Yeah, we know we have to deal with this other guy for the duration or so, but we are betting that those years are going to look a lot like the Carter Administration, and last about as long. (Hey, OPEC, you listening? Get it together people). How likely is this administration to see a second term? Let's analyze:
1. Lofty (to say the least) expectations.
2. Dismal (to say the least) prospects.
3. The early signs of class warfare. Certainly, it has been declared on us. ("Schemes and Greed?" That's our bloody job description!)
4. Dangerous rumblings in the land of the rock-grown poppy.
5. Japanic.
6. Imminent death of organized labor predicted.
Yeah, so, we're going long Clinton. If nothing else, she's got a great card to play in the Middle East with the price of oil where it is and a conflict with Iran brewing. Secretary of State fits her nicely. We're all over it.
Hedge fund managers and their charitable foundations are amply represented among the largest donors to former President Bill Clinton's charity, according to a list of donors released yesterday.While the focus has been on the foreign governments who have given generously to the Clinton Foundation--it is believed that the list was released as part of a deal between Clinton and his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), and President-elect Barack Obama allowing Sen. Clinton to be appointed Secretary of State--alternative investments players have also donated millions.
Hedgies Among Big Donors To Clinton Foundation [FinAlternatives]
Posted by guest , Dec 19, 2008 10:16AM
Anything that keeps HRC out of the country for as long as possible is a good thing. What to do with Bubba though?
Posted by guest , Dec 19, 2008 10:17AM
Falling dollar or increasing interest rates. Take your pick.
Posted by guest , Dec 19, 2008 10:17AM
Dumb. If Obama fails, it will be a Republican who takes over.
Posted by VOL IS KING , Dec 19, 2008 10:20AM
“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
- Warren Buffet
Fortunately, for you EP you don't have to worry about class war retaliation. Bloggers will not be targeted by the Obama Administration.
Posted by guest , Dec 19, 2008 10:25AM
Secretary Iron Lady will get the last laugh on this one.
Obama is going to fall on his sword over the ecomony. He a bright guy who has did nothing, now he's going to do something and its going to turn out badly.
Maybe Bill will kick Obama real hard when he is down. Then get his wife to the White House next time.
Btw, where the hell did Obama get 600 million?
Posted by guest , Dec 19, 2008 10:26AM
@5 - Tarp?
Posted by VOL IS KING , Dec 19, 2008 10:28AM
@5:
Yeah the Depression turned out terrible for FDR's legacy.
Posted by guest , Dec 19, 2008 10:28AM
@5 - Madoff. It's all becoming very clear now.....
Posted by Joseph di Jersey City , Dec 19, 2008 10:29AM
4: There's nothing stopping that tiresome old crank from paying extra money to the government himself if he thinks that's such a good idea. Note that he doesn't.
Posted by ep , Dec 19, 2008 10:34AM
"Yeah the Depression turned out terrible for FDR's legacy."
So is Obama supposed to be FDR or the Depression in this analogy?
Posted by VOL IS KING , Dec 19, 2008 10:40AM
I didn't say he wasn't a hypocrite, that doesn't mean he's not right. Why the fuck don't people pay payroll taxes on their whole income, what the fuck is that about? 15% capital gains tax? Trying to repeal the inheritance tax?
Come on, that shit isn't class warfare?
Honestly, if rich people won't weren't so stupid, i wouldn't mind letting them keep more of their money. But it seems the longer you have money in your family, the dumber and more dangerous to society you become. Look no further than Presidential exhibit W.
Posted by VOL IS KING , Dec 19, 2008 10:43AM
Obama is FDR, of course. The current Depression is "the Depression".
Posted by guest , Dec 19, 2008 10:44AM
@5 LMAO beautiful
Posted by guest , Dec 19, 2008 10:54AM
Looking at FDR's life, he could relate to the down and out. He had polio and barely could walk. Yea he had that fiasco with the veterans but hey everyone screws up.
Here we have Obama who sat in a racist church under Rev Wrong for 20 years. Obama is Bizarro FDR if there ever was one.
Posted by Suits , Dec 19, 2008 10:56AM
"He's a bright guy who has did nothing" - fantastic.
In 2012 Obama's going to look back and say "Are you better off now than you were 4 years ago?", which for just about everyone will be a resounding "yes", regardless of Obama's policies. This will be enough to get the mouthbreathers out to the polls.
Posted by guest , Dec 19, 2008 10:59AM
Everybody look out the window - I haven't seen this much snow since I partied with Barry O back in the day!
