Obama Talks. People Listen. Markets Tank.

I can visualize the commercial: A noisy room full of well-fed businessmen. One leans over to his neighbor and says, “Well, my President is Barack Obama, and he says –” Everyone falls silent, straining to hear.

Then as one they scream, rush for the windows and throw stocks, bonds and themselves to the street below.

Today’s value killer was the President’s mortgage restructuring program, which takes the germ of a good idea – dealing directly with bad mortgages will be cheaper than bailing out the entire banking system – and, as the Wall Street Journal explains, converts it into a half-baked welfare system for irresponsible home buyers.

If Team Obama had done nothing since Election Day, one might chalk the ensuing 2,200 point drop in the Dow up to bad luck or the lingering impact of the previous Administration. But it has flailed vigorously: The mortgage travesty follows the second TARP I tranche, the Detroit Three bailout, the indispensable Timothy Geithner’s incomprehensible rollout of TARP II, ARRA (pronounced “error”), and a rash of executive orders dictated by the AFL-CIO.

The One likes to be compared to Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. If either of them had spent his first month in office this fecklessly, the Confederacy would be independent today and the United States would still be mired in the Great Depression.

Further reading: Fred Barnes, “Obama’s First Month”
Larry Kudlow, “Subsidize Bad Behavior?”
CNBC.com, “Would You Join Santelli’s ‘Chicago Tea Party’?”
Jennifer Rubin, “Increasing Uncertainty, Drawing out the Pain”