In Search of the Perfect Investment

I watched it collapse:

The last few days have been painful. But not unusual for the gyrations of this year’s uncertainty:

There is one difference: The morons in Washington. They are playing with fire.

Until the past day or so, most people assumed that the morons would do it. After all, the debt ceiling has been raised 102 times in American history — without this.

But now markets are reacting as though there’s some chance the U.S. will default on its bills. Not pay its employees. Not pay social security. Not pay the interest on its treasuries.

Credit default swaps on the U.S. dollar — a bet that the U.S. dollar will default — have more than doubled.

The value of treasuries has fallen.

Muriel who prepares my “Allocation” each week triumphantly said yesterday we were “UP” on the week, despite the cratering of stocks.

There were three reasons:

1. The Australia dollar has been skyrocketting. It’s now $1.10. I have a CD in Australia with Westpac. It  pays  6.3%. Let me know if you want an introduction to my wonderful lady at Westpac in Sydney.

2. The cash dividends I’ve received from the high-yielders — NLY, AGNC, ANH, etc. Dividends have more than made up for their stocks drop in price.

3. Gold.

In the long run, stock prices  reflect the value of corporate earnings. So far, about 189 S&P500 companies have reported earnings. 152 of them (80%) have beat EPS estimates and 141 (75%) have beat revenue estimates.

Visa is the biggest credit/debit card operation. It  just reported that worldwide spending on Visa credit and debit cards, adjusted for currency fluctuations, climbed 13 percent from the same period last year to $941 billion, the company said. Cross-border volume, a measure of spending by consumers outside their home countries, surged 14 percent. Processed transactions worldwide rose 11 percent to 13 billion as consumers continue to shift from cash and checks to electronic payments.

These are bullish numbers.

The Marx Brothers explain Washington, D.C. This is so right on, so bizarre….

For the priceless Groucho video, click here.

How did we get into this mess? By Robert Reich:

I thought I’d seen Washington at its worst. I was there just after Watergate. I was there when Jimmy Carter imploded. I was there during the government shut-down of 1995.

But I hadn’t seen the worst. This is the worst.

How can it be that with over 9 percent unemployment, essentially no job growth, widening inequality, falling real wages, and an economy that’s almost dead in the water — we’re locked in a battle over how to cut the budget deficit?

Part of the answer is a Republican Party that’s the most irresponsible and rigidly ideological I’ve ever witnessed.

Part of the answer is the continuing gravitational pull of the Great Recession.

But another part of the answer lies with the President — and his inability or unwillingness to use the bully pulpit to tell Americans the truth, and mobilize them for what must be done.

Barack Obama is one of the most eloquent and intelligent people ever to grace the White House, which makes his failure to tell the story of our era all the more disappointing and puzzling. Many who were drawn to him in 2008 (including me) were dazzled by the power of his words and insights — his speech at the 2004 Democratic convention, his autobiography and subsequent policy book, his talks about race and other divisive issues during the campaign.

We were excited by the prospect of a leader who could educate — an “educator in chief” who would use the bully pulpit to explaini what has happened to the United States in recent decades, where we must go, and why.

But the man who has occupied the Oval Office since January, 2009 is someone entirely different — a man seemingly without a compass, a tactician who veers rightward one day and leftward the next, an inside-the Beltway dealmaker who doesn’t explain his comprises in light of larger goals.

In his inaugural address, Obama warned that “the nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous.” In private, he professes to understand that the growing concentration of income and wealth at the top has robbed the middle class of the purchasing power it needs to keep the economy going. And it has distorted our politics.

He is well aware that the Great Recession wiped out $7.8 trillion of home values, crushing the nest eggs and eliminating the collateral that had allowed the middle class to keep spending despite declining real wages — a decrease in consumption that’s directly responsible for the anemic recovery.

But instead of explaining this to the American people, he joins the GOP in making a fetish of reducing the budget deficit, and enters into a hair-raising game of chicken with House Republicans over whether the debt ceiling will be raised.

Never once does he tell the public why reducing the deficit has become his number one economic priority. Americans can only conclude that the Republicans must be correct — that diminishing the deficit will somehow revive economic growth and restore jobs.

Instead of powerful explanations we get the type of bromides that issue from every White House. America must “win the future,” Obama says, by which he means making public investments in infrastructure, education, and basic R&D. But then he submits a budget proposal that would cut nondefense discretionary spending (of which these investments constitute more than half) to its lowest level as a share of gross domestic product in over half a century.

A president can be forgiven for compromising, if his base understands why he is doing so. That the health-care law doesn’t include a public option, that financial reform doesn’t limit the size of the biggest Wall Street banks, even that cuts may have to be made to Medicare or Social Security — all could be accepted in light of the practical necessities of politics, if only we understood where the President is leading us.

Why is Obama not using the bully pulpit? Perhaps he’s too embroiled in the tactical maneuvers that pass for policy making in Washington, or too intent on preserving political capital for the next skirmish, or cynical about how the media will relay or distort his message. He may also disdain the repetition necessary to break through the noise and drive home the larger purpose of his presidency. I have known (and worked for) presidents who succumbed to all these, at least for a time.

A more disturbing explanation is that he simply lacks the courage to tell the truth. He wants most of all to be seen as a responsible adult rather than a fighter. As such, he allows himself to be trapped by situations — the debt-ceiling imbroglio most recently — within which he tries to offer reasonable responses, rather than be the leader who shapes the circumstances from the start.

Obama cannot mobilize America around the truth, in other words, because he is continuously adapting to the prevailing view. This is not leadership.

President Obama lies. So what’s new? I voted for him, campaigned for him and gave him money. Him or me? I’m the bigger idiot:  Reader Frank Derfler points out that on March 18, Obama said he expects the U.S. would be actively involved in any military action against Libya for “days, not weeks.”

We’re still there.

It’s gets worse. Far worse. He also said there would be no American military personel on the ground in Libya.

Friends have a daughter in the U.S. military, whom I learned on the weekend, is stationed on the ground in Libya, along with 10,000 or so other American troops. She doesn’t know the exact number. At present the American military in Libya is  not shooting. They’re in an “advisory” role. But they’re still there and on the ground — contrary to what our President told us.

I’d like our military presence  to be confirmed from several sources. My friend assures me his daughter is definitely in Libya. He has had confirmation from her on several occasions.

Yelp makes sense. Get it for your smartphone. It’s free adn very useful.

Wired Magazine’s Hot Gadget List. Click here.

From the Manchester Evening Times .

Last Wednesday,  a passenger in a taxi heading for Salford station leaned over to ask the driver a question and gently tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention. The driver screamed, lost control of the cab, nearly hit a bus, drove up over the curb and stopped just inches from a large plate window.

For a few moments everything was silent in the cab. Then, the shaking driver said “Are you OK? I’m so sorry, but you scared the daylights out of me.”

The badly shaken passenger apologized to the driver and said, “I didn’t realize that a mere tap on the shoulder would startle someone so badly.”

The driver replied, “No, no, I’m the one who is sorry, it’s entirely my fault. Today is my very first day driving a cab. I’ve been driving a hearse for 25 years.”

Favorite hearse photos.

Harry Newton who played tenns brilliantly yesterday, says he modestly. Sorry about the hearse photos. I can’t stop chuckling at the blonde with hearse. I think it reminds me of today’s stockmarket — ghoulish but risque. Catch my drift?