Posted by guest , Dec 19, 2008 11:12AM
FDR is a thief at best, incompetent and negligent at worst.
FDR stole wealth from prudent savers! Executive Order 6102, signed by FDR on 4/3/1933 which made it illegal for individuals to own more than $100 worth of gold and forced individuals to turn over their gold coin, bullion, and redeemable certificates to the Federal Reserve. Failure to do so would result in a fine of up to $10,000, 10 years in prison, or both. Can anyone imagine such theivery!!??
Thank God for President Ford who overturned the dracconian measure on 12/31/1974. Lets not also forget that there is scant evidence FDR looked the other way before 12/7/1941.
If The Chosen One is FDR, we are in SERIOUS TROUBLE.
Posted by guest , Dec 19, 2008 11:14AM
this "depression" started well before his administration. he'll be getting nominated right around the peak of job losses, so people aren't going to blame him for the economy. Chances are, things will be better in 4 years. Maybe not significantly better, but the business cylce just doesn't keep going down for 4 years.
Posted by VOL IS KING , Dec 19, 2008 11:15AM
@13:
Yeah a poor mixed race kid, with no father who was occasionally on food stamps couldn't possibly relate to the average person. Where as someone from one of the wealthiest families in the nation married to the niece of a former president (who was also his cousin) that guy is a man of the people.
Like I said, I have no problem with inherited wealth, so long as its not inherited by retards. FDR's bought with polio is precisely the reason he could relate to common people.
Posted by guest , Dec 19, 2008 11:19AM
@16 - or was that W you scaled the snow-capped peaks with? Really, who can remember; everyone was freezing and starving on top of the problems that come along with the high altitude. See you at Gilley's in late January cowboy.
Posted by VOL IS KING , Dec 19, 2008 11:22AM
@17:
FDR was our greatest president. You're an idiot. Gold is completely worthless, its just as fiat as fiat currency.
"[Gold] gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head."
- Warren Buffett
Posted by guest , Dec 19, 2008 11:31AM
@19
Obama is flawed, I think a little too flawed. Obama's wife got up a few times and said that opportunities for African Americans were still an unfair process. She stopped this only because the campaign told her to shut up. Also, since Obama thought that the Rev was like a father to him, you have a class warfare mentality that will come out more and more.
So here we have Obama being pushed by a very bright lawyer wife and then the Rev Racist as a father figure. Yea, I am going to enjoy the next four years of class warfare.
Posted by guest , Dec 19, 2008 11:34AM
Go Bubba! I would like to smoke a seasoned cigar on his behalf....
Posted by VOL IS KING , Dec 19, 2008 11:39AM
@22:
Opportunities for African Americans ARE still an unfair process. Every black person over the age of 40 is racist. If you grew up during segregation you would be racist too. Who cares about class war fare? If you're smart you'll just find a way to make money within the new system. We already have class warfare, as Buffet said, and (stupid)rich people are winning.
Why the fuck don't people pay payroll taxes on their whole income, what the fuck is that about? 15% capital gains tax? Trying to repeal the inheritance tax?
Come on, that shit isn't class warfare?
Posted by guest , Dec 19, 2008 11:43AM
@22 - everyone knows that African Americans have the same opportunities as white people, right?
It's funny how class warfare comes up only when it's going in a certain direction, never the other.
Posted by guest , Dec 19, 2008 11:43AM
Okay Okay, so Obama and his super friends can't get us out of this, then who can?
I honestly believe he is the best shot out of this mess. I'd rather a pragmatist than an idealist any day.
Posted by guest , Dec 19, 2008 11:46AM
@22
Obama believes in class warfare just as much as GWB believes in Jesus. Just the usual populist pandering every politician does.
Learn to discern between rhetoric and values.
Posted by guest , Dec 19, 2008 11:52AM
@25 - I thought it was racism that was mentioned one-way only
Posted by guest , Dec 19, 2008 11:55AM
Er, Bess, you are too smart to post something this dumb. Obama may get hammered trying to clean up the piles left after 8 years of Elephants "running or is that ruining" things in DC. But I will guarantee that Piano Legs Clinton will not be near the throne.
Posted by guest , Dec 19, 2008 11:56AM
"Posted by guest, Dec 19, 2008 11:55AM
Er, Bess, you are too smart to post something this dumb."
And you are too dumb to learn how to read a byline.
Posted by guest , Dec 19, 2008 12:06PM
EP - lay off the political forecasting, m'kay? I come to this blog for smart, funny, incisive financial commentary. This kind of amateurish political analysis makes you look dumb.
