freddie and Fannie in a 2009 interview with Larry King.

Again, you know, anytime we have now got taxpayer money on the line, what we have an obligation to do is do it in a way that protects the American taxpayer. What is going to be the way that gets these institutions safe, gets them doing what we need them to do, which is lend like crazy, and just basically functioning again for the economy.

A real buffoon, Peter Orszag, stepped down as Obama's Budget Director in July 2010. By December, 2010 he found a gig at Citibank, the same institution that asked for a $45 billion bailout from taxpayers. Orszag was paid handsomely for his service to Obama with a title, political influence and the promise of more money in the private sector.

I am pleased to be joining Citi, with its unmatched global platform and dedication to providing clients with quality service and advice.

The White House of mirth announced another resignation just last week. Economist Austan Goolsbee, who replaced Christina Romer, will return to the University of Chicago to teach. The man who won a "Funniest Celebrity in Washington" contest displayed his talent with this tribute to his longtime boss.

I believe that his judgment, his courage in confronting the worst economic crisis of our lifetimes, and his commitment to the American people have made a tremendous difference for the nation. 

All the world's a stage and the administration merely players -- with American taxpayer money. These crackpots need to go.

Read more M. Catharine Evans at Potter Williams Report