Collateral damage

Hot Air questions the notion of a "Manchurian President" from this Bloomberg column in which Kevin Hassett postulates how a planted candidate could rise to office and intentionally wreck the economy. From Hassett's column:

Imagine that some hypothetical enemy state spent years preparing a “Manchurian Candidate” to destroy the U.S. economy once elected. What policies might that leader pursue?

He might discourage private capital from entering the financial sector by instructing his Treasury secretary to repeatedly promise a brilliant rescue plan, but never actually have one. Private firms, spooked by the thought of what government might do, would shy away from transactions altogether. If the secretary were smooth and played rope-a-dope long enough, the whole financial sector would be gone before voters could demand action.

Another diabolical idea would be to significantly increase taxes on whatever firms are still standing. That would require subterfuge, since increasing tax rates would be too obvious. Our Manchurian Candidate would have plenty of sophisticated ideas on changing the rules to get more revenue without increasing rates, such as auctioning off “permits.”

Ed at Hot Air quotes the adage "avoid assigning to malice what can be explained by incompetence". But I think there's a third possibility between malice and incompetence.

I don't believe Obama is intentionally wiping out trillions in people's retirement funds, nor is he watching dumbfounded as the markets crash not fathoming the causal relationship to his policies. Rather, I think he's decided that the effects on the markets are acceptable collateral damage in the furthering of his radical left statist agenda.

Anyone who says these are the lingering effects of eight years of Bush is either lying or desperately clinging to Hopenchange. Welcome to Barack Obama's economy.