The Devil IS Prada!

 

High fashion, don’t you know?

 

What Happened on August 28, 2008…

…that might have had something to do with our financial collapse?  Barack Obama accepted the Democrat nomination, that’s what.  That is also when the stock market took a dive and also when unemployment really kicked in to high gear.  Look, I am no statistician or pollster or financial analyst, but when you look at the following charts I have assembled, it gives you pause.  I thought at the time that at least part of the reason that things cratered when they did is that it became clear to Wall Street and businesses in general that we were about to elect an anti-business President and perhaps a Democrat majority in Congress.  And, since businesses can’t afford to wait and see if they are right in these matters, they acted almost immediately in the face of the higher cost of doing business that was coming their way.

From the BBC, here is the timeline of the 2008 election:



I used Rasmussen in the above shot because according to this analysis from Costas Panagopoulos of Fordham University, Rasmussen was the most accurate poll of the 2008 election. Sorry, I know that Rasmussen is evil and all, but he is also mostly correct.

Less than a month later on September 18, Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke were asking Congress for carte blanche to deal with the imminent collapse of the whole damn global financial system and it was on like Donkey Kong.  Here is a very nifty timeline of events back then, from Dipity:

Economic Collapse Timeline on Dipity.

You can probably see it better if you click through to Dipity.  Also, scroll a bit to the left to see the beginning of the events.  Dipity starts with September of 2008.  Things really accelerate after August 28, don't they?

Next, from MSN Money is the Dow Jones, S&P and NASDAQ averages from February 2007 through February 2010.  Note the highlighted points; the market cratered beginning at the end of August 2008.



Clearly, the market was already trending down by August, but right after the nomination everything fell off the cliff.  

Finally, here is the unemployment trend from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:



Again, unemployment was trending upwards from about December 2007 on, but it accelerated dramatically after August 2008, increasing a full 1.3 percentage points from August to December of 2008.  For the math-impaired, that was a 21 percent increase over that period of time, compared to an 8.6 percent increase over the same period in 2007.

I posit that the election of Barack Obama pushed the economy over the edge into panic mode.  Investors wanted out of markets, companies knew they had to cut overhead and they all knew that they had to act quickly, before Obama and the Dems took office and imposed higher costs in the form of higher taxes, health care reform, cap and trade and because of the simple fact that modern Democrats in general and Obama in particular are essentially socialist in philosophy. Couple this with the deteriorating business conditions in general and the collapse was inevitable.

No, Obama’s nomination did not cause the financial deterioration of the economy.  That was already underway.  But it damn sure sped things up and made things worse.  With his nomination and subsequent election, all hopes of a soft landing evaporated.  Elections really do have consequences.

Obama Fail

 

Or it will soon be a fail.  Again, the ego gets in the way. 

“President Obama kicks off what might be called his "Save the Senate" tour this week, heading west to campaign for two embattled Democrats trailing badly against Republican challengers - including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.”

He has this unfailing belief, it seems, that his mere presence assures victory.  It didn’t work in in Virginia, New Jersey, Massachusetts or for the Chicago Olympic bid.  It won’t work for Harry Reid; Reid is so far down in the polls that he must know that he has little, if any, chance to be re-elected.  Bringing Obama out to the desert isn’t going to change that for the better, at all.

Obama will be able to raise money for Reid and Michael Bennet of Colorado, but it will almost certainly cost them votes, especially Reid.

Obama Win

 

I pretty much hammer on our President here, but I am willing to give him some props when he does something I think is right, and by helping to get a new nuclear power plant built, he is doing something good.  If he really wants to help this project, he will smooth the regulatory process out for the builder.  The red tape these projects must go through add greatly to the cost of the project.

As always, though, with our ever so humble President, it remains to be seen what sort of follow-up he will deploy.  He’s not so great with follow up.

Fall Far, Fall Fast

Look at this snip from tonight’s home page of the Huffington Post:

 

The Alexander McQueen story posted today about three hours ago.  The John Edwards story posted two days ago.  Dude is toast.  Rielle must be holy hell in the sack.

And Herein Lies the Problem

 

When members of his own party begin to make statements like this, I don’t see how anybody should expect Republicans or leaders of other countries can be expected to do business with Obama:

 

 

Link to story and video is here.  (Real Clear Politics doesn’t allow embedding, apparently.)

