News in August

Qaddafi's goose seems to be cooked, that's good news.  Congress is vacationing after a grueling, taxing fight over the debt limit that shouldn't have happened.  The truth is it wasn't even very taxing; in fact it wasn't taxing at all, quite the contrary.  The president is busing around the country talking about why his plans for America are good; I can't see that he has a real plan unless one counts folding to the Tea Party.  Meanwhile the men and women vying to replace him are having a contest to determine who is the looniest; as I calculate it Michelle Bachmann and Ron Paul are the front-runners with poor old John Huntsman bringing up the rear with the unfortunate title of: the only real candidate. 

So August is perhaps a bit slow, but maybe that's good.  Maybe we can enjoy the next week of downtime to reflect on the plans that neither Obama nor the Republicans seem to be offering. 

Of course, any ideas that I present here are only mine in that I endorse them and embrace them.  Many of them come from far wiser people; for example, raising Warren Buffett's taxes is an idea put forth by Warren Buffett while credit for transitioning away from oil and towards wind power and natural gas goes to oil gazillionaire T. Boone Pickens.  Republicans are right: the rich do know the most about economic growth...Republicans are wrong: none of their ideas align with what the billionaires are saying...

Tangent, my apologies.  In all seriousness, now that we have put this whole debt limit fiasco behind us and my portfolio has disappeared, what can we do that will ACTUALLY stimulate economic growth.  How can we get Americans working again.  We should certainly hope that there is no WWIII on the horizon to act as the stimulus our economy needs, but in the fortunate absence of that type of calamity, what can we hope for, better yet, what can we do?

The answer, gulp, is to spend money.  For example, in America we have this great thing called the Interstate Highway System.  It's going on seven decades...we love our cars right? How about investing in our infrastructure?  What about technological infrastructure, how about a wireless America?  Making business more efficient and bringing everyone into the fold?  How about education, why don't we make Americans smarter so they're capable of working?

Interestingly, the NYSE was up roughly 3% yesterday on the assumption that the Fed would do...wait for it...wait for it...wait for it...would do MORE to stimulate the economy.  Yes America, we regained our confidence not when our leaders retreated from responsibility but on the hope that they would in fact do MORE to help us.  We want all these cuts, but we haven't thought through what we want cut and more importantly we have chosen quite possibly the WORST time to get sucked into spending cuts.  So after all the posturing of the last few months over fake crises, we now see that when the government does what they should have done all along, the private sector will follow...interesting.

So the news in August is slow, but the revelation is real; there is a time for spending and a time for cutting; a time for balanced budgets and a time for stimulus.  Now is the time for stimulus.  The economy needs it; America needs it.  We deserve better than what our leaders have given us and we certainly deserve better than what they are trying to take away.  Public investment does not mean the end of private sector growth; rather the former serves as a catalyst for the latter.  You don't need an economics textbook to know this, you can just study history, but alas, we're not interested in history, we're interested in cutting and apparently social studies is one of the subjects taking a hit.