Once again, our feckless president cannot lead….and meanwhile, our Country is about to go into the toilet.
The story is via Reuters: (H/T to Insty)
The New Zealand dollar was a stand out performer, soaring to 30-year highs after data showed the economy grew far faster than expected in the first quarter.
The kiwi flew to $0.8491, a rise of 3.7 percent in just two sessions, as the upbeat news revived the chance of a rate hike before year-end.
That stood in stark contrast to the United States, where Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke had canvassed the idea of further quantitative easing should the economy stall
“Three months ago all the focus was on the exit from unconventional policy; now Bernanke mentions the conditional possibility of QE3,” said Paul Meggyesi at JPMorgan. “This is unambiguously bad for the dollar and good for risk.”
Investors seemed to agree, sending commodities and gold higher and lifting growth-leveraged currencies like the Australian dollar.
The U.S. dollar slid to a fresh record low against the Swiss franc around 0.8089 francs, while the euro leaped to $1.4253 having been as low as $1.3984. The dollar also deflated to 78.83 yen with only talk of semi-official bids preventing a break of major support around 78.40/50.
Against a basket of currencies, the dollar was down at 74.773 .DXY, having tumbled for a high of 76.053.
In a double whammy for the U.S. currency, Moody’s warned the country could lose its top-notch credit rating if lawmakers fail to increase the country’s debt ceiling.
In a statement, Moody’s said it sees a “rising possibility that the statutory debt limit will not be raised on a timely basis, leading to a default on U.S. Treasury debt obligations.”
Meanwhile, what does our President do, instead of actually trying to lead the Country? He walks out like a silly two year old:
President Barack Obama abruptly walked out of a stormy debt-limit meeting with congressional leaders Wednesday, a dramatic setback to the already shaky negotiations.
“He shoved back and said ‘I’ll see you tomorrow’ and walked out,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) told reporters in the Capitol after the meeting.
On a day when the Moody’s rating agency warned that American debt could be downgraded, the White House talks blew up amid a new round of sniping between Obama and Cantor, who are fast becoming bitter enemies.
When Cantor said the two sides were too far apart to get a deal that could pass the House by the Treasury Department’s Aug. 2 deadline — and that he would consider moving a short-term debt-limit increase alongside smaller spending cuts — Obama began to lecture him.
“Eric, don’t call my bluff,” the president said, warning Cantor that he would take his case “to the American people.” He told Cantor that no other president — not Ronald Reagan, the president said — would sit through such negotiations.
Democratic sources dispute Cantor’s version of Obama’s walk out, but all sides agree that the two had a blow up. The sources described Obama as “impassioned” but said he didn’t exactly storm out of the room.
“Cantor’s account of tonight’s meeting is completely overblown. For someone who knows how to walk out of a meeting, you’d think he’d know it when he saw it,” a Democratic aide said. “Cantor rudely interrupted the president three times to advocate for short-term debt ceiling increases while the president was wrapping the meeting. This is just more juvenile behavior from him and Boehner needs to rein him in, and let the grown-ups get to work.”
On exiting the room, Obama said that “this confirms the totality of what the American people already believe” about Washington, according to a Democratic official familiar with the negotiations, and that officials are “too focused on positioning and political posturing” to make difficult choices.
Cantor insists he never interrupted the president, and was “deferential,” seeking permission to speak.
The latest and sharpest in a series of harsh exchanges between the two leaders heightened concern that markets could crash at any time amid fear of a reduction in the rating on once-ironclad U.S. debt.
Cantor, for his part, delivered the blow-by-blue of his interaction with Obama to a gaggle of Capitol Hill reporters in the Speaker’s Lobby, where lawmakers typically mingle with reporters during votes. It wasn’t through aides — it was Cantor taking on the president, directly.
Cantor accused the president and congressional Democrats of progressively low-balling, over the last several days, the savings that could be achieved from proposals discussed by Vice President Joe Biden’s working group on deficit reduction. Cantor warned that the group has not identified enough cuts to win House passage of a $2.5 trillion debt-limit increase — the size the president says is needed to get through the 2012 election, sources told POLITICO.
Obama told Cantor that he would either have to agree to tax increases or give up on his demand that the debt hike be matched dollar-to-dollar to the cuts — that is, $2.5 trillion in deficit-reduction over 10 years in exchange for a $2.5 trillion hike in the debt ceiling.
He said that the negotiators should return to the White House Thursday to discuss savings from health care programs, budget caps and options for raising revenue.
“Then he said we also ought to get in the mode here, because we’re going to have to decide by Friday which way we’re going,” Cantor said. “He said really we ought to all start to think about things we can do rather than things we can’t.”
That’s when Cantor said he would be willing to abandon his own insistence on having just one vote on the debt ceiling if they could agree to a smaller package of cuts in exchange for a shorter-term hike that would require another increase before the 2012 election.
But Obama said he wouldn’t do the debt-limit increase incrementally and that he would veto a short-term bill.
“That’s when he got very agitated,” Cantor told reporters.
“Obama lit him up. Cantor sat in stunned silence,” said an official in the meeting. “It was incredible. If the public saw Obama he would win in a landslide.
Yessir, America; that is your President, whining like a damned two-year-old, when he does not get his way. Meanwhile the Country and the World is going into the toilet. This is what Democrats do, they screw up things, and when the time comes to act like adults, this is what happens.
I mean, I hate having to repeat myself; but the Democrats, on top of the spending of Bush, spent more, like drunken Sailors and to what end? Nothing! I mean, we have all this debt and where are the damned jobs? There are none! Now that it is time to work to keep the US from defaulting on loans from places like China; what does the President do? Walks out on the Republicans! What an idiot!
Just a reminder, this is the result of the failed Obama-Pelosi stimulus plan.
Remember this come November 2012; if we even last that long.
Others: Michelle Malkin, And So it Goes in Shreveport, White House Dossier, Politics, , Gawker, The Raw Story, Weasel Zippers, Outside the Beltway, Nice Deb, The Lonely Conservative, Washington Examiner, Doug Ross, Pajamas Media, THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS, Pirate’s Cove, Say Anything, Daily Pundit and The Page
