If you say it enough it must be true

Or that seems to be Vice-President Dick Cheney's mind set. McClatchy does a great job of reviewing Cheney's speech and breaking it down. I alternate between thinking he is truly delusional about reality, or if he doesn't realize the same smoke and mirrors that worked for most of his career is no longer cutting it. Damn internet.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20090521/pl_mcclatchy/3237981

State of the Store

An interesting read re: Sears Holding Corp.

http://www.fool.com/investing/value/2009/05/20/can-sears-be-the-next-amazon.aspx

A look at giving

I have been absent for a while. Spending way too much time on facebook I have to admit.

I read this article this morning and I wanted to spread it. It compares the giving / charitible habits of people of various income levels and how they are affected by tough economic times. The results might be surprising.


http://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/story/68456.html

Where are we today?

Nate Silver takes a look two months later

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/05/obama-bull-market.html

Looking at the stock market, of course, is a relatively asinine way to evaluate the performance of the economy, much less the performance of the Presidency. But I think conservatives may have done themselves a real disservice by making the market the benchmark for Obama's success back when the major indices were slumping in late February and early March.

The stock market can be a very entertaining measure to watch. However two more important numbers to watch are the actual unemployment rate which is currently setting at 14.8% and the 3 month bond rate is effectively 0.0%. The major the reason that the bond rate is important is that eliminates one of the major tools of the federal reserve to fight recessions, which is lowering interest rates. For a comparison the recession in early 1980's that many people like to compare to we were experienced 3 month bond rates at around 20%. They had been purposefully lifted to that hight to break inflation.

Those high rates were one of the major reasons for the recession of the early 80's. Essentially Volker said we have to get inflation under control even at the cost of a recession. Once inflation was tampered, and the recession got sufficiently severe the course was reversed and rates were lowered. The rates were lowered by about half down to below 10% wthin the year.

With zero % bond rates the choices are limited to do nothing, lower taxes, increase spending, or combination of both. Obama has settled on the combination of both. I am certain a large percentage of tax cuts will be used to pay off debt or save which on a micro level makes the most sense. However, such actions would have limited stimulative effect. One can argue that government spending can be less efficient than private spending. However, one only needs to witness what many of the financial institutions did with their bailout money to see that the private sector may use the money in a way that is going to stimulate a broad based economy. One last number is the average approval rating which is at 59%. Now one should not govern based on polling. But I think this is indicative that the general population is not equally represented by the stock market numbers. So can he recover? hmmm.


This was the answer I gave a friend that asked me of President Obama could recover from the stock market losses. I gotta say I am still satisfied with this anwers. I wonder if O' Reilly, Hannity, Limbaugh still stand by their version of reality.

A couple of interesting notes just to show how much of a blow hard these guys are. First and most importantly it is very interesting that Limbaugh particularly goes back to Obama owning the stock market as of Sep 15th. If memory informs me correctly isn't that the week that Lehman Brothers goes bust and the Market tanks? So the inevitable President elect is responsible for the market more so that the actually facts of the collapse. Secondly, you know the money managers of the world are the smartest people in the world and they knew Obama was going to win. It would be interesting to go back and listen to the right and see if they were convinced that Obama was going to win between Sep 15 and Nov 4th.

Okay this has really gotten them thinking. I just told you why Rush uses the timing he does to talk about the stock market performance. I took a look at some more info. From Sep 1 before our Financial crisis to election day the market on average was down 25 - 30%. Since Election day to present the Nasdaq is up 9%, S&P up 1.5%, and Dow is down 2.3%. Interesting.

One more thing to look at:

Another attempt to Privatize Profits, Socialize losses

This is something that is kind of under the radar, but interesting once you scratch the surface. A quick summation is in the negiotiations of the Chrysler situation The US Government agreed to take losses, the UAW agreed to take losses, Management agreed to losses, Fiat agreed to take a hit in the deal. Now a group of hedge fund managers who were invested in Chrsyler tried a drive a hard bargain. They refused to share in the losses on par with the other parties.

They drove a hard bargain asking for more than their fair share with the Obama Administration. The Obama Admin. didn't blink and the agreement came to pass without the support of the Hedge Fund Managers. Now the process is rolling along and the Hedge Fund Managers are crying fowl. There have been headlines to the fact that they were "bullied". (Now just a side note, there preference is to force the company into liquidation. This would probably afford them a few cents on the dollar more return. The cost literally tens of thousands of jobs.) Notice so far all legal rulings have sided with the Obama Admin and with Chrysler. There is no accusation of any laws being broken or bent.

http://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=20797