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My Take on the 2012 Presidential Election
My Take on the 2012 Presidential Election. As I write this, I am sitting at the San Francisco consulate of the People’s Republic of China, awaiting the issuance of my business visa. Since I will soon be in the neighborhood, I plan to interview some companies that I want to buy on the next upswing in the global financial markets. The Defense Department has asked me to call on my senior contacts in the People’s Liberation Army to try and get a read on the Middle Kingdom’s next likely president, Xi Jinping. Also, it has been ages since I had a decent Peking Duck.
It seems that whenever you do anything with China, there are always scads of people around. I had to wait in line on cold and foggy Geary Street an hour just to get into the building, pestered by assorted anti-government demonstrators. I’m now inside with my laptop, but my number is A288, and so far they have only gotten up to A24. It looks like I have a long haul.
Therefore, I am going to take advantage of the very rare luxury of some extra free time and speculate at length on the prospects of another president, that of Barrack Hussein Obama. Having spent time in the White House Press Corp under Carter and Reagan, I have some inside knowledge about how whole election process works.
The most important factor to affect global financial markets next year and years beyond will be the outcome of the 2012 presidential election. As card carrying paid up members of the Mad Hedge Fund Trader network, I therefore have not only the responsibility, but the obligation to give you my forecast about how this is going to play out.
To believe that President Obama is anti-business and bad for the economy is lunacy of the highest order. Barack knows more American history than either you or I will ever forget. He is well aware that a poor economic performance has been the primary creator of one term presidents since WWII.
Kennedy was assassinated, Johnson retired early, Carter was demolished by the stagflation caused by the Iranian revolution and the second oil shock, and George H.W. Bush was turfed out by a minor recession, despite winning the first Gulf War. Therefore, the economy had to be Obama’s top priority from the first day in office. To do otherwise was for Obama to risk becoming one of the countless jobless himself.
I believe that the economy that Obama inherited was so broken that it will take decades to fix, if ever. It is easy to forget that virtually the entire financial system was bankrupt, the credit markets had seized up, and the ATM’s were two weeks away from failing to dispense cash. The government newly found itself a major investor in the country’s 20 largest banks, General Motors, and AIG.
But the reflationary measures he was able to get through a reluctant congress were too small to engineer the recovery he needed. The boldness of the moves seen during the Great Depression was sadly absent. Remember, Franklin Roosevelt directly hired 3 million men during his first two years through the Civilian Conservation Corps, immediately preventing 5 million from immediate starvation. This was when the population was less than half of what it is today.
To a large extent, Obama has become the fall guy for the excesses of earlier administrations. The big problems facing the country are long term and structural. The $15 trillion national debt is the product of 30 years of tax cuts and spending increases, primarily for defense.
Our runaway health care costs can be traced by our failure to nationalize health care when the rest of the developed did so in the late 1940’s, enabling them to keep their medical expenses to two thirds of ours, with better results. Fear of communism was the reason. That saddled corporate America with the costs, eating into our competitiveness.
Social security and Medicare were financially flawed from the day they were launched, and modern day politicians were loath to touch them once they became sacred cows. None of these intractable problems are amenable to a quick fix.
All of this leaves Obama’s popularity in the polls falling, going into one of the most acrimonious and hard fought elections in American history. Obama has become the Jackie Robinson of American politics, the first African-American to play in major league baseball. The better the job he does, the more people hate him. When the stock market doubled after he came into office, he received none of the credit. When the Tea Party the threat to default on Treasury bonds prompted a 25% plunge, he got all of the blame. Robinson died at 53, largely due to stress.
If he can’t pull out of his tailspin, I believe the president will withdraw his candidacy, and throw it open to other contenders. That is what Lyndon Johnson did in 1968 due to declining health and an unpopular war. When you try to push history forward too quickly, sometimes it bites you back. The election of Obama was such a generational leap in so many ways that some retracement was inevitable. Blame it all on the excesses of the previous administration, which were many. After all, the Democrats don’t want to commit suicide.