Posted by guest , Dec 19, 2008 1:43PM
It's not polite to so blatantly troll with your own blog posts.
Posted by guest , Dec 19, 2008 1:46PM
@Vol is King:
In addition to your admitted antisocial tendencies, it's clear that you're also not the successful trader you claim to be.
Like EP, I've grown to question what I used to think was your intelligence. The more you talk, the stupider you sound.
There's a reason for the cap on payroll taxes, idiot - it's because there's a cap on recovery of those payments during retirement. Removing the cap turns SS into welfare even more obviously than it already appears to be.
Stick your class warfare up your ass. Sideways.
Posted by ep , Dec 19, 2008 1:57PM
"EP - lay off the political forecasting, m'kay? I come to this blog for smart, funny, incisive financial commentary. This kind of amateurish political analysis makes you look dumb."
The entire piece is a fictional monologue from hedgies. I hate all the Clintons with a passion so white-hot it reduces local matter in my immediate vicinity to 10^7 K plasma.
Posted by guest , Dec 19, 2008 2:16PM
@34
EP I would love to hear why but I'm sure that will not be discussed. Try to squeeze it in sometime, Ok pumpkin? Thanks.
Posted by VOL IS KING , Dec 19, 2008 2:55PM
@33:
As I stated earlier my definition of "success" is not having to work for other people ever again. I am sufficiently successful for that, which is all that matters to me.
Further, you think that because I think moron sons of morons end up with too much money that allows them to perpetuate their idiocy has anything to with my personal income? Remember it was the bourgeoisie who beheaded the aristocracy, not the sans culottes.
Unlike most speculators, I don't confuse luck and skill and I harbor no libertarian ideas, realizing that people are not rational and are not capable of making rational decisions and therefore can only be held so accountable for their idiot decisions.
Also like most speculators I think risk taking serves an important social purpose and I think there are two ways to encourage it. 1) Allow people to become rich from risk taking and 2) prevent people from falling into abject poverty as a result of risk taking.
Because risk is incalculable, people can't actually ascertain the risk they're taking so the whole personal responsibility mantra rings hollow. You can't possibly be responsible for things you are incapable of understanding.
Social security IS welfare and for these reasons a society that benefits massively from the positive externalities of risk taking NEEDS welfare in order to encourage people to repeatedly take risks which benefit society a whole. Even though only 1% of the risk takers will actually payoff since we don't know which ones they'll be in advance you have insure everyone against debilitating poverty so the risk takers will run up their credit cards building a search engine in their dorm room.
P.S.
Since I don't (and never plan to again) pay payroll taxes. I will not be eligible for social security anyway. So this is all academic to me anyway. (I do love that 15% tax rate though, but I still don't think its fair)
Posted by guest , Dec 19, 2008 3:00PM
@33
"You can't possibly be responsible for things you are incapable of understanding."
huh?
That's not what any police officer will tell you buddy. Wake up.
Posted by VOL IS KING , Dec 19, 2008 3:19PM
@37:
I am awake. I am supposed to base my view of the world on our antiquated legal system?
You're the one who needs to wake up. Its the fucking allegory of the cave. People are monkeys, wearing clothes, they have no idea what they're doing 99% of the time. If you don't think a chimp can make sound risk calculations then why would you expect 50 year old office worker to be able to? Or a grandmother.
Our world is too complex for us to understand. We evolved to hunt in small bands in eastern africa, not manage derivative books. Or calculate the conversion rate of eyeball to future free cash flows of internet start ups. We are all one (retrospectively) poor inference away from the poor house. Just ask Joe Gregory.
I'm going to enjoy watching your eventual failure 37. The shit never gets old.
Posted by guest , Dec 19, 2008 4:01PM
#38, Creating random theories on human behavior is fine, as long as you do not become a stuck up prick who thinks that he is the only person on planet earth who figured it all out. There have been hundreds of thousands of philosophers before you - most of them way smarter than you - who have proposed conflicting theories on humanity. Unfortunately this is not a field that lends itself to easy analysis absent any means of a controlled experiment. So get off the high horse and pull that head out of your ass.
And if you really want to take your 'chimp' thought process further, then what is the point of all this risk/welfare/security/poverty/inheritence and shit?
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The end is inevitable. We are and inconsequential part of the vast and unbounded universe. We are just one freak cosmic event away from non-existence. You can create a more 'equal' welfare based society where everyone will still die anyways. They will just somewhat speed up the rate of increase of entropy in this universe. Nothing that you do has any meaning in the broader scheme of things.
