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Bring out the finger bowl so the Administration and the Democrats can wash their hands of responsibility for the nation's economic woes.

Secretary of Treasury Tim Geithner was asked over the weekend if the Obama Administration was "in any way responsible" for the credit rating downgrade by Standard & Poor's issued last Friday.  Geithner responded "absolutely not."   

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As if the last week wasn't already packed with bad news, yesterday we got two more unprecedented signs of the economic times.

Late yesterday, Standard & Poor's dropped the credit rating for the United States of America for the first time since 1917. The "full faith and credit" of the U.S. Treasury is no longer the world's gold standard. Instead of the U.S.A. the AAA rating that had become synonymous with the dollar, is now in the possession of France. America is on a par with New Zealand and Belgium.   

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Following are questions and my responses to recent questions for The Arena at Politico.com:   

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Nothing seems to upset Barack Obama like being ignored. He is the President, after all, and "The One." Yet, as the negotiations on a debt ceiling deal bob-and-weave along in Washington, he grows visibly angrier that he's not getting his own way. This week he reportedly "stormed out" of discussions after Majority Leader Eric Cantor suggested the two sides were still pretty far apart on a solution. 

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Click here for 105 seconds of spot-on analysis and honesty. 

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As the political tug-of-war wears on in Washington over a deal on reducing the deficit as part of a compromise to raise the debt limit, some conservatives are beginning to fret about the possibility of the GOP "caving" (there's a plethora of definitions of what "caving" would be). And, today the media's attention is focused on differences – perceived or genuine – within the GOP Leadership. 

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Make sense of this if you can.  On the very day that the Labor Department released the June jobs report showing the unemployment rate ticked up to 9.2% and new jobs for the month was an anemic 18,000, Nancy Pelosi says that whatever Congress and the White House finally agree on to reduce the deficit, it must "not harm our economic growth." 

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Editor's note:  Politico.com asked me if "closing tax loopholes" as proposed by Barack Obama to raise revenue amount to a tax increase?  My answer is below and can also be found in the Arena on their website.

Whatever a politician chooses to call it, when the government takes more money from a business or and individual, it is a tax increase. Additionally, how can government - even a president - determine what is a "fair" portion to confiscate of income earned by someone else? 

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