Leaving the Bayou…

The packing for the move is almost done and I’ll be loading the truck as the Mardi Gras parades wind through the downtown streets of Thibodaux. I’m fortunate for the lessons learned and experience of the past year and a half (“You’ll be there about 10 months”) and I’m glad to be leaving.

Onward.

Mars out.

A note to the team at CNBC…

Hi Squawk Box Team,

Larry, the Honeymoon’s over

We elected a socialist and the redistribution of wealth began in February. Larry Kudlow’s Newly-Elected-President-Honeymoon is officially over. Sorry. It was a sincere positive thought but Obama said “Change” and “Change” it will be (Larry has been increasingly glum the past ten days because he knows….) The true shape of this administration’s philosophies will become fleshed out in days 44-100 if you haven’t been paying attention.

The buck stops here

One must keep in mind the Framer’s intention of checks and balances with the three branches. Who would have predicted the Executive branch is going to be the first (ineffective) line of defense against the acts of the Legislative branch (Pelosi, et al). Uh oh…

A Preemptive entitlement for Mr. Santelli

Obama’s $75 billion mortgage rate plan is the logical extension of prevailing Democrat socialist thought. It creates an entitlement class of Americans BEFORE they actually need the money. A preemptive entitlement with a bonus for doing what they should be doing anyway. If you apply the basic philosophy: there is an impending catastrophe which will cause a person to default and they should be helped now; then this can, and should, be applied to every single person paying down a mortgage.

Is there a personal responsibility test? Of course not. Does the average debt junkie living paycheck-to-paycheck get to keep the 3 maxed out credit cards, the financed jet ski, a financed bass boat, 2 HD plasma TVs on revolving credit, the 4 cell phones and the land line, the max cable package for the new HD TVs, high speed/ DSL, the second mortgage for paying off credit cards three years ago, etc? Certainly, because it’s not your fault. Keep smoking those cigarettes, too, it’s only $5/day.

The pretzel logic continues: Mr. Obama, if we help Harley-Davidson’s finance unit why can’t we help Elrod make his late Harley payment? Let’s have a revolver stipend for everyone and deduct all personal interest. Forget the fact that H-D pursued Alt-A borrowers. (Disclosure: blogger has owned/does own HOG itm puts;)

Debt junkies work very hard at rationalizing and staying one breathe above water even though they are and have been insolvent for years. Cue up the credit card “Freedom” and “Priceless” themed ads.

Preemptive entitlement for me

I have health insurance, savings and no debt other than my mortgage but I might get T-boned at an intersection by an unemployed 29 year old drunk driver without liability insurance. I’ll probably miss my mortgage payments for a couple of years. Sign me up now – I’ll take the $1,000 performing-note bonus as a hedge until I get hit by a car. And while you’re at it lower my mortgage interest rate to 4%.

Mars out.

It’s audacious…

If you give a politician the opportunity to write whatever legislation they want and tell them it will pass what do you expect them to do? Come on, Mr. Obama… The Democrats in the House are no different than the freshman-punk-frat-boy-pledge who is told by his parents as they leave on sabbatical “No parties.”

The President said at the Indiana press conference, basically, we have the opportunity to include legislation which has not been allowed to be passed by previous classes of congress going back “25 years” to correct some social wrong, imaginary or not. This past window includes a previous Democrat administration. This is, on its face, an admission that there is a bunch of pork which should be in an omnibus spending bill not a “stimulus” bill. They then say “well, we just have to pass it anyway.”

There is no personal accountability to each member of Congress for passing bad legislation or even cleaning up a package or themed act of legislation.

I’ll indulge in another metaphor re: spending vs. stimulus.

Let’s say you have a patient on the table in the ER operating room. He has $25,000 in emergency coverage and two greenstick fractures in his right leg. The hospital administrator tells the orthopedic surgeon he can’t really fix the fractures completely “just make it look like the leg is good” because we are going to treat other conditions at the same time with the money. We think this will benefit the patient. They bring in a plastic surgeon to alter the patient’s nose, a salon stylist to color and cut the hair and a tailor for new threads. Even though the patient can’t walk he is told he’ll look good while he is stuck in a wheelchair until he goes through the many subsequent surgeries.

We’ll take care of it later.

Mars out.

The pendulum swings…

After reading through the House spending bill and listening to Obama’s comment yesterday relating to his election as a mandate on “change” and this stimulus[sic] bill will pass I couldn’t help thinking of an interview with the author Tom Robbins I read back in the early 1990’s. He made a comment about one of his themes and it was this “The ultimate goal of any ideology is totalitarinism.”

 The idea that we need to injure our economy further by including a legislative rebuke to George Bush’s failed policies is the act of the metaphor “biting one’s nose to spite one’s face” and ad hominem. Bush did not represent the average conservative, Republican or Democrat, in thought nor deed. In a way, it is completely understandable the developing populist/socialist/progressive themes of the Obama presidency will take the same arrogant attitude toward US citizens (and the world) as George Bush and Dick Cheney’s “I know better than you and this is the way it will be.”

After listening to Rep. Maxine Waters explain the rationale for the legislation I just thought “Here we go.”

Mars out.

Update…

I still have a pulse.

Like many I have considered the reality of the current economy and job market. While 90% of working Americans have their jobs (including me) my company has about 20% of the staff it had one year ago. Some quit and some were laid off and while I know what I have (a job) I’m not an idiot. So…

Savings from each paycheck went from Net 27% to 42% in December. This requires a very active level of awareness in what I need and what I do not need and its working fine. Damn, I’ve wasted some money…

The development of multiple income streams is progressing very well.

I’ve always had more than one option.

My next full-time job has a philosophical foundation.

While driving from here to there I notice many new cars with dealer tags, semi trucks running, trains running, people going to work, the people I know who were laid off have new jobs, the stores have stuff on the shelves, companies in my home town are hiring (Norman, OK), no soup lines, etc.

Folks may be having a rough time but the world is not coming to an end and not everybody is as crooked as Bernie Madoff.

Mars out.