The election is over. It’s time for leadership and decisive action. Yes, there are winners and losers and promises to be kept. Six billion dollars was spent on elections in total and the money given to support candidates is not charity but an effort to purchase some modicum of influence. No problem with that for that has been the game since the birth of the republic and long before that in other political entities. If the “fiscal cliff” and its potential impact is as serious as some opine then leadership is needed to set the course of real action. President Obama, if you believe that the fiscal crisis is the most urgent problem, you will choose Erskine Bowles as your Secretary of Treasury because he has the ability to reach across party lines and get to rational levels of compromise. Mr. Bowles has the respect of party leaders and, most importantly, his plainspokenness is needed to get the American people to understand the rudiments of the looming financial debacle.
Archive for the ‘2012 Election’ Category
Notes From Underground: Erskine Bowles For U.S. Treasury Secretary = A Big Stock Market Rally
November 15, 2012Notes From Underground: Will Parliament’s Dissolution Become the Beginning of the Solution?
November 14, 2012Last night , Prime Minister Noda decided to call for new elections in Japan and that automatically ends this session of the DIET. The elections will take place in a month and the present unpopularity of the DPJ means that the LDP is the favorite. It seems that Noda was willing to call elections on the promise that the new parliament would work toward some type of election reform. Hopefully some of the readers of NFU will help fill in the specifics about the issues of election reform. The YEN was sold off on the news of Parliament’s dissolution because the present strength of the YEN and its negative impact on Japanese manufacturing is certain to be an issue. The LDP’s leader, Shinzo Abe, has been very vocal about the BOJ/MOF doing more to raise inflation in the Japanese economy and to be more aggressive in efforts to weaken the YEN. While the YEN weakened, the NIKKEI index held its overnight gains even as the S&Ps, DOW and NASDAQ were knocked lower following President Obama’s press conference.
Notes From Underground: A Response To The Berkshire Boys (Putting Contemporary Civilization Into The Barbarous Relic)
May 7, 2012Quick Hitter: The financial markets steadied themselves today after the initial “shock” of yesterday’s European elections. The EUROPEAN DEBT MARKETS showed resolve as both the BTPs and OAT futures performed better than the BUNDS and the EURO rallied back to almost unchanged as the market awaits the discussions between Merkel and Hollande, as well as further word about attempts to create a working government in Greece. At the end of the day, a crisis was averted but as all our readers know Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Italy are all still on the boil. So, while the heat was turned down NOTHING HAS REALLY CHANGED … so it goes.
Notes From Underground: MAY 6 — A Flash Crash For the European Political Elite
May 6, 2012Notes From Underground: No Box Can Contain These Thoughts
April 30, 2012Notes From Underground: If You Go Chasing Rabbits
April 23, 2012Notes From Underground: Let’s Assume We Have A Can Opener…
April 15, 2012As regular readers of NOTES are well aware, I have been very critical of market participants like George Soros and their sanguine views of the European DEBT CRISIS. Many analysts like Jim Cramer have spent the last years waving the debt problem away. First, it was Greece was too small to have an impact on Europe. Ireland was too small and besides was ring-fenced by a bad bank structure. Portugal was smaller than Greece, thus nothing to be concerned about. Italy and Spain were possible problems but many were listening to the flirtations of the Chinese, who, time after time, made solicitations about purchasing European Debt. (By the way, we still haven’t seen the Chinese Sovereign Wealth Fund enter the fray.) If all else failed, European financial leaders were too exposed to the EURO to allow the European Monetary Structure to collapse. Germany would not allow the work of Helmut Kohl and others to be just another failed attempt at a unified Europe.
Notes From Underground: The Meaninglessness of IOWA and Other Thoughts
January 4, 2012While the mainstream media desires to fill time it seems that Iowa has become less important this year as a barometer of the national mood. The agrarian sector of the economy is very healthy and with their stomachs full, the people of Iowa can ponder and think and be much more philosophical in terms of candidate selection. Rick Santorum can play to the high-mindedness of the social conservative agenda because in Iowa those voters have two loaves of bread under each arm. It is much tougher to be concerned about the ideological nature of life when you are fighting in a line to pick up an unemployment check or applying for a job.