Egypt's hopeful turn towards reform this past week shows that sometimes a leader sees their position and makes the right move. While Egypt's Mubarak is a real bad actor in the eyes of media elites in the US, he is due credit for adjusting his position several times and finally just leaving office. Frankly, we should be surprised that he left office with minimal bloodshed. Both the Egyptian people and Mubarak have achieved, if nothing else, the hope that a more open and productive society will be attained.
Protests are spreading and other leaders aren't doing so well. Iran is starting to kill their people again and George Soros predicts the regime won't last the year. Yemen, Sudan and Bahrain have also joined the list of countries where change is coming. In Libya, the worst despot of all, and he has always been that, is Colonel Gadaffi. Calling in jet fighters and Russian mercenaries to attack your own people on the streets of your capital city as he did Monday will be remembered in the annals of despotism forever. The bright side of that is any other despot thinking of doing it probably won't after they see the backlash Gaddaffi is to about receive.
Madison Wisconsin is experiencing its' days of rage once again (oh if it were 1970 again). Enraged or not, the city is one of the most fortunate and best endowed in the United States with an extremely stable economy due to the fact that nearly half the jobs are in the public sector. (state and local government and UW). In addition, Madison may be the most educated city in the United States with over 70% of adults having a bachelors degree or higher.
Having just returned from there, I can report first hand that it is now cool in Madison to blame recently elected Governor Walker for a bad economy, the return of fascism and the destruction of Wisconsin's families. The governor may or may not have erred in his attempt to limit the collective bargaining rights of Wisconsin's vast army of public employees, but the state has been running billion dollar deficits for about 10 years and he came into office with a clear mandate to solve the problem.
President Obama, notably hesitant to jump into the fray in support of Egyptian reformers earlier this month, was surprisingly quick to throw his weight behind Wisconsin's public sector unions in their struggle against their Governor's attempt to repair his state's deficit. Obama's intrusion was arguably unwise for several reasons.
First, a sitting US president has no authority in the governance of individual states except in the case where federal law is being violated. In this instance, he had no business interfering.
In addition, the proper deportment of a president requires a certain reserve when it comes to purely partisan matters that don't concern him. It is part of being presidential. A sort of royal detachment is required of our chief executive and from that a special authority comes from people believing their president has only the interests of the nation at heart. Wading into a spat like this so quickly made Obama look more like a Chicago union boss than our nation's leader.
More telling, Obama who faces the worst fiscal crisis ever faced by a sitting president, has taken sides against another state's chief executive who is facing the same issue head on and still worse he has done it for money. You see Obama's largest campaign contributors in 2008 were the public employees unions and his loyalty to them had to come first. Well it did if he is a president who doesn't appreciate the gravity of the issues facing America or his duty to his country.
How is President Obama going to confront the same fiscal issues that Wisconsin faces if he can't commit to dealing with the federal government's unions and employment costs? Since he has now shown he is easily compromised by his ties to public sector unions, how can we trust him to get our government on a firm footing? In trying to curry favor with Wisconsin public employee unions, Obama just may have shown the country he isn't the right guy for the job after all.
Score Card:
Mubarak gets a passing grade. In the end, he did the right thing and avoided the worst for his people. Mubarak exceeded our expectations for him.
Obama gets an unsatisfactory grade. His budget released last week was again fiscally irresponsible and he continues to show no inclination to confront the hard issues behind our deficits. Also, his actions with respect to the state of Wisconsin have an appearance of pursuing political interest while exceeding his portfolio by interfering in the affairs of a state government. Since that state is facing the very same issue he should be facing, he has earned poor marks. Bad job Mr. President. You have just 12-18 months left really to prove you are willing and able to lead us out of the fiscal crisis or you will not be reelected.
Gaddafi gets a worse grade than Obama. Well of course he does. He is one of the worst leaders on the face of the earth so good for Obama, he finishes ahead of Gaddafi.
Investment Implication:
President Obama won't address the fiscal crisis so longer term skepticism remains about the quality of the finances or our country.
Arab and Iranian social revolutions are now proceeding and will for years to come. Probably a good thing but oil supplies will be more at risk now and if oil prices soar, the economy will suffer.
There is a danger our economy is too dependent on stable oil supplies from unstable countries.
Plan on economizing ever more on your energy needs. Environment favors energy and resource producers in stable countries.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Sputnik Moment: Does This America Have What it Takes?
The flourishing rhetoric of politicians these days routinely over promises and under delivers. A business probably can’t be run that way, but evidently it works in politics. When President Obama’s inspiring State of Union address rolled out the powerful Sputnik/space race metaphor, he evoked an achievement that should be remembered, but does he or our country have the right stuff to follow through with that challenge?
In 1958, the US was shocked to learn that a Russian satellite, Sputnik had been launched into orbit and was flying over our country freely and unmolested. It was shocking because the US felt it was the unchallenged super power on the planet. Soviet Russia may have been bigger and unconquerable within its own territory, but it had no reach. The United States was dominant politically, militarily and economically. On top of that, Americans believed we had the moral high ground and we that our technology and know-how was second to none. Yet the Soviets had beat us into space and our national security and prestige were at stake.
