CAUSE AND EFFECT

WELL, What do you know? Yesterday the stock market jumped nearly 400 points, largely due to news that Citi Bank had posted a profit.

Now if you will remember, Citi had only the previous day or so been written off by the bean-counters as a hopeless wreck, and the market sank to a near-record low. But what a difference a day makes. And let us hope - but also let us not hold our breath - that President Obama and his gang notice this and take away a lesson.

When business succeeds, the value of business goes up. This should be a no-brainer, but the current Administration seems to lack the brains to have a no-brainer with. It ought to follow that real "stimulus" consists of striking the chains off entrepeneurs large and small and letting these companies hire workers at real jobs, not just raking gravel at some temporary highway improvement program. Management, after all is concerned with and will do everything possible to have the company turn a profit. Stimulus - real stimulus - is government getting the hell out of the way.

BUT the Obama Administration wants to burden business with "cap and trade" provisions for carbon emissions, and the more radical among them would extend this to individuals (and enforce it with devices that the Gestapo would have envied, such as "smart" electric meters to monitor and control energy usage). What? Am I going to be required to hire some bozo to plant a tree every time I drive somebody to Dulles Airport?

Of course if Obama's economy-wrecking "stimulus" agenda goes through I might not have to worry about a fare to Dulles. Or, for that matter, anyplace else. "Stimulus" indeed. The well-known poison strychnine kills by its stimulus effects.