Not for the first time, and probably not for the last, the Obama Administration is being lectured by leaders of countries which we’ve historically seen as more financially reckless than the US to get our fiscal house in order.

As the Washington Times reported yesterday, both the German Economy Minister and Chancellor Angela Merkel are chiding Obama:

“It’s urgently necessary for monetary stability that public budgets return to balance,” German Economy Minister Rainer Bruederle said at a press conference Monday, according to Bloomberg News. “This is something we should also tell our American friends.”

His comments were echoed at a separate press briefing Monday by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble…

Germany, home of massive labor unions and the country which, under Bismarck, essentially created the government-run Ponzi scheme of Social Security, has now become the world’s fiscal conservative with the US acting more like France, Sweden or possibly the early stages of Zimbabwe, though even I wouldn’t put Obama in the same category with Robert Mugabe.

Canada, also no stranger to socialism, was somewhat more gentle to Obama, with Prime Minister Stephen Harper saying “To sustain recovery, leaders from advanced countries, to the extent possible, need to reaffirm their intent to follow through on delivering existing stimulus plans. At the same time, advanced countries must send a clear message that as their stimulus plans expire, they will focus on getting their fiscal houses in order.”

That’s polite code for “Don’t pass a second ’stimulus’, Obama.”

In the meantime, even Senate Democrats are getting cold feet about spending which, as impossible as it would have sounded just two years ago, is so reckless that it’s making Republicans and Democrats alike forget (at least a little bit) just how bad George W Bush was.

Obama is not (yet) backing down, arguing that his budget will cut the deficit in half, from $1.4 trillion to just over $700 billion in the next few years.  But, like everything else Obama says about finance, it’s either wrong or an outright lie.  Indeed, if ObamaCare is not gutted or repealed, that alone could overwhelm any other potential budgetary savings Obama claims to be looking for.  If anything like cap-and-trade is passed, it will only be worse.

One has to wonder whether Obama’s Through-The-Looking-Glass sense of fiscal responsibility and the pressure he places on his underlings to support what they (with the likely exception of Robert Gibbs, Obama’s own “Baghdad Bob") know to be baseless predictions and economic policies conceived in ignorance is responsible for yesterday’s announcement that Obama’s budget chief, Peter Orszag is resigining and plans to leave his job in July.

Perhaps Orzsag, who prior to this job wasn’t particularly in the political spotlight, wants to disassociate himself from the most fiscally reckless government in this nation’s history so he can point back with a hint of “I told you so".

Between Merkel, Harper, and Orszag, you’d think that Barack Obama might get the message.  But he won’t. I guarantee it.  His success in ramming through the biggest, most expensive, and most liberty-crushing of all versions of health care “reform” (except for the public option which he knew couldn’t pass the Senate) despite advice from Rahm Emanuel to go for a scaled-back version has made Obama, Pelosi, and Reid believe they must stick with a strategy of doing as much as they can as fast as they can to further their radical leftist “transformation” of our government.  (Side note: I have bet that Emanuel will leave his job before the end of Obama’s first term…)

By the time they (Democrats in Congress, primarily) realize they got lucky – and the country now realizes that it got unlucky – by virtue (or specifically the lack of virtue) of the Cornhusker Kickback, the Louisiana Purchase, the Stupak flip-flop, and other such disgusting tactics, it will be too late for them to save their jobs or their places in history.  Orszag doesn’t want to share a place in that pantheon of infamy with people who can’t even sense the urgent wake-up call represented by big-spending governments telling us that we’re spending too much.