America rose up to meet the Soviet challenge in space and in 1961 President Kennedy told the nation our goal was to get on the moon within ten years. Less than ten years later, in July 1969, the first NASA astronauts walked on the moon. In eleven years, the US went from being earth bound to putting men and satellites into earth’s orbit almost routinely, then reaching the moon and landing men on it and safely returning.
The space race should be remembered as an extraordinary achievement for this country. Is Obama right to invoke it?
Obama’s Sputnik moment analogy calls us to pull our education system and economy together and to once again be in the first rank of competiveness and productivity. Here are some reasons the call is hollow and we can’t measure up to it.
- Our education system is the most over funded yet unproductive in the world. Achievement in almost every category ranks below average or at the bottom relative to other developed countries yet almost no other country spends so much to educate people. This is a crippling competitive disadvantage. teachers unions, cultural attitudes, policy makers and too many families don’t care.
- Capital investment and returns on investment are overwhelmingly skewed towards financial investment in our economy. At the highest echelons, business leaders, Wall Street and policy makers are too focused on takeovers, financial products and financing and are not serious about investing in the US.
- Never in the history of the country has such a large share of the population been so disenfranchised. The distribution of wealth in the US resembles no other developed nation. Countries like China and Mexico have the same distribution of wealth characteristics. America’s middle class hegemony and thus their commitment to excel have become gravely compromised. Increasingly, we have a culture of defeat.
Income Disparity Graph
- Free trade policies have benefitted the elites and harmed the country. Despite falling relative employment costs in the US, out sourcing of good jobs continues benefitting corporate profit margins. S&P 500 earnings have outperformed the economy arguably at the expense of the domestic economy as the share of jobs that provide an affluent secure middle class lifestyle decline.
- Policy makers and big businesses like Walmart have opened our domestic markets wide open to foreign competition without expecting the same of other nations. China is the worst case and the failure of the last three administrations to hold them accountable for a whole spectrum of dirty trade practices is a gross failure.
Investment Conclusion:
On the margins the President’s goals will be attended to, but really there is little awareness or conviction about what is at stake. There are also too many powerful interests like financiers, self interested politicians and unions who aren’t going to buy into the solutions.
In the short term, a falling dollar and a weak recovery will support US industry, but the issues causing the continuing loss of market share remain.
There is also the reality that many Americans aren’t interested in competing anymore. They are more interested in consuming. The disincentives for small business ownership have multiplied and corporate culture is to get what you can for yourself just like your boss does. Too many Americans have just given up.
In 1958, the US was shocked to learn that a Russian satellite, Sputnik had been launched into orbit and was flying over our country freely and unmolested. It was shocking because the US felt it was the unchallenged super power on the planet. Soviet Russia may have been bigger and unconquerable within its own territory, but it had no reach. The United States was dominant politically, militarily and economically. On top of that, Americans believed we had the moral high ground and we that our technology and know-how was second to none. Yet the Soviets had beat us into space and our national security and prestige were at stake.
America rose up to meet the Soviet challenge in space and in 1961 President Kennedy told the nation our goal was to get on the moon within ten years. Less than ten years later, in July 1969, the first NASA astronauts walked on the moon. In eleven years, the US went from being earth bound to putting men and satellites into earth’s orbit almost routinely, then reaching the moon and landing men on it and safely returning.
The space race should be remembered as an extraordinary achievement for this country. Is Obama right to invoke it?
Obama’s Sputnik moment analogy calls us to pull our education system and economy together and to once again be in the first rank of competiveness and productivity. Here are some reasons the call is hollow and we can’t measure up to it.
- Our education system is the most over funded yet unproductive in the world. Achievement in almost every category ranks below average or at the bottom relative to other developed countries yet almost no other country spends so much to educate people. This is a crippling competitive disadvantage. teachers unions, cultural attitudes, policy makers and too many families don’t care.
- Capital investment and returns on investment are overwhelmingly skewed towards financial investment in our economy. At the highest echelons, business leaders, Wall Street and policy makers are too focused on takeovers, financial products and financing and are not serious about investing in the US.
- Never in the history of the country has such a large share of the population been so disenfranchised. The distribution of wealth in the US resembles no other developed nation. Countries like China and Mexico have the same distribution of wealth characteristics. America’s middle class hegemony and thus their commitment to excel have become gravely compromised. Increasingly, we have a culture of defeat.
Income Disparity Graph
- Free trade policies have benefitted the elites and harmed the country. Despite falling relative employment costs in the US, out sourcing of good jobs continues benefitting corporate profit margins. S&P 500 earnings have outperformed the economy arguably at the expense of the domestic economy as the share of jobs that provide an affluent secure middle class lifestyle decline.
- Policy makers and big businesses like Walmart have opened our domestic markets wide open to foreign competition without expecting the same of other nations. China is the worst case and the failure of the last three administrations to hold them accountable for a whole spectrum of dirty trade practices is a gross failure.
Investment Conclusion:
On the margins the President’s goals will be attended to, but really there is little awareness or conviction about what is at stake. There are also too many powerful interests like financiers, self interested politicians and unions who aren’t going to buy into the solutions.
In the short term, a falling dollar and a weak recovery will support US industry, but the issues causing the continuing loss of market share remain.
There is also the reality that many Americans aren’t interested in competing anymore. They are more interested in consuming. The disincentives for small business ownership have multiplied and corporate culture is to get what you can for yourself just like your boss does. Too many Americans have just given up.
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