We used to take it on faith that an independent Judicial Branch and an independent Fed were important principles forming part of the foundation of trust in American institutions. So it is very disturbing to see the choreographed events taking place this past year in American politics. First we had the President of the United States in his State of the Union address, one of the most visible forums in politics, excoriating the Supreme Court, a co-equal branch of government, for one of its rulings (and one having to do with free political speech no less). Also note that it was a forum in which the accused did not have a possibility of replying to the slight. More recently, somehow the “President” had the Fed Chief, Helicopter Ben Bernanke at his side in the White House to back him up on what a wonderful job he and the Demunists were doing with the economy. I believe it was the first time a Fed Chief has been brought to heel in such a way, ever. Bernanke could not even bring himself to raise his eyes. He was supremely uncomfortanle, and so he should have been. Such a display of course begs the question of the Fed’s independence from political pressure. There is some correlation here with Gold breaching 1200/ounce in dollar terms and surpassing the price of the S&P500 index.

For some on the left the answer is to give Obama the dictatorial powers he craves so he can “fix” our problems with his omniscient set of advisers (who have the least real-world experience of any set of presidential advisers ever). One of these was Woody Allen I admit but one was Thomas Friedman, a supposedly serious journalist with the NY Times. Yeah, great idea. Is it any wonder that we have an ongoing crisis of confidence? Or that the public approval of its legislators is at its lowest ebb? Things will turn up once confidence returns. Confidence will return once these clowns (we actually elected an actual clown to the Senate from my home state, and from my own high school) are sent packing and the ratio of those who are minimally serious and competent in Washington rises above the 10% or so it numbers currently.

Yesterday it was reported that Ken Salazar, the Secretary of the Interior of the United States actually said that he would ask BP to repay the salaries of any workers laid off because of the six month moratorium on deepwater exploratory drilling imposed by the government.  So let me get this straight.  BP cuts some corners and suffers a blowout of the well they were drilling in deep water which under tremendous pressure is now spewing much oil into the Gulf of Mexico and fouling the coast, affecting the livelihoods of many people.  This much we know and I think everyone would agree that BP should pay for the effect they are having on peoples livelihoods as they are impacted by the presence of the oil.  And as a result the United States government imposes a halt on further drilling in order to create new regulations or something so other blowouts do not happen.  As if the operators of other rigs are not already reviewing their operations to avoid the fate of BP, which is going to fork over tens if not hundreds of billons in revenue to pay for their spill.  The moratorium is going to result in the layoffs of thousands of people working on these rigs.

Now comes the Secretary of he Interior, a cabinet official of the United States, appointed by the President. He apparently suggests in all seriousness that BP pay the salaries of those laid off because the US Government overreacts and stops all drilling?  This is so far outside what would be reasonable, so absolutely outrageous in its audacity and idiocy, that Ken Salazar should resign immediately or be fired by the President. You just cannot make this stuff up.  One more example of the horrifying lack of seriousness and gravitas of those who represent the interests of the polity in Washington.  To the right is a picture of this buffoon.

Of course what I have heard no one mention is that one of the great tragedies of this blown well is that we are losing all this oil! Jim Cramer was just on saying that his “oil people” are telling him this crude deposit is one of the greatest finds of all time. That is why the pressure is unmanageable. And it is all flowing out into the Gulf at this point. What a waste.

When the US Employment Situation Report came out Friday, the 41k private payroll print shocked the bulls. An interesting divergence appeared. Normally a weak payroll print in relation to expectations would cause the currency in question, the US Dollar in this case, to weaken substantially. But in fact the opposite took place. The Dollar rallied hard against all but the Yen. The EUR plunged to new cycle lows, the Aussie and Loonie also fell out of bed. This indicates to me that the market has assumed a crash mentality. Risk off. Big time. And with the US approaching 100% Debt to GDP by some calculations (there is a great deal of debate over what is the appropriate debt to measure; does it include off balance sheet liabilities like social security, pensions and medicare for instance? Does it matter what is owed to other parts of the government?  What part is domestic versus foreign held?) if the idea crystallizes in the trading community that the US has crossed the magic line past which it cannot make good its debt without massive dollar printing, you will see a dollar crash, an equity crash and a bond crash simultaneously.  Is that when Gold would go to $3000? Odds? Higher than is comfortable. See the CBO Reestimate of the President’s Budget here.   The chart below can be found here.   I found the link at at he Fundmastery Blog at Marketwatch here.   And I found the link to that at Real Clear Markets.   And remember that when all is said and done, when 2020 rolls around, even these numbers will almost certainly prove to be too low.   Scary stuff.