There are two potential candidates. I believe that Hillary Clinton was given the safe position as Secretary of State precisely to hold her in reserve as a backup candidate in 2012 in case something happened to Obama. People of both political parties agree that she has done a spectacular job managing America’s role in the Arab spring, providing military support to drive Khadafy out of power, and keeping the Chinese buying out gargantuan debt issues. But as a presidential candidate, she is not without baggage.
The dark horse in the race is Michael Bloomberg, the highly popular mayor of New York. If there was ever a politician who can change his spots quickly, it is Michael. A lifetime Democrat, he switched parties to win as a Republican in a Democratic town. He could flip flop again, or bolt to form a third party.
I have known Michael since he went door to door on Wall Street seeking funding to start his data business to replace the aging Quotrons. A more quixotic mission there never was.
Yet he succeeded wildly, making himself a billionaire many times over, proving his credentials as an entrepreneur and a businessman, and creating an urban legend. An early adopter, I have personally paid him over $1 million in fees for the past 20 years for his versatile machine, as have most other hedge fund managers.
Where do the Republicans stand in all of this? They have to spend a year appealing to the conservative base, attempting to outmaneuver each other in a marathon to the right. Then they only have two months to swerve back to the middle to win the election. They have a somewhat hopeless task, and is why we have so many two term presidents.
What Rick Perry harangues about is popular in libertarian, oil based Texas, but will they wear it in Ohio, Washington, or Florida? I think not. Mitt Romney’s Mormon origins leave his party’s Christian base cold, and he is unelectable without them. Both these men are presenting themselves as modern day incarnations of Ronald Reagan. But I knew Ronnie for decades, first as an aspiring governor of California, and a Reagan they are not. I can’t imagine Perry telling me an off color Irish joke, as Reagan did frequently, after the cameras stopped rolling.
The rest of the field are just “also rans”. On top of this, the power of the presidency as a campaign tool is not to be underestimated. Air Force One versus a chartered bus? Give me a break.
For those who wish to participate in Macro Millionaire, my highly innovative and successful trade mentoring program, please email John Thomas directly at madhedgefundtrader@yahoo.com . Please put “Macro Millionaire” in the subject line, as we are getting buried in emails.
To see the data, charts, and graphs that support this research piece, as well as more iconoclastic and out-of-consensus analysis, please visit me at www.madhedgefundtrader.com . There, you will find the conventional wisdom mercilessly flailed and tortured daily, and my last two years of research reports available for free. You can also listen to me on Hedge Fund Radio by clicking on “This Week on Hedge Fund Radio” in the upper right corner of my home page.
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What garbage -you should be writing for CNBC or Fox News. or maybe the New York Times. Yeah, Ron Paul is an also ran -so we need Hillary or Rick Perry. Why don't you state the obvious -4 more years of an establishment fraud politician and we might as well concede the end of America as we know it, depression and the inevitable World War to follow.
Wow... The ZH crowd must all be on the same menstrual cycle...
You girls (comment section) must really be PMS-ing, today...
Since I reserve my commenting to the one thing I do know about - electioneering - let me just say I was SHOCKED by the writers analysis of the 2012 election outcome. His forecast overlooks little; the outcome is guaranteed.
Voting is a shallow, briefly considered episode for the bulk of the American Electorate. Their voting habits are dictated by MSM - who gladly synthesize The Opinion for the Typical American Voter - and, their neighbors; family; church group; etc.
Roll the credits, it's 4 more years of Barry.
Voting is a shallow, briefly considered episode for the bulk of the American Electorate.
That comment doesn't pass the hanging chad test (ya know, the election that no lefty will ever let go of?). :D
+1
The rest is purely to help people feel good....heck, look at Congress, how did ANY of those bastards make it though last Fall elections. B
You're sitting in San Francisco and your going to China For Beijing Duck? You either have not been to China, or do not know where to eat in the Bay Area. Maybe both from how you suck Made in China Hinde T in this meandering drivle.