So what is the point of all this? What is the point of life? Why are you still alive?
Try this BS elsewhere. Many people also have other brilliand theories, like a skewed distribution of different skills in the broader human population. Even though we evolved from the same band of monkeys, some people can throw a ball better than others, some can sing better and some can solver mathematical problems better than others. As long as the dimension along which the skew exists is valuable and rewarded - those people will make more money / get more acclaim.
Yes, there is also a very strong component of inherited resource base that sits on top of that natural skew. So despite the best hopes of your liberal mind, all people are not equal. There is a distribution along muliple dimensions and some people will always do better.
Posted by guest , Dec 19, 2008 4:27PM
As a result of you head in ass syndrome, you also constantly pass of baseless creations of your brain as fact.
You said risk is incalculable. However, you do not need to 'calculate' risk. You only need to be able to estimate it. Most people do not have any diffulty in 'estimating' risk in situations that they are pre-programmed to be able to do so. Driving at 250 mph is 'riskier' than driving at 25mph, all else being equal. Similarly, calculations are not required to understand that 30:1 leverage is 'riskier' than pure cash.
Hence I call utter, complete and absolute BS on your "people can't actually ascertain the risk they're taking so the whole personal responsibility mantra rings hollow" - statement.
You are a complete idiot if you think that people cannot gage the relative risk between options. Usually the higher risk option comes with higher perceived returns. Some (classified as the greedy) pursue the higher returns, others dont. That is not an incapability of understanding risk. It is the mispricing of risk. Which is also an essential human behavior.
You say people are not rational? Which world do you reside in? People are always rational given their circumstances. They may not be rational by someone else's standards. Rationality is not some higher divine truth that you can quantify in people. You may say that people responding to greed/fear are irrational but those are normal human reactions and people 'rationally' respond to those. Who is the arbitrageur of rationality? You?
And finally, you say a social net is required to prevent people from falling into poverty. So pray who defined poverty? You?
As someone who has lived in 2 large developing countries let me tell you something. You do not even know what poverty is. Sitting in front of a computer all day and commenting as much as you do, you dont even have a clue so as to what real poverty is. Also, poverty is a great driving force. People in poor country like India and China realize how shitty life can get so they swamp school and colleges and slog it out to have a shot at a better life.
And all that your 'safety net' has achieved here in the US is comfortable 'safe' kids who are more interested in ipods and ps3s than math and science. There is not 'fire' in their belly. Because they know, some moron like you who is guilty of his undeserved (self-felt) success will always be there to provide a 'net'.
Posted by guest , Dec 19, 2008 4:29PM
That should have read 'arbitrator of rationality.'
Posted by VOL IS KING , Dec 19, 2008 5:19PM
@39:
I went through the existentialist phase when I was 16. I love that that was you definition of "clever" philosophy. The point of bothering with trying to organize society is to increase the quality of life of its members.
I don't think all people are equal at all. I think some people are far superior to others. Just as some monkeys are superior to other monkeys. The problem is what I think doesn't matter. There is no objectively verifiable way to distinguish the superior specimens from the rest of humanity.
You cannot estimate "risk". And perhaps I should define "risk" for you. By risk I am referring to Knightian uncertainty. Which in practice is everything, because statistical inference is useless for projecting into future when the participants actions change the relationships upon which they are basing their decisions (the Lucas Critique).
Try applying Karl Popper's test of falsifiability to the statement that people are rational. Its not that I think people actually are or are not rational, its that the very concept of rationality itself is untestable. You can come up with an explanation of why any set of actions is rational when that is your operational assumption (See the book Freakonomics). Further rationality only applies to marginal utility maximization under discrete choices in finite time intervals. There are too many options, and combinations and permutation thereof for people to " gage the relative risk between options.", especially not in continuous time. When Daniel Bernoulli came up with this theory it was for the choice of whether or not receive a small pox vaccine which is a specific and binary decision process. It was not asking for you to factor in the term structure evolution of interest rates for the next 10 years.
Its precisely because anything can be said to be "rational" that human behavior, group behavior cannot be predicted and neither can market prices or "risk" be estimated into the future. This is why markets crash.
As for the safety net. Well, think about things i've said above. People really have very little control over their lives. The whole point of developing the capital stock of this nation is so that we don't have to be like China and India.
But you are right, nothing I have said is new. Soros, Keynes, Hayek, Taleb all said it before me.
P.S. I am on vacation for the next month. I have a lot of free time and I don't talk to other people besides in the comments sections of blogs... so I have a lot of comment time.