I am in the habit of rolling through most stop signs at 4 way stops. I used to come to pretty much a full stop. But then I thought about the following.   The U.S. imported 1.2 Million barrels of oil per day from Saudi Arabia in 2009. At $70 per barrel (that may be a bit high, Saudi crude is relatively sour or heavy and so probably commands less than the price for WTI), that comes out to $84 Million per day, or about $31 Billion per year. The Saudis use some of this money to support their anti-western Wahhabist religious hate factories. These people want to kill us. They enslave their female population. It is a nasty place. This money is just from the United States. The Saudi take is much much more when you consider their exports to other countries. We and others also send massive numbers of dollars to other unsavory places like Venezuela, Russia, Nigeria, and other Middle Eastern locations. These nations are opposed to us and our way of life. It seems to me that we have an acute National Security Interest in using as little Crude and Crude products (like gasoline) as possible.

Now it is also pretty obvious that much of the gas you burn in your car is used in overcoming the inertia represented by the sizable mass of your vehicle at a full stop. So it stands to reason that if you did not come to a full stop where possible, you would use much less fuel. And if everyone did this, we could save millions of barrels of crude oil annually. Therefore we would send many fewer dollars abroad annually to people who want to kill us. It therefore seems that we should, as a matter of policy and law, treat all stop signs as slow down signs where possible.

Some may object that this would increase the number of accidents. It might. But I think people are smart enough that they will stop at intersections that pose a danger but can keep some of their momentum at intersections where there is clearly no other car or bike or pedestrian approaching. In any event, police departments could be trained not to issue rolling stop citations unless the motorist actually presented a danger to someone else.

I always sort of a grimly chuckle when I hear a politician on the tube say something like “Our focus is now entirely on creating jobs.” Politicians may be just about the stupidest creatures on our shared Earth, but they do know one thing. When people feel economically insecure, they tend to vote against those currently holding the levers of power, whether they are responsible or not for the state of affairs leading to the insecurity. So when they say they are focused on jobs, they are really saying they are focused on getting reelected.

In a market economy, it is not the responsibility of the government to provide jobs (a statement with which nearly everyone agrees, freaks from places like moveon.org notwithstanding). It is the responsibility of the government to provide an environment in which the people of the country can go about their business, which will collaterally result in creating jobs. So the government takes care of the national defense and provides an impartial system for the adjudication of disputes, which in our country is predicated on applying the same set of rules to similarly situated people similarly (unless you are a demunist, in which case the rules get applied depending on whether you are in one of their identified support groups or not, the nub of identity politics). This is something that statists, redistributionists and collectivists like Barack Obama and his Demunistic brethren fail to understand. The more they do to create jobs, the less likely it is that we will have sustainable job growth. They are destroyers. They destroy. If they really wanted to see jobs created, the best thing they can do is get the government the hell out of the way.

From the pre-harvest low near $5.25 in September 2006 to the monster blow-off high of $16.63 in July 2008, Beans more than tripled in price.   Then in a mere 5 months as the world was crashing in 2008, they lost more than half their value to a low of about $7.75, a drop of nearly $9.   Through 2009 and into 2010 they have established an equilibrium centering right around $10/bushel, closing today at $9.67 1/2.  The planting intentions report is due out day after tomorrow before the market opens.  The thinking is that Beans will pick up acres formerly devoted to wheat setting up a large crop on top of massive crops coming out of Brazil and Argentina.  What is most interesting to me is that the oscillation around the current equilibrium has narrowed, which implies that the market is about to break out one way or the other to a new equilibrium range. Odds are it will fall out the bottom.  See the chart for yourself.

Click me (Soybeans Daily)!

After consigning the American experiment to the ash heap of history by arrogantly and brazenly cramming government control of health care down all of our throats against our will, Mr Obama is really feeling his oats.  Reuters reports of El Presidente:

President Barack Obama dared Republicans on Thursday to try to repeal his newly signed healthcare law… I don’t believe the American people are going to put the insurance industry back in the driver’s seat. We’ve been there already. We’re not going back.

Riiiggghhht.  Because all of those 85% of people who are satisfied with their current health insurance arrangement would rather have the government in the driver’s seat than their insurance company.  A sick and twisted mind it is.   He actually thinks that it is preferable to have your health care dictated by the government, against whom there is no appeal and who wields the sovereign right of extortion (it is called taxation, and is in the end backed up by force), than a private company that you can fire or sue.  Simply amazing.  My mouth just gapes open when I hear this kind of stuff.