Some advice. Put some dirt in your mouth. Take a swig off a bottle of hoisin sauce, and then chew on something else. Like your hotel bed post in Beijing.
That or go to Vancouver for the real thing.
The BS Meter hit the top with this sentence: "Barack knows more American history than either you or I will ever forget."
I have to agree with you about the Vancouver Chinese food being better than mainland ... nothing beats a good HK joint. MHFT are you kidding me about NoMobama. This was the biggest Pepsi PR scam yet. He did nothing he promised. I too was scammed, donated and voted for him. The only change was no change. There was no choice last election.. no one wanted to see the moose hunter take the yoke after granpa got sick. I pity all the fools that voted for change..myself included. You must want to keep your DC previleges to write this article.
thank you mr. t. my thoughts exactly. ron paul may at least try to do what he says he will, at least until the assassins (mossad, cia, ...) get him and his v.p. hello president boehner.
For a man whose resusme could be written on a matchbook cover with enough room left over to land a 747, BO is doing as well as I feared he would. Cheerup folks, only 14 more months of the tsumami election news crap left, if I listen to one more projection or one more political ANAList, I fear I shall go insane, for all this BS matters not a bit, the fact that a majority of Americans don't vote is a testament to their intelligence....
MHFT off his meds again
Tyler, did you give us this for a laugh? What a friggin retard! Too many things to make fun of and so few pixels, but wow!
you continue to be the biggest fucking tool on this site, second only to "george washington" and his truther bullshit.
If you get your visa in Hong Kong, you do not have to wait, you can get it without ever leaving your hotel room.
...shirley it was a satirical piece...wasn't it?
"And stop calling me Shirley!". Here's a Perry one-liner from yesterday. Someone asked him if he would support ANY form of gun control. Perry: "Yeah...use both hands." 1860----->2012.
Hey MHFT, I head back to China in a couple of weeks, so perhaps we can meet for dinner and you can share the unique insights that you must have on ending world hunger and promoting whirled peas? Dinner's on me.
Sorry for the second post people but this article by an obvious tool seemed worthy of a second, sarcasm laden post. Oh, and Tyler, please add a -1 rating for obvious kool-aid horseshit like this. Thank you.
Madhedgefund trader says as he takes off his knee pads from sucking O's BBC. What a fucking putz.
I put in a call to my old friend Den Xaioping to see if he could move you up the queue a little in the Consulate;
They said he was busy, but he would get right onto it......
Deng? I don't like to brag, but we used to hang out together in the old days at the Laundromat playing monkey-butt soup.
While you're waiting for your visa, why don't you write this excrement on the embassy walls instead of posting here.
This was just posted as an article to major blogs (Huff Po, Big Gov), but you get it first.
PRESIDENT OBAMA “MOVING TO AVOID POLITICAL SUICIDE”
The ultra-liberal Huffington Post blared that President Obama: “MOVING TO AVOID POLITICAL SUICIDE"; as the White House abandoned efforts to pass his American Jobs Act and went into a maximum defensive mode to save the President’s imploding re-election campaign following the loss of Anthony Weiner’s ultra-Democrat New York House seat and the launch of an inter-party rebellion to deny Obama the Democratic nomination for President.
The President took his best shot at trying to sell America his vision for new stimulus spending in last week’s joint- session of Congress speech the main-stream-media adoringly termed: “forceful yet plain-spoken message on jobs and the economy”. Hope for the bill’s passage wilted on Tuesday with front page article: “Support for Big Government Jobs Programs has Evaporated” simultaneously published in the conservative Big Government and the ultra-liberal Huffington Post. The story revealed a 50% opinion poll plunge in “likely voter” support for spending on job creation has doomed much of the bill.
Legislative losses can cause political damage to any Presidential Administration; but the stunning blow last night as voters in New York’s 9th Congressional District, formerly held by disgraced Democrat Anthony Weiner, reversed a nearly 90-year tradition by electing a Republican has begun what Andrew Breitbart termed a “Civil War Against Obama”.
