"Time? What time do you think we have?"

Obama isn't an 'A' student, and he definitely doesn't know much about history...

In one of his first major decisions on trade policy, President Obama opted Friday to impose a tariff on tires from China, a move that fulfills his campaign promise to "crack down" on imports that unfairly undermine American workers but risks angering the nation's second-largest trading partner.

The decision is intended to bolster the ailing U.S. tire industry, in which more than 5,000 jobs have been lost over the past five years as the volume of Chinese tires in the market has tripled.

It comes at a sensitive time, however. Leaders from the world's largest economies are preparing to gather in Pittsburgh in less than two weeks to discuss more cooperation amid tensions over trade.

The tire tariff will amount to 35 percent the first year, 30 percent the second and 25 percent the third.

Although a federal trade panel had recommended higher levies -- of 55, 45 and 35 percent, respectively -- the decision is considered a victory for the United Steelworkers union, which filed the trade complaint.

Hey, here's an idea: how about deliberately angering the largest creditors of the United States with a tariff, then following it up with yet another bond-auction? Obviously, China isn't worried about our ability to repay the staggering amount of debt that the Federal Government has accumulated, so why not?

The spread between AA-investment grade corporates and 10- year Treasuries was 2.07 percent today. The average for this year has been 3.151 percent.

The U.S. government is concerned about overall demand for Treasuries, not appetite from individual countries, said David Dollar, the U.S. Treasury Department’s economic and financial emissary to China.

“The interest rate on long-term Treasury bonds is at a very low level by historical standards,” Dollar said at the World Economic Forum meeting yesterday in Dalian, China. “That says that the market has confidence the U.S. will get the fiscal problem under control.” The U.S. government and the Federal Reserve have spent, lent or committed more than $12 trillion in a bid to revive the economy and credit markets.

Very interesting, Mr. Dollar. (I realize that this is beginning to sound akin to a Bond script.) As much as we would like to believe that you are not defrauding the American taxpayers, that isn't what we've heard from our sources in China!

Cheng Siwei, former vice-chairman of the Standing Committee and now head of China's green energy drive, said Beijing was dismayed by the Fed's recourse to "credit easing".

"We hope there will be a change in monetary policy as soon as they have positive growth again," he said at the Ambrosetti Workshop, a policy gathering on Lake Como.

"If they keep printing money to buy bonds it will lead to inflation, and after a year or two the dollar will fall hard. Most of our foreign reserves are in US bonds and this is very difficult to change, so we will diversify incremental reserves into euros, yen, and other currencies," he said.

In all seriousness, I'm having a difficult time imagining a more historically predictable or utterly asinine way of handling a severe market-correction.

Now, I would like to attribute as much of this behavior to either good-natured ignorance or old-fashioned congenital idiocy, but the limit of this behavior is fast approaching deliberate, calculated evil, as I find that the collection of "our best and brightest" on Capitol Hill cannot or will not drop the pitched slap-fight over non-issues to address the debt. Indeed, they seem to be doing everything within their power to not only avoid it, but to exacerbate and accelerate its arrival.

The hour is later than you think.