{"id":22520,"date":"2013-10-10T09:22:26","date_gmt":"2013-10-10T13:22:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=22520"},"modified":"2013-10-10T09:41:54","modified_gmt":"2013-10-10T13:41:54","slug":"im-from-the-government-im-here-to-help-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=22520","title":{"rendered":"I’m from the government. I’m here to help you!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Each morning I survey what I read, listened to and recorded yesterday. Then I search the morning’s news for good news. I find endless words, but little real hope.<\/p>\n

There’s a continuum of madness. Ted Cruz wants to completely defund Obamacare. Some Republicans want to selectively cut back spending.on things they don’t like, but which Congress has authorized. Some are simply enjoying the TV fame that the whole madness is bringing.<\/p>\n

I remember one time I owned a piece of a private equity fund. The goal was to buy companies cheaply, build them up and sell them for a huge profit. The fund concentrated on publishing. Which was good, since publishing was what the fund’s operators knew about. One day I heard they were buying a telecommunications carrier, called a CLEC (competitive local exchange carrier). I was horrified. I hurried across town to beg them to get rid of their CLEC instantly. I marshaled my arguments. They listened politely and paid me no attention. Several months later, they tried to save their ailing CLEC by buying another one and achieving “economies of scale.” About 18 months later they wrote off every penny they had spent on their CLECs.<\/p>\n

I’m not writing this to prove I’m a genius. It was simply a field I knew something about and they knew nothing about. But they had convinced themselves of a “reality” that was different to mine.<\/p>\n

There are politicians who believe that not raising the debt ceiling will force spending cuts. There are those who believe that keeping the government shut down is saving money. These politicians believe smaller government is good government. They believe their own reality. They ignore the experts who warn them of dire consequences that comes from not paying your bills.<\/p>\n

This shutdown and debt ceiling is abstraction to many politicians. Though our government is shutdown, our politicians are receiving their full salaries and their own exemplary health care — far better than yours or mine.(You can see this arrogance in third world countries like Cambodia, Egypt, and throughout Africa where the ruling class live like kings and the rest live in abject poverty. They call those regimes kleptocracies.)<\/p>\n

I can’t imagine how the party of small business honestly believes that what it’s doing will curry favor with voters — hundreds of thousands of whom it’s seriously hurting day-by-day as this mess drags on and on.<\/p>\n

I personally believe they will open the government and they will allow the debt ceiling to rise. But the affects meantime on all of us are painful. Some leading stocks have fallen 10%. There are terrible effects, like my friend who’s in the middle of getting a critical SBA loan for his business. With the SBA closed, he’s scrambling to pay his workers their salaries, and his suppliers their bills Everyone understands the reason for their lack of money. But they still got to eat and put gas in their cars to get to work. Many workers live from paycheck to paycheck. It’s not easy for them to understand why Washington seems to be so deliberately hurting them for seriously dubious reasons.<\/p>\n

The Wall Street Journal had some semi-happy news this morning:<\/p>\n

Shutdown Shows Signs Of a Thaw<\/strong>
\nThe partisan logjam showed signs of easing as conservatives warmed to the idea of a short-term increase in the borrowing limit and House GOP leaders prepared to meet with President Obama.<\/p>\n

You can read the rest of the article here.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Stocks I’m eyeing or picking at. <\/strong>The big downside to buying now is that prices will fall even further in the next day or two. I think that’s a real likelihood.<\/span> I bought a little more APO and SAN and today I’ll pick up a little more COST. I’m eyeing a bunch of stocks and funds readers have suggested — including BIOPX, NDP, BERY, DGI, ILAN and XOOM. I covered my HPQ short yesterday. But I’m letting my BBY short run.
\n<\/span><\/span>
\n\"HarryNewton\"<\/a>
\nHarry Newton whose best news is that iceing, time and patience has repaired my should rotator cuff and I’m able to serve again. I even made a few aces yesterday. And I’ll try again today. Was the improvement worth the $250,000 in recent stock losses? A good question. Fortunately they haven’t been realized. When this mess gets resolved, the market should recover.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Each morning I survey what I read, listened to and recorded yesterday. Then I search the morning’s news for good news. I find endless words, but little real hope. There’s a continuum of madness. Ted Cruz wants to completely defund Obamacare. Some Republicans want to selectively cut back spending.on things they don’t like, but which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22520\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}