The first hint there might be a coup d'état brewing against the President by the extremist wing of his party came ten days ago in an Op Ed by Mat Stoller: “What Democrats can do about Obama” published in the liberal “Salon” website. Stoller is Fellow of the non-profit Roosevelt Institute that is devoted to carrying forward the most collectivist legacy and values of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. His editorial comments are a clear warning to Obama his party’s elites stand ready to decapitate his re-election campaign if his plummeting prospects threatened to drag down other Democrats in the 2012:
“From the debt ceiling fiasco to the recent rescheduling of a jobs speech at the behest of Speaker Boehner, it has not been a good summer for President Obama. Like Chinese water torture, Gallup's daily tracking poll has shown a steady and unrelenting drip of bad news. He has been in and out of the high 30s for his approval, and in the low to mid-50s for his disapproval. George W. Bush's approval rating didn't drop this low until Katrina hit. And on the economy, 71 percent of Americans disapprove of how Obama is doing his job. Even among reliably Democratic groups -- union households, women and young people -- he's now unpopular.
No one, not even the president's defenders, expect his coming jobs speech to mean anything. When the president spoke during a recent market swoon, the market dropped another 100 points. Democrats may soon have to confront an uncomfortable truth, and ask whether Obama is a suitable choice at the top of the ticket in 2012. They may then have to ask themselves if there's any way they can push him off the top of the ticket.
Stoller and other Democratic insiders are still seething that Obama nearly ruined the Party in 2010, with the worst electoral performance since 1894. According to the Gallup poll, from 2008 to 2010 the fastest growing demographic party label was “former Democrat”. Obama took over the party in 2008 with 36% of Americans considering themselves Democrats and within just two years the number had dropped to a 22-year low of only 31%. Stoller threatens:
It would be one thing if Obama were failing because he was too close to party orthodoxy. Yet his failures have come precisely because Obama has not listened to Democratic Party voters. He continued idiotic wars, bailed out banks, ignored luminaries like Paul Krugman, and generally did whatever he could to repudiate the New Deal. The Democratic Party should be the party of pay raises and homes, but under Obama it has become the party of pay cuts and foreclosures. Getting rid of Obama as the head of the party is the first step in reverting to form.
Those insiders are especially suspicious the Tea Partyers that Barack Obama has fomented; look allot like the Reagan Democrats that Jimmy Carter fomented. After the Carter wipeout; it took Democrats 28 years to regain a veto-proof majority in government. The lock they gained on absolute power in 2008; vanished after just two years. It is the Republicans who increasingly stand poised to capture veto-proof majorities next year that could potentially last for decades.
The shocking loss of Weiner seat is already being blamed on the President. His fundraising will soon shrink as several candidates will file to challenge Obama in the coming primaries. As the acrid smell of rebel bomb-fires fill the Washington air; President Barack Hussein Obama had best be hunkered down in the White House Situation Room, with what’s left of his loyalists cadre, reading up on how to avoid the “Arab Spring” failures of Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak and Libya’s Colonel Muammar Ghadhaffi.
Feel free to forward this Op Ed and follow our Blog at www.chrissstreetandcompany.com
Barry has done something I never thought possible. He's f**ked up so badly he's pi**ed off everyone. (usually this would make me take a second look but this clown doesn't require that)Not only has he doubled down on a crazy hearts and minds approach in Afghanistan but he's bought into every ignorant Keynesian economic approach that has failed for decades. Even his supporters (mad hedge fund trader) are saying let's dump him for someone else. (before we are crushed again!)Look to yesterdays house vote and see the future.
This dumb bunny makes the TOTUS look like he has a clue.
take Leo and Robo with you:
a) they can blow you on your way so you can join the mile club
b) we get some great stock pick ideas; chinese solar etc..
MHFT: I rated your article a 1 because of factual errors that you are smart enough to be aware of and yet seem bent upon disseminating.
