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I Know What Keeps Obama Awake at Night
While Obama relaxes in Hawaii, sipping Mai Tai’s adorned with little umbrellas and hooking up with distant relatives, a potential nightmare is giving him sleepless nights. Let’s say we spend our $2 trillion in stimulus and get a couple of quarters of decent growth. The “V” is in. Then once the effects of record government spending wear off, we slip back into a deep recession, setting up a classic “W.” Unemployment never does stop climbing, reaching 15% by year end, and 25% when you throw in discouraged job seekers, jobless college graduates, and those with expired unemployment benefits. This afflicted Franklin D. Roosevelt in the thirties.
So Congress passes another $2 trillion reflationary budget. Everybody gets wonderful new mass transit upgrades, alternative energy infrastructure, smart grids, and bridges to nowhere. But with $4 trillion in extra spending packed into two years, inflation really takes off. The bond market collapses, as China and Japan boycott the Treasury auctions. The dollar tanks big time, gold breaks $2,300, and silver explodes to $50. Ben Bernanke has no choice but to engineer an interest rate spike to dampen inflationary fires and rescue the dollar, taking the Fed funds rate up to a Volkeresque 18%. %. The stock market crashes, taking the S&P well below the 666 low we saw in March. Housing, having never recovered, drops by half again, wiping out more bank equity, and forcing the Treasury to launch TARP II.
The bad news accelerates into the 2012 election year. Obama is burned in effigy; Sarah Palin is elected president, and immediately sets to undoing all of his work. Republicans, reinvigorated by new leadership, and energized by a failing economy, retake both houses of congress. National health care is shut down as a wasteful socialist mistake, boondoggle subsidies for alternative energy are eliminated, and the savings are used to justify huge tax cuts for high income earners. We invade Iran, and crude hits $500.
If you’re over 50, and all of this sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because we’ve been through it all before. Remember Jimmy Carter? Remember the “misery index,” the unemployment rate plus the inflation rate, which hit 20, and catapulted Ronald Reagan into an eight year presidency? A replay is not exactly a low probability scenario. This is why junk bond yields are still stubbornly high at 12.5%, and credit default swaps live at lofty levels. It’s also why the investing public is gun shy, favoring bonds over stocks by a ten to one margin. Are the equity markets pricing in these possibilities? Not a chance.
The risk of economic Armageddon is still out there. Personally, I give it a 50:50 chance. Batten the hatches, and please pass the Xanax.
For more iconoclastic and out of consensus analysis, visit me at www.madhedgefundtrader.com.
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It has been a long time since I have heard of another voice for Ross Perot - Misthos - am with you on this one - It's over and what we have been doing for a long time is entering the Dark Ages of America. We use to have a "society" that wanted America Prosperity, which meant everyone, not just one class or another if not perfect but better. "One for all, all for one" was yesterday's battle cry, replaced with what best describes the line of Wall Street - "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good" - I am, as you state, "little people", and I realize I do not know anything in comparison with what others who do know and should know have but this much I know, it's not working. All I can do is show up every election and do what I have always done except this time I know that my vote is meaningless, regardless of who I vote for.
So true, and SO UTTERLY MADDENING---
We voted for someone who would stomp down the banking oligarch, not someone who would become OWNED by the banks!!
He has only shown us our government has been completely CAPTURED by the financial elite! And I am someone who VOTED for him!!
Puppets, all of them. As so many congressmen and women have admitted, "They--aka the banks" own this place"..everything else is just for show.
When are we going to think of the alternative to the money economy?
Would $500 a barrel oil soak up excess dollars? Thus avoiding hyperinflation??? In other words, might they have a strategy of creating an oil crisis?
Sorry but Obama is not an idiot nor is he worried about what is happening one whit. What is happening is what is supposed to be happening, destruction is his goal. Marxists at his level are never stupid. He knows exactly what he is doing and what he is doing is destroying the system that made his family miserable. The system that every single of his cohorts has hated since they were able to read das capital.
He is bringing to fruitition the long held goal of marxists everywhere, destroy the best example of freedom in the world. That the Republicans have helped him accomplish this by being so feckless is one of the biggest crimes of this young century.
Once you accept the premise that he is intentionally destroying the country you no longer are surprised by anything...matter of fact he becomes predictable.
He was able to come to power because the country wished to amuse themselves to death...we have gotten our wish.
http://pierrelegrand.net/2009/12/15/amusing-ourselves-to-death-by-stuart-mcmillen.htm
Quite honestly, I do not understand these sort of statements.
When you limit a persons actions to some sort of belief system how can you state they`re intelligent. These quasi-psychological assessments based on external stimuli while the person was growing up seems like an incredible oversimplification of all the factors involved.
Obama is not an island.