Maybe Obama is doing some kind of amazingly brilliant counter-intuitive strategy.  Maybe he is doing the old “reverse psychology” trick that works so well on 4 year olds.  But we’re not 4 year olds, though he apparently thinks that we are all a bunch of rabble to be led into the wake of his magnificence. 

And when the New York Times begins to question his credibility and integrity, he is on the downward slide to Cartericity or maybe Nixonism.  Either way, this is a problem for all of us, conservative or liberal.  The US needs a strong, trustworthy, effective President and right now Barry is lacking in all of those things.

The Problem with Familiarity

 

Remember this?  (From the NY Times)

 

 

Now look at this headline from Bloomberg:

 

 

Now look at these two, from The Raleigh News & Observer and the Charlotte Observer, respectively:

 

 

 

In the first two stories, we have a glaring example of lack of consistency and an arrogant display of subjective bias.  He takes the “fat cats” to task on a regular basis and that is the part that people will remember.  The rabble cheers him when he does this.  But these two guys over here, the ones that he knows personally?  Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs and Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan?  Hey, they make less than A-Rod, so it’s cool.  He has given a tacit approval to their clear attempts to avoid controversy by taking stock instead of large cash bonuses.  Blankfein clearly reined himself in by taking only $9 million, while Dimon unapologetically took $16 million.  Dimon should have taken double that; JP Morgan is a very profitable company and he has served his shareholders and employees well.  Blankfein took $62 million in 2007 and Goldman is the undisputed king of Wall Street.  He should have taken another $62 million.  The problem with this is that Obama is giving a pass to two CEOs merely because he knows them personally while essentially meddling with the relationship between these two guys and their company and shareholders.  When Obama is calling out the fat cats, he is really saying, “We want our money back from the fat cats…….uh, except for my golfing buddies Lloyd and Jamie.  But all the rest of you are evil and greedy.”  This is arrogant.  This is subjective bias, with the pardon granted merely because he knows these two guys and thinks they are “savvy”.  It shows a lack of rigor in his thought processes in allowing him to grant leniency merely because of personal familiarity.

Then you look at the headlines from the Raleigh and Charlotte papers (they are both McClatchy papers, hence the identical photos) and it adds further to the recognition that Obama doesn’t know the effect his “fat cat” comments or his ongoing disdain for Las Vegas have on the economy.  Charlotte is the 2nd biggest banking center in the country, after New York.  Bank bonuses are important to the economy there and always have been.  My daughter attends a college near Charlotte that has long had a relationship with Wachovia and the donations that came from Wachovia and one of its executives in particular were vital to the school.  That Wachovia fat cat is no longer able to help out as he had done in the past.  New York Mayor Bloomberg is on record as wanting the state of New York and President Obama to soften their stances with regard to the wealthy over taxing the bonuses they receive.  He recognizes that when taxes on the rich become confiscatory, it hurts the New York City’s and Charlotte’s of the world.

Obama has absolutely no understanding of how the economy works in this country.  He wants to punish business and confiscate money from the business world to redistribute according to his whims, hence the healthcare bill and the increased taxes that he is contemplating, not to mention the cap and trade bullshit bill.  That this is done on a whim is the real problem.  He is attempting to reshape the country according to his personal vision.  This is a country of laws and individuals, not the United States of Obama.  Companies aren’t hiring or moving forward right now because Obama’s governance by fiat makes them uneasy and who could blame them? 

A suggestion to all Fortune 500 CEOs; try to get a tee time with Barry some time this year.  Maybe that will settle things down once and for all.

Well, I Feel Better Now….

 

….because Timmy said it would be OK.  Sometimes, I think these clowns that we have in office don’t know basic math.  Apparently, we can grow the national debt to insane levels while revenue drops and, if you believe our Treasury Secretary, it won’t change our credit rating.  Even though the people who create credit ratings said it would.

Look at this, and weep:

 

That was as of 10:20 AM EST, Feb. 7, 2010.  Go here to get an update; it’s changing really fast.  You may need a welder’s mask to protect you from all the red ink you will see on that page.