The percent of national income dedicated to defense is low compared to historical averages. http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/past_spending
I hope you know that national defense is an enumerated power of the Federal Government, where as the real growth areas of the Federal budget are funding activities not enumerated in the Constitution. Sure, the defense budget, including DHS, could and should be cheaper, but with less than 1% of the population in uniform and an aversion to using nuclear weapons, it probably could not be smaller.
I will read one more of your articles to give you another chance, after that, I will ignore you.
MHFT,
Are you freakin' kidding me? What is the deal with all these progressive types constantly lauding Obama as the wisest man to walk the earth since Aristotle. The last time I checked, this man cannot even complete a sentence without his telemprompter.
The sad thing about MHFT is that it appears he actually believes his bullshit. In reality, he is just like many of these successful fund managers and business people in America. They love to talk about free markets and free societies, yet in reality, they believe in the scientific dictatorship of a small so-called enlightened few directing our personal and economic lives. There is another name for this type of system, fascism. Who the hell do he and his ilk think they are? Gods? I am fed up with these individuals telling us how to live, that they will take care of everything if we just let them.
Clearly there are many dumbed down Americans that don't know their ass from a hole in the ground, but it is their God-given right to live that way. If the arrogant bastard elite, who apparently only care for ever increasing profits no matter the human cost, would give up their dreams of controlling us all, life wouldn't be that bad. I am done ranting for now.
In the words of Ace Ventura, "I prefer the nonfiction section, thanks."
The idea that Obama isn't antibusiness? Huh? Have you ever heard of Gibson Guitars? Armed raids by Marxists, here in America, and you think this president is wonderful? Good for you, ass hat.
Also it seems that the author is unclear on the end of the JFK term as well. You may like to look up Executive Order 11110 and start learning about how banking works.
Tyler, can we please pull the plug on this bullcrap and return to reality?
Thanks
every time I think I've seen his worst piece, every time I'm wrong.
we are in a new era of corporate keynsianism - to which Obama is a card carrying member (as are all the candidates)
one additional note: Obama is 50 years old - been a sitting as Senator/President of the US for 14 percent of his adult life - it's time to drop the "inherited" mantra.
Weak.
That’s nothing MHT, I’m sitting on Air Force One right now getting blown by a supermodel I picked up Monday while tearing my broker a new one at Cantor’s 911 trading floor fundraiser (guess who won that testosterone contest?). You see, the president himself has asked me to personally fix Europe and he’s loaned me his ride so that those pansies in Brussels know I mean business.
Since I have mastered the chakra-leveraging art of extending the male orgasm from seconds to hours (taught to me by the Dali Lama himself) I am luckily (for you) at liberty to wax philosophic about the superiority of central planning and the wisdom of socializing all economic activity that doesn’t affect my life personally.
If I’ve learned anything from being a rock star, fighter pilot, movie star and Washington insider (aside from the fact that I wasted my time with that physics/applied biology Phd!) it’s that 99% of the people in this country don’t know what the fuck they’re doing. The greatest economic prosperity and stability, human health and happiness is achieved when people who do know shit from shine (that’s a Navy expression) are in control and making the big decisions for everybody else. Root for some other team besides the Yankees if you must, shoot yourself in the foot by driving something other than the dead-sexy Chevy Volt if you want to look like a maverick but please leave the eating, housing, money, health and education decisions in your life to us experts (really us alpha-male experts but hey – I love the babes!). When the Tea-Party types bitch about monopoly war and dictatorship they’re really disparaging one-stop shopping, the ultimate team sport and elite leadership – not too goddamn patriotic or American when you think about it, is it?
So, in case it’s not obvious by now, Barrack Hussain Obama is far and away the 2012 presidential contender who is most like me (maybe not in the lady-killing department but you know he could kick up that game if he wanted to!). He’s just super-awesome in so many ways I tremble to think where this economy would be if he weren’t elected in 2008. In depth charts, figures and analysis supporting this thesis can accessed by fully paid-up subscribers to my site but right now I have to show Angela Merkel who’s boss. But if I get another sub-par braised saddle of dragon at the ECB luncheon I’m going to let these fops drop another rung down civilization’s ladder…
Great parody!
the winner
More, please.
