There are many who are getting a sense of deja vu about the Obama Presidency. Like President Jimmy Carter, President Obama is dealing with quagmires that have built up over many years that will make the American people worse off for some time to come. The weight of those challenges, and the unwillingness of Congress to impose the measures needed to turn things around, is making him seem hapless and impotent. Moreover President Obama underestimated just how rotten our economy has become at its core, and what a hard slog it will be to find a bottom. The measures he managed to get passed were conventional measures for a conventional recession, not an economic structure in collapse at the end of a 30-year debt binge. That 30 year era followed another era that collapsed under President Carter.

But Jimmy Carter had a Democratic congress, whereas Barack Obama is facing a Republican congress. That makes his situation more like that of President Harry Truman, whose term I didn’t live through personally but read about in the award winning book. Truman was unpopular due to the problems in the country, including a far more brutal war than the one we are in, and yet could run against a “do nothing Congress.” At the time, as well, part of the Republican Party had fallen into McCarthyism. You can’t say politics today are more divisive than that. To put on a respectable face the Republicans nominated a respected and reasonable figure, Thomas E. Dewey, the Mitt Romney of his day, but Truman won anyway.

According to the Attorney General, as quoted in the Daily News, stock prices are volatile because people distrust Wall Street. “The trust bank is empty and we have to restore public confidence in the instruments of government and the instruments of the private sector,” Scheiderman said. Scheiderman said people need to believe that Wall Street “is not a rigged casino.”

Actually, stock prices are volatile because they are too high, because the suckers have too much trust. The dividend yield is 2.0%, down from a historical average of 4.3%. Those running the rigged casino are looking for the signal to get out before the suckers. Scheiderman is repeating the Spitzer line, and perhaps enough trust was restored after 2000 that the suckers were fleeced again. What people need to believe is that Wall Street is, in fact, a rigged casino, and that government will not be trustable until all those incumbents are tossed out. The real debate is whether our public and private institutions can be reclaimed, or the best we can hope for is to rebuild after an institutional collapse that we only hurt ourselves more by forestalling. The problem, Mr. Scheiderman, is the values of Generation Greed.

As a former Republican I have observed that the GOP has been in a train wreck and many of its members are in a state of trauma unable to effect action.  Oh the party has not lost power but instead undergone a seismic shift in demographics.

I recently had to take my wife for an MRI.  She has been under a lot of stress lately because of what is going on with our economy and the wackiness in Washington and she slipped on some steps in the rain.

ROCK Given the recent "crap" on Room Eight New York Politics, I decided to share an old e-mail I had gotten some time aback, with some of the readers.