Truthfully I don’t really feel like reviewing the nonsense that transpired last night, which was supposed to pass as the State of the Union address. I am actually part of that majority of Americans who like President Obama personally, but disapprove of his policies. I think he is extremely bright and likable guy as well as a true America success story. His speech of last night was almost hard to watch and had me screaming at the television on several occasions. As I sat there thinking about it after its conclusion, I decided I felt the same way after watching Michael Jordan’s acceptance speech as he entered the Basketball Hall of Fame. If you didn’t see perhaps the greatest basketball player of all time that day, he not only invited his high school basketball coach but also the student who remained on the team after the coach cut Jordan from the team. Basically, 30 years after high school, Jordan is still so bitter and petty that he found the need to rub the coach’s nose in his decades old decision over his player choices. This, on a day when Jordan should have been basking in the glow of his greatness. A few other individuals who ticked Jordan during those 30 years were also taken to the woodshed in his “acceptance” speech.
If you watched the speech yourself last night, ask yourself who was spared the woodshed in Obama’s speech.
–He wagged his finger at the Supreme Court Justices in the front row for their foolish bench decisions.
–The Republicans got a scolding for being obstructionist.
–Senate Democrats took a beating for not passing legislation as he wanted it passed.
–Bush was once again reminded (along with everyone else) that Obama inherited this whole mess but luckily the new President saved us from another Great Depression. Actually, Obama reminded us that he saved us from a second Great Depression a bunch of times.
What caused my loudest outburst was when he announced he would set the goal of doubling U.S. exports in five years. As an economist is was the most ludicrous of his many claims or promises (the 2,000,000 people who supposedly got or kept jobs thanks to the stimulus package was pretty funny too). A couple of worthwhile facts to understand is that it took us 230 years to arrive at the export level we currently enjoy and that the fastest the United States has ever doubled exports was 12 years. And that 12 years just so happened to be the greatest period of economic and industrial expansion in American history. In summary, I thought last night’s speech was just foolishness and fiction.
With all of that said, I will have a newsletter sending on Monday morning and I will wait for that longer format to outline my real feelings and reasons for the direction of the economies and markets.
On another note, I was sent a YouTube video featuring an interview with Robert Kiyosaki who authored the best seller “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”. This is actually a book I bought and read when it was published and there was a few decent nuggets that many non-financial readers would benefit from. My only beef was that the book really only needed to be about 12 pages long, plus I find him personally tedious to listen to.
The reason it was sent to me was because one of the comments envoked my name in reference to the fact that Kiyosaki is now only mimicing things that I and others were saying three years ago. Here is the comment and the link if you would like to check it out yourself:
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfx43J0wzlU
CaronteEmpire (2 weeks ago)
Bahia82 (2 weeks ago)