Regardless of which candidate you vote for in three weeks, our economic reality will not be washed away with the tide of the elections. Grotesquely high budget and trade deficits, obscene debt-levels led by off-the-chart consumer spending, low savings and impossible-to-obtain loans have all finally caught the attention of investors.

Whether in the short-term the market ends up trading higher or lower from this point, one thing is for certain: you have to be more careful than ever with how you invest your money. The market will not "save you" from a bad investment. Only your wits and a fair amount of patience will.

"EMBARRASSING"

That's the word our Treasury Secretary used to describe how he felt begging Congress for money to bail out America. Around him were seated our Federal Reserve Chairman and our Securities & Exchange Commission Chairman.

GDP, or Gross Domestic Product, is the total amount of goods and services that every working person produces in this country each year.

In 2007, GDP was $13.671 trillion dollars. That means that all of our efforts - your's included - produced $13.671 trillion dollars worth of output.

I was going to speak today about our national budget and discuss discretionary versus non-discretionary spending. But I decided to put that article aside for another time and address something recently in the papers again: creating a "Windfall Profits Tax" on Big Oil. 

This is a tricky first subject to write about. Many of you may automatically think I'm taking a position that is anti-Democrat or pro-Republican. But my position has to do with neither party - it has to do with business and economics, first, and a desire not to hurt us, second. Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease, and in this case, I see it no differently.

Los Angeles City Council member Jan Perry thinks you are stupid. 

Dense. Dumb. Obtuse. Dim-witted.

OPEN: NOVEMBER 2006: An elderly married couple who could pass for caring grandparents are sitting inside a luxurious conference room waiting for a meeting to begin. The man (a Ben Stein look-alike) is whispering to his wife (a Barbara Bush look-alike) in hushed but forceful tones. It's clear they are talking about something important.

MAN: There's no way this deal is gonna go through. I don't care what they agreed to verbally last week. I just can't see it happening. 25 Billion dollars for a mortgage company at the very top of the mortgage market? Not in million years.

Much has been written in the press about my RadioShack (RSH) recommendation in June of last year.

At the time I recommended it, RadioShack had just replaced poor performing CEO David Edmondson with retail-turnaround guru Julian Day.

I can already tell that I am going to like Home Depot's (HD) New CEO, Francis Blake.

Within months of taking the reins of the largest home improvement company in America, Blake has made a couple of key decisions that prove he understands the basics of running a business.