It seems the market has lost all confidence in the Obama administration’s policies, and rightfully so.  Every time he opens his mouth and moves his silver tongue the stock market shudders.  Tim Geithner doesn’t help, Bernanke comes off as the smart one in the group, and Press Secretary Gibbs is revealing himself as a two-bit hack when it comes to politics and communication.

You don’t single out the most highly visible characters on Wall Street, take a few back handed shots at them, and expect the market to have any trust in your leadership, especially when those shots follow the revelation that it’s Obama’s desire for capital gains rates to go up on nearly everyone.  Not to mention the fact that Obama wants to raise taxes on the “rich”; lest we forget that the “rich” are the ones still spending money these days.  Brilliant!

The fact that Gibbs is making any mention of Rush Limbaugh indicates that the administration is looking for a diversion from its own policy, or lack there-of.

The President tells the nation that it should go out and invest in stocks, even after his own treasury secretary (Geithner) goes on camera and single handily drops the market like an old pair of underwear with a rotten waistband.  No details for the financial sector, no bull market bounce for you, Mr. Geithner.

Further, Obama tells the public that the stock market shouldn’t be viewed as a “tracking poll”; obviously worried about how he and his administration are to be perceived when those monthly brokerage statements hit the mailbox.  The fact is, the stock market is the biggest tracking poll we have about our economic health (at least when it’s not manipulated by the government) of which the policy of Barack Obama narrowly guides.  Ask anyone with some skin in the market how their account is looking today and you’ll get a glimpse at those poll results.

Obama is a great speaker, to be sure, and the words he uses are well thought out, the sentences well structured, and the tone well managed.  However, at the end of the day, that’s all he’s got; a bunch of empty words with little real leadership and understanding of major problems needed to inject any substance into his rhetoric.

Economics, Finance, Investing Barack Husein Obama, Economics, Stock Market

I tried listening to Obama’s speech last night, but got distracted doing other things.

I must say, Barack Obama is one of the most eloquent speakers I’ve listened to in a long time.  He has a way of telling you what you want to hear while getting you on board with what he wants to accomplish.  But maybe that’s the problem, he wants to accomplish so much that he really doesn’t focus on any one issue long enough to tell you how he plans to bring the endeavor to fruition.

As many readers of The Corner Office know, I’m not a big fan of big government, and quite frankly I believe most in Washington D.C. need a history lesson, and I’m not talking about going back to the civil war era.  The last 15 to 20 years would be a good start.

I’m tired of hearing about what Obama inherited; I really don’t care, and it seems like he’s trying to proactively cover his backside if by chance these billions of dollars he just printed don’t work out.

I really want this country to get back to taking ownership for one’s own self, and I believe that in the end, that’s what truly empowers Americans.

President Obama is a great speaker, but his words lack substance; details of how we’re going to get from point A to point B and not end up wishing we were back at point A.

Economics, Politics Economics, Obama, Politics

I’ve been restraining myself for the last several months when I hear the talking heads refer to our economic woes in terms of a crisis.  “It’s so bad right now, and going to get worse.”

Yeah, it’s pretty bad, at least in terms of jobs.  Jobs are lost every day, and no one is safe.  Even those of us here in the Midwest where the peaks aren’t very sharp and the valleys aren’t that deep.

Just ask my buddy MJ who just got laid off for the second time in a matter of months.  What’s really irritating isn’t so much that he lost his job (don’t slight me for it buddy, I feel for you), it’s that the company hired him thinking they needed his technical expertise (he’s an engineer) to perform a specific role in the company, knowing the financial strengths and weaknesses of their balance sheet, and having some short-term idea of where the company was headed.

In short, if times go so bad that they needed to lay people off, why did they hire MJ in the first place just months ago?  To be certain, that’s a reflection of the company, not the employee.

I agree with MJ that things are getting worse, and not better, and there are a lot of good people losing jobs.  Luckily I’m not one of them yet, but MJ didn’t have any warning, either.  So who knows.

But is it a crisis?

The jobs numbers stink and they’re getting worse every day (the day they don’t get worse is when we turn the corner at the bottom, in my opinion).  But is this really a crisis?

The news clips lead you to believe that the sky is falling with unemployment rates on the order of 7-8%.  Personally I look at things from another perspective; 92-93% of the workforce still has a job.  I lean towards the glass-half-full part of the crowd.

Consumer prices have stabilized for the most part, energy prices have moderated and the government hasn’t jacked taxes through the roof (yet).

Consumer spending on the other hand, is way down, and it should be.  We went through a period cheap money, easy credit and euphoria.  The harder they rise, the harder they fall.

The consumer needs to strengthen their own financial situation and shore up their emergency funds before they start buying high-priced luxury items again, and I think this is healthy.

If you look past the jobs reports, things aren’t all that bad for those of us who take care of our own finances, save for those few who are in foreclosure and don’t deserve to be.

Yeah, times are tough, but this isn’t a crisis, and certainly not one the government can step in and fix overnight with the promise of artificially created jobs.  It could get a whole lot worse, even outside the employment numbers.

As for MJ?

He’ll be alright.  He’s a pretty tough guy who’s been knocked down before and picked himself up, all the stronger for it (a trait I’m slightly jealous of).

He’ll find a job (and if you need a good mechanical/manufacturing engineer in the Kansas City area, email me and I’ll patch you through) just like the rest of the recently unemployed will, and life will go on.

As for me, I’m polishing up the old resume.  Who knows, I might be next.

Business, Economics Economics, employment, jobs report