I understand the allure and the principle for a government to borrow money.  Like any other organization, it is a way to leverage your way into spending money on things that you would not otherwise be able to afford.  Sort of like sub-prime mortgages.  And governments, particularly the US government, can borrow money so cheaply that it is like crack cocaine for a self-aggrandizing egomaniac.  Why pay for something today when you can borrow the money and pay it out over time with inflated dollars?  Because it results in the image you see above. 

There are things that a person should borrow money for and it’s a short list; to buy a home and to get an education.  It’s not a good idea, but most of us borrow money to get a car.  That’s it; those are the only loans a person should have.   A government doesn’t need a house and you clearly cannot educate a government; Lord knows we have all tried.  Instead, the federal government has a clearly laid out set of items it should provide and they can be found in the Constitution; the defense of the country, facilitating interstate commerce, the judicial system and so on.  Most of what we pay for is not mentioned in the Constitution.  The Left likes to use the “promote the general welfare” phrase from the Constitution to justify whatever it is that they are freaking out about at any given moment, ignoring the fact that having, say, Social Security doesn’t really improve the general welfare.  It improves the welfare of those who are eligible for it, at the expense of those who must pay for it.  See here for more ideas on what parts of government need to be reduced or eliminated.

My 1 year old nephew owes over $40,000 right now and he still craps his diapers.  By the time he turns 18, at the rate this mess is going, that number will be far into the 6-digit range, maybe even 7 digits.  He will never catch up.  WE will never catch up.

Woooo---Check out the Katie Cougar!!!

 

The coug on the loose!  Looking upscale, while CBS is thinking about cutting staff or wages or both.  Way to rally the troops, Katie!  But you’re lookin’ mighty fine:

 

Cheating in Sports…

 

…it’s been going on for a while:

 

Is it a Reflex? [UPDATED]

 

Does he do this consciously or is this some long dormant remnant from his youth?  He grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, and maybe this is a common greeting in those places.  I can’t say for sure; I’ve never been to either place.  But it seems that the minute he sees someone with Oriental features, his waist goes all jelly-like and he starts bowing like crazy.

 

Had Bush done this, he would be getting ridiculed for being an insular, unworldly idiot.  Why doesn’t Obama get the same treatment?  Why does he continue to get a pass in the media for these actions?  Because the media is only now coming around to the notion that he ain’t all that and a bag of chips, but they still can’t bring themselves to go after him hammer and tong.  Yet.

UPDATE:  Video here of the actual bow and it confuses me.  On the one hand, his eyes are facing the ground, the essence of a bow and as sure a way as any to show subservience.  On the other hand, he bows so quickly that it could simply be an overly energetic greeting, sort of like what some people do when they are really excited to meet someone.  I think it is simply a reflex action for him, probably from having lived in Asia and Asian-influenced places.

Here’s What Obama Wants for us….

 

….just heartbreaking.

 

 

This is how health care rationing works.  Some bureaucrat, our wonderful Governor in this case, has to save a few bucks and it is people like the Mabrys that suffer for the incompetence.  Some years ago, the state decided that a great way to save money would be to get out of the mental health care business.  Sort of.  You see, they decided that it was absolutely necessary that they retain some control over the system, so they just held the purse strings while outsourcing treatment to private providers.  I’m all for the private operators providing care, but the state has terribly mismanaged the whole process.  The whole system functions sort of like Medicaid, with the state paying for treatment in amounts they deem appropriate.  It doesn’t work.  There are constant backlogs, people can’t get service and many simply walk away.  The state insists on oversight of the care of these people and apparently, oversight includes not providing services when it is inconvenient for them.

It looks like Obama’s health care plan is dead, or at least on its last legs.  I truly hope that someone soon, I don’t care who or which party, takes up reform again in the very near future and fixes the whole mess.  A big first step in fixing it will be getting the government all the fuck the way out of it.

Speak of the Devil!

 

I asked earlier today what Valerie Jarrett does and just a little while ago, I get the answer:

She sends out bland spam.  Gee, I can’t wait to see Geithner’s report in this thing.

Maoist Fashion [UPDATED]

 

This is too easy, sometimes.  Here is a photo of White House Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett that landed in my inbox this morning from Politico. (article here)  Is that a Mao jacket she is wearing?

