Obama needs to print dollars

That is the only way out. Print more dollars and weaken the almighty dollar. There is no point trying to tax the rich. Firstly you cannot simply tax them on their assets just for being rich.. You can only tax income. Most of these people have thier income tied up as carried interest in hedge funds. That is capital gain and not current income. The ceo's and other corporate highly talented people get paid in stock or options - again capital gain. So there is no easy way of getting these people to share.

So, there you have it. Banks will not lend and the rich will not share the tax burden plus they have their tea party puppets peddling trickle down economics in Congress. That is a perpetual stalemate. If this was a game of chess, you would simply resign at this point.

Anyway, printing dollars is the best way to redistribute. Inflation will make your worthless homes more expensive relative to the mortgages. Stocks will go up since prices are in Nominal dollars, so everyone's 401k will look a lot healthier. The dollar will weaken and make US goods more competitive. Saudi Arabia and China will lose the real value of their Treasury holdings - we will pause here to shed a tear for them. There you have done it - you screwed the banks on the mortgages, hedge fund managers on their billions stashed away in dollars and some other countries that you do not particularly care for. Sure grandpa's social security checks will be worth less but hey the current plan calls for throwing grandpa over the cliff anyway. This way will be somewhat slower.

So Obama, get your hands on that printing press...

Wither Global trade ?

POTUS is right - global trade is the enemy.  Trade used to be the good guy - I make something nice, you grow some food, and we trade. Win win for all.  It was better for one village to trade with another.  Two tribes were better than one. The bigger the economic unit, the more we could trade and the greater the benefit.  So why does this not work when the economic unit is the entire globe ?

Trade provides the discipline where the most efficient producers are matched with global consumers.  No duplication of production resources.  This assumes that all the production resources of the globe are inventoried and allocated to its most efficient use. The only way for this to be possible is if all the resources of the world are controlled by a single or small group, with total authority.

Since no one wants to give up control to a single global authority, the next best thing is to have self contained nation states, or groups of nation states forming a single economic unit. A balkanization of the world into trading blocs.  That is where we are headed.