Over at the Wall Street Journal, Alan Reynolds wonders where Obama will get $4.3 trillion dollars to fund all his new programs?  But never fear, Democrats won’t let a little thing like money rain on their parade.  They’re already floating a trial balloon that would net them $4.5 trillion:

House Democrats recently invited Teresa Ghilarducci, a professor at the New School of Social Research, to testify before a subcommittee on her idea to eliminate the preferential tax treatment of the popular retirement plans. In place of 401(k) plans, she would have workers transfer their dough into government-created “guaranteed retirement accounts” for every worker. The government would deposit $600 (inflation indexed) every year into the GRAs. Each worker would also have to save 5 percent of pay into the accounts, to which the government would pay a measly 3 percent return. Rep. Jim McDermott, a Democrat from Washington and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee’s Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, said that since “the savings rate isn’t going up for the investment of $80 billion [in 401(k) tax breaks], we have to start to think about whether or not we want to continue to invest that $80 billion for a policy that’s not generating what we now say it should.”

Democrats want to nationalize your 401K, and put it in Al Gore’s Social Security “lock box”.  You know, the lock box that our politicians spend every year and put a big IOU in.  In reality though, it’s really an IO”ME”, since the only way the government’s IOU on Social Security can be paid off is with more taxes on you and me.  That’s exactly what this plan will do too.

Barack Obama and Barney Frank will nationalize our 401Ks and that money will evaporate just like Social Security taxes do year after year.  Then you and I will be on the hook for paying ourselves back long after they’ve left office because remember, the government makes no money it doesn’t take from us.  But wait, there’s more!  If you act on this limited time offer, besides the asset seizures, Democrats will make you pay yourself $600 dollars a year with a guarenteed 3% return!  And believe it or not, if you act in the next 10 minutes, Democrats will throw in a 5% payroll tax just to sweeten the pot.  I bet you never knew you could be so generous to yourself.  What a steal!  (quite literally)

The Obama stock market discount is very real.  With the far left-wing firmly in control, the market may very well plumb fresh depths.  The key question now is will his policies turn 2009’s recession into 2010’s depression?

World wants Obama as president: poll

US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama may be struggling to nudge ahead of his Republican rival in polls at home, but people across the world want him in the White House, a BBC poll said.All 22 countries covered in the poll would prefer to see Senator Obama elected US president ahead of Republican John McCain.[snip]

A total of 23,531 people in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Kenya, Lebanon, Mexico, Nigeria, Panama, the Philippines, Poland, Russia, Singapore, Turkey, the UAE, Britain and the United States were interviewed face-to-face or by telephone in July and August 2008 for the poll.

FLASH

For all you liberals who believe in what the world thinks, they don’t get a vote!

Former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton makes a great point in his Op Ed today—Mr. MotO doesn’t understand the lessons of the Cold War. Unlike his “we’re citizens of the World” speech implies, the Cold War was won through steely resolve—a resolve that many on the left and Western Europe did not share. If we’d joined the pacifists and socialists at the time, we’d be propping up Eastern Bloc countries with economic aid just like North Korea today. And tens of millions would still be suffering inside totalitarian states.

Let’s hope Mr. MotO was pandering to the crowd. It’s naïve to think the world will embrace, and there’ll be no more need for US leadership.