 

Pretty close.  Here is the original:

 

Does anybody really know what Jarrett does?  Her title is Senior Advisor.  So, what is her area of expertise?  I know she’s President Obama’s best buddy, blah, blah, blah.  But what, exactly, is she good at?  Military affairs?  Economic matters?  Education?  Union relations?  O originally wanted her to be in his cabinet (Can’t remember what for.  Health and Human Services?), but that didn’t fly so now she is in the kitchen cabinet.

Read the opening two paragraphs from the Politico piece:

“White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett vowed that President Barack Obama will keep up his aggressive outreach to the business community, even as the president steps up his attacks against irresponsible players on Wall Street and in the insurance industry.

“Business is really not a partisan issue,” Jarrett said in an interview for POLITICO’s new video series, “Inside Obama’s Washington.” “What I hear from the business community all the time is that they want a strong economy. That’s a goal that the president shares. They want to create the kind of environment in this country where they feel secure about investing and building for the future, and that’s completely consistent with the president’s objective to create jobs.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/31805.html#ixzz0djCXQhqf “

President Obama is making an “aggressive outreach” to the business community?  He disparages business at every opportunity.  A recent poll showed that 77% of investors view him as anti-business.  He wants “to create the kind of environment in this country where they feel secure about investing and building for the future, and that’s completely consistent with the president’s objective to create jobs.”?  Really?  Really, Valerie?  OK, let me help you.  This afternoon, have the President make the following announcement.  He will probably need the teleprompter so he doesn’t choke on the words:

“In view of the continued economic strains the country is under, I have decided to suspend pursuit of health care reform.  Also, I will be putting on hold any further discussion on the cap and trade bill.  I recognize that businesses view these initiatives as additional costs and until we determine that businesses can absorb these additional costs, we will halt our efforts.”

His all-important popularity will soar, markets will rise and businesses will pick up the pace.  Try it, Valerie, you’ll like it.

UPDATE:  So I went back to trash the article out of my inbox and got another look at the headline that came in with the picture and it struck me as funny to see that picture of Jarrett with this headline:

 

Mao nationalized private business in China. She wants us to believe that she, and Obama, understand how to support business.  My ass.

“Extend and Pretend”

 

That is the phrase that bankers are using to describe how they will handle the coming commercial real estate collapse.

I saw my uncle over the holidays and he has been in and out of commercial real estate since the ‘70’s.  He was recently working with some bankers on a deal and he asked how they would handle the round of refinancing that is coming.  “Extend and pretend” was the answer.

A little explanation will help you to understand what this means.  When a new construction project is built, it is frequently done on a 5 year note (and, though I am not positive on this, maybe interest-only).  At that end of those 5 years, the borrower is supposed to retire the note and refinance into a longer term loan.  So, what was going on 5 years ago when those loans were being made?  That’s right, a lot of loans were being made on everything from shopping malls to hotels to office buildings.  Many of which are empty right now.  And therein lies the problem.  The project was originally funded based on a higher value.  Clearly, that value is gone now.  So if you are a bank and are holding a note with a face value of $10 million on a piece of property that is now worth only maybe $6 million, what do you do?

You extend and pretend.

The good news is that, according to Evil CEO Jamie Dimon at J.P. Morgan, the worst may be over.

More Loss of Privacy on the Way [NSFW] [UPDATE]

 

Many people have likely seen this image by now, if you are on the interwebs much at all (Try to ignore Janet Napoletano doing an Obama and looking down her nose at someone.  Shouldn’t be too hard to look at the x-ray image.):

Nappy-J assures us that these images do not represent an invasion of privacy.  We are about to spend a few billion to buy and install these body scanners at, apparently, every place that has ever had an airplane parked at it.  That’s a fairly revealing picture all by itself.  But look what happens to it in the hands of a geek with a copy of Photoshop:

I don’t know squat about using Photoshop (note to self: check local community college for Photoshop lessons), but according to Gizmodo, this must have taken all of about 20 seconds to do.  And of course, the instant they had done it, they launched it off into cyberspace to show their skilz. Of course, this also demonstrates how woefully incompetent Nappy-J and her crowd are when it comes to what can be done with commonly available software.

We are going about airport security all wrong.  The recent Christmas day bombing attempt was not a failure of technology, it was human error and all the tech in the world will not prevent that.  Jeez, was it Newark airport that got shut down recently because some TSA agent walked away from his post for a minute or two and some dingbat took that as a good time to kiss his girlfriend one more time?  Thousands of people were stopped, millions of dollars of cost and delays ensued as the TSA over-reacted.  That was human error and it took all of one thoughtless decision on the part of the agent for it to happen.

