Doc 224899

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

Along those lines, Old Trader, we could add Abu Dhabi telling Dubai that Abu Dhabi is somewhat disinclined to cover the Dhubai World debt obligations, Sri Lanka buying more gold, Vietnam buying gold, India looking at buying the balance of the WMF annual gold allocation after already claiming a couple of hundred billion dollars worth, open discussions of replacing US dollars with an open basket of currencies including gold for international reserve transactions by the G8 and the G20, and China giving Obama a rather cold shoulder during Obama's bowing and scraping visit to China.


On Nov 27 11:38 AM Old Trader wrote:

> I can't help but wonder if Dubai is just the first shoe. This news
> has overshadowed Japan's Finance Minister thinking of asking for
> CB intervention on behalf of the yen, and the fact Vietnam has devalued
> the dong.

The Nationalization Debate: Confused by Surowiecki

I do not want the government that taxes me being the same government that owns the bank where my money is deposited.

If people kept their money in banks run by the government, there would be no way to prevent that government from engaging in tyranny.

If the government owned the banks, then the IRS would be........would be the KGB!

Markets Show Concern Over Government Micro-Managing

Is there anyone left who is bright enough to understand what works and what doesn't work in corporations who is not completely terrified that the Obamanomics approach seems to involve relentless MICROMANAGEMENT BY GOVERNMENT as the the solution to all economic ills?

All this ranting by Obama and his Democrat Possee about CEOs as bad guys, and protesting an internal AIG Human Resources approach to keeping a few remaining good employees from quitting, chills the hearts of investors and prevents any sort of market recovery from forming.

What they've done to the healthcare sector with "Managed Care" (which boils down to limiting reimbursement to cover the bare minimum a patient might get by with, thus ensuring bad outcomes and fee opportunities for litigating attorneys) they're going to turn around and thrust on all sectors. They'll come up with a p.c. term for the approach, maybe "Assured Corporate Profitability" or some such, but it will be micromanagement by goevernment.

There just aren't enough stupid investors with money who will bet their finiancial futures on such rubbish to turn the market around, and we will see a DOW below 5,000 before 2010 because of the chill induced by the general expectation of micromanagement by government.

The Government Actually Created the AIG Bonus Firestorm It Claims to Be Reacting to

Michael Steinberg wrote, "I doubt whether many Americans actually care about the AIG bonuses; they simply want to know if the government will ever get its money back."

I'm an American, and my take on this is that I am frightened by Obama claiming that blatant "micromanagement by government" of a corporation’s HR practices, amounting to small fractions of a percent in the case of every bonus, is somehow going to help things.

"Micromanagement by government" is a whole new management nightmare that I hadn’t even imagined was possible, but now I see it looming on the horizon like the shadow from an approaching plague of locusts.

If AIG employees expect bonuses as part of their compensation plan, then that’s what AIG should do. Anybody with half a brain who works at AIG has had numerous reasons for leaving AIG already, and they’d better do something to keep all the bright ones from leaving if they’re not going to just close the doors.

We're in this problem because we've forgotten how to work, and forgotten how jobs get done, because we’ve been following all this "management technology" drivel about performance improvement and indicators and action plans, etc, all of which results in micromanagement becoming "Job 1" in every organization.

Now our government’s leader is saying the solution is not only “more micromanagement”, he's saying the solution is “micromanagement by government”. I can’t say just how many different ways this is completely the wrong strategy to use in trying to solve this problem.

Let's Quit Worrying About Bankers' Bonuses

The theatrical display of indignation that Obama and Cuomo are showing is not just a convenient partisan political put-on: it is the most blatant sort of hypocrisy.

If President Obama wanted to “make the American people whole again” by assuring that tax dollars weren’t wasted, he would vigorously oppose the common practice, still followed, of siphoning 10 or 20 percent of government contract dollars to “minority contractors” who often just stand around and do nothing while the non-minority contractors actually do the work. Everybody who has worked on a large public works job knows this is the case, more often than not, except for those specific jobs where the “minority contractors” do everyone a favor and don’t even show up, which at least keeps them from being under foot.

My message to the president is “Please make me whole” by ending the practice of paying “minority contractors” for work they can’t even do, while maintaining the official fiction that they’re on the job and pulling their own weight.

I’m still waiting to see some bricks on mortar in our infrastructure initiative. Maybe it’s the case that “minority contractors” have already been awarded the contracts, and are already doing their customary fine job of standing around with one shovel for every 5 “workers”, or just staying home.

Wreck a Company, Earn a Bonus

How about a bonus for designing politically correct policy that uses appealing terms to describe pressing problems in ways that lend themselves to assessments and recommendations that will accomplish nothing, but create the appearance that they feel our pain.

Geithner Unable to Break with the Past

Geithner spoke, and Wall Street replied by dropping Dow below 7900 within minutes. That was an immediate response by "We, the People", without any influence from partisan politicians or talking heads in the news media, to a plan described by the leading financial expert in the Obama cabinet.

You can bet that Obama and his cronies will try to blame this on Republicans, saying that Republicans were being obstructionist and uncooperative, but that will just be another lying Democrat-style attempt to cast off responsibility and distort the issues.

The facts are that Obama's plan, since he claims it is his plan, is a crummy plan that won't help people who play by the rules and work for a living, and the flaws have been recognized by the brighter and better Americans who invest the money they've already made (rather than complaining and demanding and hoping the government will give them money they don't have yet).

Here's a thought for Obama: rather than trying to please the nation's most unsuccessful people, try and please the nation's most successful people (whose opinions should mean more, if you stop and think about it for a moment). Then, if the nation's most successful people are pleased, and more successful, and the government supports their efforts, then the successful ones will take care of the unsuccessful ones as a matter of generoisity and charity. Right now Obama is trying to please the losers at the expense of the winners, and the cost of that strategy will bankrupt the entire country.

Obama’s Compensation Limits Amount to Zip

"Obama limits CEO compensation"?

There is no legal way he can do that!

Who does he think he is? What does he think he is? He isn't some king or dictator. He is bound by laws, and there is no law that enables him to barge into corporate activities and impose regulations that haven't been passed into law.

Somebody needs to start keeping closer tabs on the way this guy is misusing executive privilege, over-stepping the law, and acting like a despot.

Isn't anyone else frightened by this slick, unilateral usurpation of power and influence, unfettered by checks and balances?

The corporate CEOs in question have all been functioning in a manner consistent with the community standard for professional practices in their field of endeavors. The entire financial community has been taken down by the inevitable consequences of many factors functioning over time, and it has occurred all over the globe. Everybody who was at the helm of a financial organization made decisions that, now, appear to have been disadvantageous. Up until a couple of years ago the most influential people in the world saw them as the standard for success. Pointing at them now, and demonizing them at this point, is nothing more than politically advantageous scape-goating.

We can't afford to let our government get away with distracting us from a careful study of the government's contribution to this mess by theatrically pointing at corporate management's contributions.

We also can't afford to allow a velvety usurpation of executive government power.