Jesus H Christ quasi-psychological??? Are you serious? Every SINGLE influence on the man from his childhood onwards were by some sort of marxist...or perhaps you prefer the term Progressive? He would have to be made of stone to have grown up believing in the right of an individual to make their own decisions. We can see now, and some of us who did some due diligence on this clownfuck saw it way back in 2004, every time this clownfuck makes a decision it is based on the premises you would expect a Marxist to hold.
Father, Mother, Grandparents, childhood mentor, school, school teachers, religious leader, friends, community organizers, all of them were from either admitted Marxists or cowards who hid behind the label of progressive.
LOL. You remind me of Mrs. Kravitz from Bewitched, looking through the curtains and saying, "Oh my. Oh dear. There's MARXISTS next door. And across the street. Oh my, oh dear, there are MARXISTS everywhere."
Or maybe you're the kid in Sixth Sense:
I see Marxists. Walking around like regular people. They don't see each other. They only see what they want to see. They don't know they're Marxists.
If you don't know it, you're hilarious. A career in comedy for you.
For god's sake, if you really want to say it, Pierre, just say COMMUNIST. It ain't the N word, it's just so silly retro. Seriously, it's dated, like calling Obama a Colored or a Negro.
You're killing me whitey, you really are.
Apparently you are another Obama voter eh? You are either in denial or you think like Axlerod and Rahm that if you simply deny deny deny that I will change my mind...and that others will believe your bullshit. Of course a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth.
Let's repeat again for the stupid fucks...
EVERY SINGLE INFLUENCE ON OUR FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT WAS EITHER AN ADMITTED MARXIST, or they claimed the label of progressive which is another name for communist if you wish. I will not argue about the degree bullshit that some of you want to descend into because EVERY SINGLE INFLUENCE OF OUR MR WONDERFUL PRESIDENT wants to take my freedom away. I don't give a fuck about whether he is Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin or Mao...fuck them all they are all coming from the same portion of space with the same basic premise. ALL those motherfuckers know better than I how to make my money, spend my money and educate my children.
Once read Das Capital and ever since then I have had nothing but contempt for the clownfucks who sat around gazing at their navels saying how fucking brilliant Marx was. Stupid fuck understood zero about his fellow travelers on earth.
I wonder what our distinguished Progressive (Republican!) Presidend Teddy Roosevelt would say about you calling him a Communist. Really, the only question is whether he'd shot you or beat you with his bare hands.
Hopeless. You are one of those people who, in a conversation, simply waits for the very first chance to start talking again, listening to not a word the other person has said because you're so busy thinking about your brilliant response, the one that will 'turn on the light' for the other person. A bore, in other words.
By the way, I had no idea he was surrounded by Marxists his whole life. His granny looked like a nice old white lady to me, and he attended Harvard and that bastion of Freidmanite, free-market economics, the UofC. Of course, like British intelligence post WWII, it's probably riddled with Marxists and pinko commies.
In the end, it does not matter. As many on this board have so rightly said, the president is a puppet for the people in charge. Someone above alluded to this, but said they didn't know what 'Their' agenda is: it's pretty simple. It's like 1984, when Smith's interrogator says, to paraphrase, That the sole reason they are in power is to stay in power FOREVER. I have been a lifelong REPUBLICAN going back to Reagan's second term, every election, every candidate, but it appears from where I sit that the two parties are just different brand names for the same beer which the hoi polloi with fight over on bullshit sideshow antics like abortion, gay rights, wars, illegal immigrants, even the president himself, with one side attacking while the other vigorously defends and all the while the beer makers count their profit. Obama is a wet dream for the people in charge, because the traditional Left will defend him to the while the right grows ever more batshit crazy with legitimate frustration, much like old-school Republicans would go nuts when 'ChristoFascists' would defend Bush and his moronic policies at any turn. I don't support Obama, I utterly despise him and wish him gone, but the reasons are that he has sold the American people up the river for the chosen few, the banksters, the stakeholders, the connected and the insiders, all while wrapping it up in a lie entitled 'I care'.
We probably agree more either of us realizes...I fucking hate him and I hated McCain nearly as much. Faced with two awful choices I went with McCain.
I have to believe that someone can fix the system or it is time to take out blunt instruments and start striking the leaders over their heads.
And yes every single influence on the "Messiah" has been from the Marxist side of the aisle. I do not like others believe that there is much difference between fascists and communists. Both want my freedom. Both of them can kiss my ass and ultimately as hopeless as this is to say I will say... Molon Labe motherfuckers.
Really, dude, lay off the weed. Propping up Goldman, buying up AIG and GM - those are not the actions of a Marxist. As others have pointed out, this is FASCIST or CORPORATIST, not Marxist. A Marxist would have nationalised GM and AIG, let Goldman fail, and protected workers' jobs. It wouldn't have been cheaper than what was done, and probably wouldn't have been any more successful, but it would have been DIFFERENT.