UPDATE:  I was right, it was Newark.  Just found this little gem from Reason TV:

Country Poised to Prosper in 2010

 

Tax cuts, particularly for businesses, rolling out this year are expected to give dramatic boost to the economy.

Great news, if you live in Germany.

I love to see real world examples of economic theory.  We’ve all been part of a huge demonstration of the forces of supply and demand since Hurricane Katrina as the price of oil and gas has gyrated up and down the spectrum.  People bitch and moan about the price for a gallon of gas and I, being the weirdo I am, study them and try to suss out their decision process.

If you will recall, right after Katrina, the gas pipelines that supplied us here in North Carolina were shut down.  Immediately, the price went from about $1.80 or so to as much as $5 in some places.  I had filled up the day before because I had to drive to Burlington in the morning, about 90 minutes away.  Gas that morning as I left town was still about $1.80.  When I rolled into Burlington, prices were up around $4.50.  I switched to a news channel on the radio and heard what was going on and immediately pulled in to the nearest gas station to top off.  (Of course, they were telling everyone not to do that, but I drove for a living then and some places were already out of gas, so I couldn’t risk not having gas.)  The gas station was no busier than it ever was and that was what was so interesting to me.  People either didn’t need gas or were so shocked by the increase that they muttered to themselves about getting ripped off and drove on in search of cheaper gas.  The latter point was proven to me as I was filling up.  A little ol’ blue haired lady pulled in behind me.  She sat up so she could see over the car door and I watched her study the price on 3 or 4 pumps as she looked for a lower price, each time shaking her head.  Eventually, she left the station.  She didn’t understand that we were not in a position to shop for cheap gas, we had to worry more about getting gas at all.

Which brings me to an observation that I have made and it is that we, as a country, have lost our survival instinct.  We are so cosseted, so far from having to make decisions about food, water and shelter (and transportation) that we cannot even recognize when one of those things is about to disappear.  Because these things are so easy to come by in America, we do not really get too agitated when our property is threatened.  Kind of like it is now by our congress.  Yes, people are pissed off and we are all supposedly poised to vote the bums out.  The town halls of last August were a thing of beauty.  This is a thing of beauty:

But in the end, we have to take action.  Obama and the congressional Democrats are clearly ignoring us.  They seem the think that they are only there to represent the nutroots and not the whole country.  We must keep the pressure on them, we must be unrelenting.  We cannot take our eyes off of them, not for one minute, because they will duck into a smoke filled room and pull off some shit.  They’re doing it right now on health care.  They’ll pay at the polls next time around, but we have to make them pay every day between now and then.  Write them, email them, call them.  Do not back down.

Back to Germany.  The critics there are going after Angela Merkel, as could be predicted.  Merkel has cut individual taxes, among other things, though not by a whole lot.  I am not conversant with the German economy, so do not know if they are in as bad a way as we are.  I assume so, since the whole world is pretty much in the shitter right now.  But this is a perfect chance to see the theories of Hayek and Friedman played out against the theories of Keynes.

I wish we were getting the Hayek/Friedman treatment.  Germany will recover quicker than we will.  Just watch.

Whoa!!!

Very cool!

CHOP CUP from :weareom: on Vimeo.

Dorking in Surrey

 

Heh.  Gotta love the names that the Brits give to their towns.  Tiger probably still has a ways to go to catch Warren Beatty. 

Just Damn….

Look at this damn thing:


That big red bar on the far right there looks like somebody turned on a spigot.  Courtesy of SayAnythingBlog.  I’ll be charitable here and allow that $800 billion or so of that is TARP money, which I agree was necessary.  If you were looking to invest in a business and you saw the revenues take the dive that they do in 2009 while the spending goes through the roof, you would run screaming from the broker who is trying to get you to buy this pig.  Jeez, the deficit is roughly equal to all of the tax revenue.

We cannot get out from under this any time soon and Unicorn One, along with Pelosi, will blow this thing up in 2010.  I don’t care if Obama has suddenly discovered that he is using Monopoly money, this is unsustainable.