"If voting could change anything, it would be illegal"
Graffiti on San Francisco alley wall.
hey asswipe, please stop slinging these excrements at us; what have we done to deserve it?
Who cares? Meet the new boss, same as the old boss... because they're both owned by Wall Street and the banks.
This article had the power of stopping me from what I was in the middle of at work and inspiring me to log onto my Zerohege account and to write this: "This article sucks balls."
I agree. I logged in just so I could give it one star. That's saying something as I'm pretty lazy feeling right now.
Second the motion. What a piece of drivel. I had already concluded that his market advice was lame, but this political stuff is even worse. Obama did not inherit:
- Tim Geithner (I should just stop there, pretty much says it all)
- Libya (Obama as a candidate: "The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation."
- Gulf Oil Spill
- Solyndra
- Social Security tax cuts (hey, Bush must have been right about tax cuts, so let's cut the revenue of the program that already doesn't have enough revenue)
- 30% increase in gov't spending from 2008 to 2011
But for the Obama apologists, it's always everybody else's fault. To some extent, preceding regimes did, of course, contribute to all this bad stuff, but Obama has contributed more than his fair share, too.
I did find interesting his prediction that Obama will step aside. Hard to believe that one, as the man's ego is gigantic. We'll see. I was, at the end, infinitely amused by his pitch for his service. Who in their right mind would want advice from this bozo?
You gotta fucking be kidding me! Tyler don't ever allow some shitbag collectivist to come in here and tell us lack of government is the problem. I can get this bs at huffpost. Really, you don't really believe a typical ZH reader wants to waste time reading this guy telling us the US should be more socialist? I feel violated by this article. At least put up a warning : This article written by hypocritical pro collectivist prick who got rich off capitalism, or something, geez.
I always assumed MHFT paid to put his posts there, as a form of advertising. I think lots of the contributors pay, and that is how Tyler profits from this site.
MHFT forgot the sarc tag.
Pure unadulterated excrement
Thanks for your take on politics madhedgefundtrader. You are probably 25-27 years older than me and you have been around a long time- by your own admission. In order for our life experiences to make sense, we must all have a framework. However, in my opinion, your picture is askew. Perry is not libertarian- he is the consumate politician- he is a fake. He will say and do what it takes to get elected. Dr. Ron Paul is the libertarian candidate from the State of Texas. He does not change his message and in the opinion of many he is not an "also ran". Thousands of us will be writing in Dr. Paul if he somehow fails to get the Republican nomination.
This guy clearly knows nothing about Perry. I've been active in Republican politics in Texas and have followed Perry for 20 years. He's horrible -a fake, a phony, a fraud, a pervert, the consummate politician. That being said,, looking at Clinton, Bush and Obama -he's probably going to win. God help this country.
"Perry is not libertarian- he is the consumate politician- he is a fake. He will say and do what it takes to get elected."
Exactly. Only someone who, like most, doesn't even know what a libertarian is would claim that Perry is one.
Individuals who might actually change the status quo are filtered out by the major party, mainstream media, and idiotic voter vetting process. Only if we had a physically attractive billionaire candidate with charisma would there be a chance of a boat rocker taking the White House.
You forgot he is Bilderberg approved as well.
where's the beef?
'Like Jackie Robinson, better job he does more people hate him,' LOL, YOU got to be kidding. Is this joke?
How did Obama do good job at all, he alienate base and wall street whore at expense of Americans. Maybe he do good job for your pocket book, you make money on your inside information from the President?
Well at least you can tell who ever ask you to write this you did it. LOL. And good job with order ignoring Ron Paul. First rate job.
Good God Almighty. That's the most laughable thing I've read all day. I really thought it was SATIRE until I got nearly to the end!
Well, thanks for the laughs anyway. But GEEZUS, if this isn't satire, you're in need of some serious therapy.