SgtSally

Wall Street Is Short Barack Obama

Another lame attempt to pin the consequences of the Bush presidency on Obama. Since his election, a core media question has been - when will it become the "Obama economy". Even before the election, FOX was attributing every down day in the market to expectations that the Democrats were going to win.
Even an Economics 101 student would realize the momentum that is carrying the market now is the consequence of inaction last fall.
Nothing that Obama and the Democrats have done since the election will even manifest itself untill late this summer at best. ... about when many economists (including Bernake) are looking to see improvement. Too bad Bush took a powder the last six months in office!

The Economic Cost of the Military Industrial Complex

The defense as a percentage of GDP argument as been debunked at length many times....use Google.

The author understates the true cost of the military. There are many hidden military expenditures in other government departments. For example NASA, the Nuclear Regulatory Admin., most foreign aid is not for schools and hospitals but tanks and guns, etc.

There is also the intellectual opportunity cost of all our scientific talent going to develop weapons. Useful science and technological advancement has been retarded by decades. It has been conjectured that we will not be until the year 2025 where we would already be today if not for the siphoning away of our minds and money by the war industry.

Thursday's Big Jump Shows The Dangers Of Market Timing

Bernake on the whole is kinda lame but he did say one thing pretty intelligent a few weeks ago, "Bull markets don't die of old age".
We have just now attained the level of the market in 2000 (not adjusted for inflation). But there is a big difference in the quality of earnings and in valuations and in the supporting world markets. Are we range bound in some decade long secular trend where todays highs indicate an inevitable retracement to yesterdays lows? It doesn't seem so.