Face it - Eisenhower was mostly right, but now it's the military-financial complex, as American industry has been hollowed out. It's Goldman and BankAmerrillwide on one side, and General Dynamics, Boeing, and UT on the other. They're calling the shots, and Bush and Obama both are capering monkeys dancing to these organists' tune. Businesses don't call the shots in a Marxist state, but they do in fascist ones. Add in the complete erosion of civil rights under the Orwellian "Patriot Act" and the increased goonery of the TSA, and it's only a matter of time before the jackboots are sounding in the streets.
interesting debate.
so mr anon, i take it that you *don't* believe our current president (community organizer) was influenced by 'spread the wealthers' (pick your favorite label, whatever...), and that you *don't* believe he is currently acting in that manner?
personally i think he's a complete puppet of an effective elite, and hasn't quite figured that out yet. and while i can't figure out what *their* agenda is, it will undoubtedly cost me more than it will help me.
i'd have a beer with him, but his policies scare the hell outta me.
You're a fucking moron. He's not a Marxist, he is a fascist. The closest he gets to socialism is National Socialism, but I'm not saying he's a Nazi. But like those folks, O's aligned himself with the business interests, be they Big Pharma, the health insurance companies, banks, the military industrial complex for whom he extended the war. Hitler aligned with the Junkers, Farben, and all the other German industrialists to the point workers had to carry work cards that bound them to their companies. Your boss had complete power whether to hire, fire, let you go and it was ALL THEIR CHOICE. No quitting for the German worker, was verboten. Obama is a fascist and his rise was predicted in the book THE FOURTH TURNING, if you consider him to be the first GenX president rather than a last-Boomer as he actually is. The pragmatism of the GenX latch-key kids.
And no, he doesn't intentially seek to destroy, that's an infantile, immature (Right wing) read. He simply seeks to get reelected using the politics of expediency. He has no inner core, just like Bill Clinton. He believes in nothing, save himself and saving his own skin. He is President DoucheBag.
Practicing his bad politics, he's a one-termer who will ultimately lose by exposing his left flank to a withering primary challenge and the rise of a 3rd party contender.
hehe...Ah the sophisiticated argument about the differences between socialism and marxism....how many angels are dancing on the needle bullshit. There is NO difference both steal away your freedom in the interest of being able to make better decisions than you. In your case that might be true.
When someone is not honest and Obama is anything but honest you are forced to judge them by the company they keep. All of Obama's influences are decidedly Marxist...from his parents to his grandfather to his mentors to his friends and allies. You probably don't want to believe this clownfuck is a marxist because you probably were one of the dumbasses who voted for him based on his "promise" for change. How is that change working out for you?
We should be so lucky to think he is so fucking stupid that all this destruction is not intentional. But sorry clownboy your guy is an evil bastard and it was plainly evident for those of us who looked. Now suck it up and admit to the world that you believed all of Bambi's bullshit.
Just like all Marxists he is believes that you cannot make an Omelet without breaking a few eggs.
Why are Righties so brain-damaged? Why can you not understand the difference between MARXISM and FASCISM? Marx criticized the bourgeoisie class and all that capitalism implied, of private companies (mostly banks) over The People. Mussolini gets Obama perfectly straight:
Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power.
If we're equating Marxism with communism or socialism, Obama would have wiped out the people's debt in a total bastardization of contract law, a la Lula or Chavez, at the price of the companies. Instead, Obama's Treasury has borrowed against the future of America to back the banks while requiring the people to continue being responsible for their own debt. Privatized profits and socialized losses is FASCISM. BTW, fascism is not about police states, it is about economic policy. Like communism, it often (usually?) comes with a police state, but it is not necessary to the concept.
I agree that the too close cooperation between Government, banks and corporations is fascism especially as practiced in Germany 1870-1920. So also is the too high leverage in the banking system based on foolish collateralization decisions a parallel to the German banks of that era.
So is the closed off to the rest of society thin closing ranks of the oligarchs.
When it all was going over the falls in a barrel they turned to a charismatic wall paper hanger they were sure they could control
There are some interesting arguments in your thesis, but using epithets based on the opinion of others discredits you. This is a great blog and we should be open to all opinions, including yours and mine.
Ok, but also keep in mind much of this nonsense was initiated by Bush:
“I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system,” Bush told CNN television, saying he had made the decision “to make sure the economy doesn’t collapse.”
Yup and Republicans positively danced in the corruption surrounding them in DC, instead of doing something about cleaning it up. It appears that none of the politicians on either side were smart enough to realize that they were playing right into the hands of those who would like to destroy this country.
Obama is the leader of that group.
Romney= more big government spending. Check his record in MASS. Huge healthcare entitlement that they cant pay for.
