Economic Quote of the Day

From CNBC's Rick Santelli, the spiritual father of the Tea Party movement, on Obama's call to end tax breaks for oil companies:

"If I broke my right arm, am I going to pick a fight with the neighbor? No. If I'm two months behind on my mortgage, am I going to go complain to the bank? Probably not. But let's see, with gasoline approaching $5 a gallon, isn't this just a supreme time to pick a war with the energy people that are bringing us what already seems to be in the market's eyes in short supply? Just like picking fights with China when the world's about ready to go into recession. There's a time and a place for everything. And, by the way, all these profits Exxon's making, the administration doesn't like it. Well, what about Apple making a billion dollars a week, or Microsoft? I bet you if GM made a billion dollars a week, they wouldn't mind. Come on!"

The oil companies pay about 40 cents on the dollar in taxes. Apple pays about 20.

Charles Krauthammer also had some comments:

“I think any objective observer would look at what the president said today in the Rose Garden on this and conclude as I did: it is truly staggering cynicism,” Krauthammer said on Thursday’s broadcast. “Number one, when he was in the Senate, Obama supported the subsidies he’s denouncing today. And when our own Ed Henry asked Jay Carney about that, Carney had no answer. He was looking for a hole to hide in.”

“Second, the Congressional Research Office in March of 2011 showed that if you remove the subsidies, if it has any effect whatsoever on the gas prices, it will be to increase them, and the president is pretending he is trying to lower the gas prices.”

Obama is going after the oil companies because he hates their business and hates the fact they make a lot of money meeting America's energy needs. He can throw away $535 million taxpayer dollars on a failed solar energy company (Solyndra), but the idea the oil companies who are producing a product that actually works just ticks him off to no end.

Idiotic.