Panic as a political strategy.

"Never let a good crisis go to waste" was the advice of Obama's advisor Rahm Emmanuel, and it seems that Obama has taken that advice to heart by working to create a panic, according to Legal Insurrection:

If nothing else, Obama does “panic” well


John Podhoretz notes that Obama is trying to talk the markets into a panic as part of Obama’s political strategy (emphasis mine):

An enraged Barack Obama just took to the nation’s airwaves to announce his effort to strike a deal with Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner has fallen apart. Perhaps for the first time in American history, this president is literally using this press conference to create a financial panic over the weekend about the opening of the markets on Monday. He is warning of disaster on Monday. Clearly, he wants to use this as leverage to frighten the GOP into passing the plan proposed by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, which will push the debt ceiling problem into 2013, but it’s still an entirely new and astonishingly reckless gambit.

I agree with the analysis with one big exception, the use of the terms “first time” and “entirely new.”

In fact, talking down the markets and creating a sense of panic is one of the few things Obama has done well.

Recall February 2009, when Obama wanted to push through the Stimulus Plan and created a near panic in the markets which caused even the last bull to capitulate...