“The Black Swan.”

Obama Stimulus Made Economic Crisis Worse, `Black Swan' Author Taleb Says

By Frederic Tomesco - Sep 25, 2010 10:36 AM ET Sat Sep 25 14:36:37 GMT 2010

U.S. President Barack Obama and his administration weakened the country’s economy by seeking to foster growth instead of paying down the federal debt, said Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of “The Black Swan.”
“Obama did exactly the opposite of what should have been done,” Taleb said yesterday in Montreal in a speech as part of Canada’s Salon Speakers series. “He surrounded himself with people who exacerbated the problem. You have a person who has cancer and instead of removing the cancer, you give him tranquilizers. When you give tranquilizers to a cancer patient, they feel better but the cancer gets worse.”
Today, Taleb said, “total debt is higher than it was in 2008 and unemployment is worse.” 
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-25/-black-swan-author-taleb-says-obama-s-stimulus-made-economic-crisis-worse.html 

Famed Obama 'Hope' poster artist losing hope

– Fri Sep 24, 10:44 am ET

By Aamer Madhani, National Journal
The artist whose poster of Barack Obama became a rallying image during the hope-and-change election of 2008 says he understands why so many people have lost faith.
In an exclusive interview with National Journal on Thursday, Shepard Fairey expressed his disappointment with the president -- a malaise that seems representative of many Democrats who had great expectations for Obama.
Fairey explained that when he came up with the poster in 2008, he was trying to find a single image that embodied the issues he cared most about -- promoting health care, helping labor, and curtailing lobbyists. He likened the issues to projectiles.
(What Ohio Voters Tell Us About Obama)
"Looking at Obama's standpoint on various policies, it was like, 'Why throw all these particular projectiles over the wall... when I could put all those things in one projectile that I could hurl over the wall,'" Fairey said in a phone interview from Los Angeles, where he lives. "Obama was the delivery device in theory. Now, I realize that he maybe is not the correct delivery device, and I'll just deal with those issues separately."