Quick! More leeches!

If there's one thing that this administration has demonstrated, from day one, it's a complete and total lack of understanding of economics, cause and effect, and the things that you can do to spur economic growth and increased employment. Everything - every single thing - that they've done has been counter-productive, from the porkulus stimulus bill to cash-for-clunkers to cap-and-trade (which has not yet, Thank God, passed the Senate and been signed) to Obamacare. All of those things, and their approach to taxes and economic issues in general, have conspired to make a bad situation worse.

Noticing that it's gotten worse, they're starting to think about trying to make it better.

By doing more of the same.

President Obama still felt the need to announce a ‘jobs summit’ at the White House next month. That’s compelling evidence that the White House doesn’t believe the job market is mending nearly fast enough to keep unemployment from trending higher — or Democratic electoral prospects in 2010 from trending lower. The summit is likely a table setter for Obama to announce Stimulus 2.0 (though he surely won’t use the word ’stimulus’) at his State of the Union address in January. Indeed, Harry Reid is already cooking up a plan in the Senate.

They're treating an anemic patient by bleeding him with leeches, and, as the patient inevitably gets worse, their only solution is to...add more leeches.

It would be funny if it weren't the source of such suffering, on a world-wide level.

Early in one of my first electrical engineering classes, we learned about feedback, positive and negative. Control systems need to have negative feedback to prevent them from oscillating wildly out of control. The example of the destructiveness of positive feedback which made a lot of sense to me was the husband and wife sleeping under an electric blanked with dual controls. As the husband gets too warm, he turns down the blanket. If the controls are reversed, his side doesn't get cooler, hers does. So she gets too cool, and turns her control up. This warms his side, so he turns it down further. Which makes her cooler, so she turns her side up again. Etc.

Obviously, that's a bad thing. That's what's happening here. They people at the controls don't understand how they work, so they're getting positive feedback instead of negative. They do something, get praised for it by people who believe it's the right thing to do, and then, when things get worse, they do it again or more.

It's hard to believe that they're ignorant enough about the workings of the world to do this again, but all indications are that they are.