You're aware that the Democrats controlled about 85% of the legislature during Romney's 4-year term, right?
And not just Democrats - Massachusetts Democrats.
And yes, RomneyCare is an epic disaster. But the alternative was a single-payer 2006 ballot initiative that would have almost certainly passed 70-30 so yeah, given the options I'll take RomneyCare over being plopped into the "public" health system in MA.
Romney is certainly open to a fair chunk of criticism on his liberalism, but for Pete's sake let's cut the dude some slack given the looney bin he had to preside over. Seriously folks, let's not confuse Massachusetts with the USA or even the real world.
yeah in fact lets just shrink down the U.S.A down to Texas.. and just keep that one star instead of 50
I'm still holding out hope for a Lone Star secession, personally.
Sounds good. Bring on Sarah Palin. Energy independence which means hundreds of billions stays in the USA instead of being sent overseas.That would do wonders for this economy.
except by that point China will own most of it so we'll be making nuclear energy here for their profits!!!
roflmao, on my yearly review, i worked out such a scenario, athough, the probability is alot lower than yours, imho, you're way off on unemployment...........
i do agree though oil is still the big risk, inflation if when it comes will be energy forms, no other, over 100 and we got major problems, thus, i really see dollar support to dampen commodity prices, or profits go bye bye bye-
Interesting premise; not your analysis of the economics but that this situation keeps Obama up at night. That assumption would imply that he understood economics and finance which he clearly doesn't. What should keep him up at night is Iran.
The only thing keeping Barry O up at night is Michelle.
Ditto that.
There are rumors that he gets up at night, he looks himself in the mirror and gives one of the "fisted left hand, arm bent at 90%, elbow pointing to the floor, swing downwards" and screaming "yeees." Just like Tiger putting a 30 footer.
He is still in campaign mode. He just can't believe he is the President.
"He just can't believe he is the President."
And niether can I!
Giddie Uppp!!
Burns and Miller had a choice and didn't dampen inflation, why would Bernanke be any different?
Hey, Reagan gave me a tax cut too!!
Better than 50:50 IMO. It won't be Palin though, it will be Romney.
Romney >>>>>>>>>>>> Palin
...but most people I know are freaked out by Mormons. Just sayin.
"...but most people I know are freaked out by Mormons."
Dude, have you seen what's in the Whitehouse now? If people aren't freaked out by that, then nothing will freak them.
At this point you can be anything from anywhere and won't matter.
Maybe Tom Cruise could do a
better job at being
president?
He did help get tens of
thousands of kids of
psychotropic mind-altering
drugs.
Bad for big pharma but good
for kids souls.
We should consider his
strengths.
Romney is a liberal with an R after his name... look at what his healthcare did to MA. He's just as bad as all the rinos and dems currently in office.
If Palin would embrace Ron Paul's ideals she'd have a shot.. as it is .. she's still too liberal on some things.
Ron Paul should just run as a democrat to jazz it up
I think if an economic crisis can give us our first black president an even worse economic crisis can give us our first Mormon. Or hockey mom.
you hit the nail on the head, Cursive. I think Romney's Mormon background will eventually be his downfall as a widely popular candidate. People are deeply suspicious of Mormons.
also, as a comment on Bernanke's plans to raise rates to choke off inflation, I expect Ben to draw on what he's learned as a student of the depression. Rates were raised too early because the pols were worried about inflation. It choked off a nascent recovery and threw the country back into recession. My guess is Ben tolerates abnormally high inflation for some period to ensure that a recovery has taken hold before even thinking about raising rates. He will not make the same mistake. We'll probably get an inflation scare at some point over the next year, but the prevailing force is still debt deflation and Ben knows this. I think all the talk of a meaningful rise in rates in 2010 is off base. A guess says we're at least 2-3 years from seeing anything above 1%. And as rates do come up, they will rise very slowly.
People are deeply suspicious of Mormons.
It's that extra "m"....
Here is Bernanke's fate Chunky et all.
Things will go so wrong, that BB while trying to plug one hole many others will start leaking.
It is 3:30 am on a Wednesday 201? and while thinking hard for his next move, he realizes that it's check mate time.
His final solution? His glock 40. A templar shot angling upwards 23%.
"People are deeply suspicious of Mormons"
It's the underwear...uh, sorry...The Garment.
Romney will never get the support of the Tea Party which will seal his fate. He is seen as part of the problem. Palin's strength is not her wonkishness indeed we love her specifically because she hasn't lost sight of what is important in life. Wonkish types have foregotten family, friends, and why it is we love this country.
This is why Obama will be back. Tea Party morons will split the Republican party in half.
..and continue to ignore Ron Paul.. which is why you can't take the repub party seriously
Palin = viagra votes.
At least Romney was a successful businessman - but at this stage in the game who cares.