Kunst

How You Can Profit from the Obama Economy

Maybe we should have saved a bit of that wonderfulness during the 2003-2007 "boom". A 1% or 2% tax surcharge would have slowed things down a bit while putting money in the bank for a rainy day. Keep in mind that Bush inherited a long-term surplus and passed on a devastating structural deficit, in the process doubling the national debt in two terms. Of course, his father and Reagan quadrupled it in 12 years, so he's actually weakened the tradition.

Defense Spending and the Presidential Election

The British won nearly every battle in OUR war of independence, but in the end they had to leave.

We lost in Vietnam because we were on the wrong side from the beginning. In 1946, after fighting the Japanese in WW2, the Vietnamese declared their independence, in a document modeled on our own. We decided to support the French, who had been on their backs under Nazi rule for 4 years, retaking control of their colonies in Indochina. It took the Vietnamese 29 years to defeat the colonialists, first the French (we paid 90% of their costs; they just had to supply the bodies) and then the Americans. Not our finest hour. Not something we should repeat.

The American public finally pulled the plug on a stupid and wasteful war that had always been based on lies (e.g., the Tonkin Gulf incident). We would never have "won" that war. The Vietnamese would have fought until we left, however long that took. We certainly did enough damage to both countries.

Stocks to Watch On Monday, Sept. 8

"Get ready for another 300 point move, this time to the upside, with the financials zooming up. "

Kind of like a hit of methamphetamine, and about as lasting.

The Defense Sector in 2008

How long will it take before we realize that we can't afford to spend a trillion dollars a year on maintaining a military empire that is bleeding us dry? We spend nearly as much on "defense" as the rest of the world combined. We also have the dubious distinction of being far and away the world's largest arms exporter.

Rome, here we come.