Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Obama to Kick McC's Ass? But Problems Are Deeper and Broader

Is Rolling Stone happy that even before the official publication of its scoop about General Stanly McChrystal and his team of trash talkers, said General has resigned or is close to so doing? Talk about an impactful story . . .

In any case, the U. S. and NATO body counts are rising rapidly in Afghanistan, the Marja invasion has been a fiasco, the planned takeover of Kandahar is now in good measure a sweet-talking tea-sipping make-nice operation, and at best a growth slowdown in the economy appears baked in the cake. You know things are difficult at home when Walgreen's misses earnings estimates by a mile.

The 90 and 180 day year on year average growth rates as measured by Consumer Metrics Institute (http://www.consumerindexes.com/) are in the single digit of all percentile year on year growth rates per BEA data going back over 60 years. The new government in Britain has announced austerity, complaining that 1 of every 4 pounds of gov't expenditure are borrowed. In Congress, however, where at least 1 of 3 dollars spent by the Feds are borrowed (printed), the powers that be are planning no budget at all for the upcoming fiscal year beginning in the fall. The excuse that they are waiting for the deficit commission (which needs more money than anticipated to complete its work!) to report in December is beyond lame. Said commission will either be ignored or say things that could be said by any poli-sci or econ college major. Spend less/tax more.
Duh . . .

Speaking of spending less, the President needs to reconsider his one-year surge in Afghanistan. It's one thing to print money to keep Medicaid clinics alive. It's another to kill Afghans. And while he's in a kick-ass mode, let him consider kicking the derriere of a certain senior economic adviser who used to be president of Harvard and whose pro-deficit, pro-Wall Street policies are failing the country even more than Stanley McChrystal, whose frustrations may have been uber-legitimate but were shared too openly.

The stock market responded well to the austerity package proposed by Team Cameron in the U. K.

If Barack Obama were to kick some Keynesian ass, the same would happen here. Maybe Paul Krugman would dump all his stocks, but the market would survive that blow.

It's time for more major mid-course changes we can believe in. But don't hold your breath.

Three assets continue to act well, two of which have good fundamentals: Gold, Apple Inc. stock, and Treasuries. Guess which of them lacks fundamental support (hint: supply is rising rapidly)?

Thus guess which one EBR views as a trading vehicle rather than (for now) a buy-and-hold asset?

Further hint: it's the asset the downside of ownership involves the U. S. going Grecian rather than Japanese.

Japanecian (or Grecianese) is the flavor of the day.

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