In a related bit of news reported here,  a Harris Poll, aptly critiqued for its methodological shoddiness by James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal here, apparently finds 25% of Republicans think Obama is the AntiChrist.  I am not a Republican, though I have never voted for a Demunist in any election for any office, and I never will.  I also do not believe there is an AntiChrist.  But if there were an AntiChrist, I think Mr. Obama might just fit the bill.  Certainly he will be remembered that way once the whole house of cards comes crashing down because he threw the wet towel of state on top of it.

There is no number to convey what I have perceived in the last couple of months but the signal nevertheless seems too strong to ignore.  I take my daughter to Tae Kwon Do near downtown Chicago two or three days a week from further north on the Interstate.  I do this after school so it is about 4:30 or so.  The height of rush hour.  IDOT has helpfully placed signs that indicate how long it takes to get to the Loop from between Irving Park Rd and Addison.  Back in 2007 and even in 2008, this sign at this time of day might say 26 minutes or even 30 minutes to the Circle as they call it.

These days I have seen it as low as 8 minutes and regularly under 20 minutes.  Instead of bumping along at 5-15 MPH, I am hitting 70 and rarely under 20.  This has been going on now for some months.  Which indicates to me that there are very many fewer cars and trucks on the road into Downtown Chicago.  This further implies then that there is less shipping being done and fewer people going to or going home from work.  So when I see blow hards talking about a V-shaped recovery in the economy and how we will see 1300 in the S&P 500 this year, I have to scratch my head.  I told my father in November 2007 he should go to cash.  I also told him in November 2009 that he should go to cash because the S&P would stall somewhere between 1150 and 1200.  It barely hit 1150, but it was around 1150 for about a week, ample opportunity to lighten a portfolio.  I wrote him on Feb 18th to say that the recent bounce up from near 1040 to 1110 was another opportunity to get out.  I expect that this year we will be testing lows from last year as there is a new wave of Mortgage resets and foreclosures to come over the next 2 years.

Look at the chart below from T2 Partners via Amherst Securities.  Note how the market climbed as we were in the trough.  We are now climbing the hill.  The market is not going higher.

In watching the Sunday talking head shows today, I saw some footage of Mitt Romney saying something foolish at the recent CPAC dinner.  He said that the Stimulus Package passed by Democrats in 2009 “added not one net new job to the American economy”.  Hmm.  I know what he was trying to say.  But what he said was something else.  What he was trying to say and should have said was something like “The Stimulus Bill may have produced some jobs, and we are happy for those families who are now employed.  But the cost per job for each of those jobs, which will be paid for by American Taxpayers, was much more than what the employed people will benefit.  And in the end, the economy as a whole will be less well off than if those jobs had been provided by the private economy because they did not have to pay the taxes it cost to create those government provided jobs.  The economy would be better off, on the whole, if the money was left in the private economy rather than washed through the inefficient hands of government.”  Of course with some more wordsmithing I am sure this could be made more pithy.

Instead he said that no jobs were created.  Now the average American will look at a statement like that and say to themselves, “um, obviously it did create some jobs.  This must be one of those nay-saying Republicans (like the media says) saying something demonstrably untrue that anyone can see at a glance is probably false.  So I guess we cannot trust those guys either.”  And of course the Left will run with such a statement to prove that Republicans are lying idiots.

Which brings us to Thursday’s trap setup.  Obviously Obama is trying to lay a trap to make Republicans look bad on Health Care.  If Republicans go into it with thoughtless language like Romney used at CPAC then they are going to get their hats handed to them and blunt the force they have going into the mid-terms in 8 months.  Hopefully whoever winds up going will take a page from the recent editorial by Newt Gingrich, which laid out a number of ideas for handling health care reform, and be well-prepared enough on why the Left’s ideas are dangerous not to sink the party’s fortunes this fall.

With all the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the Federal Budget our Dear Leader the Obamanator proposed recently, you occasionally hear the solution mentioned but it is rarely discussed and Congress turns it’s back (for example by voting unanimously to keep entitlements off the table when considering how not to bankrupt the country).  It seems to me the solution is just plain obvious.  When Social Security was conceived, the government was assuming the obligation to pay some piddling amount for what was an expectation of something like 2 years per person.  This was because the average life expectancy at the time was about 2 years more than the age at which the government would start paying benefits. A similar dynamic is at work with Medicare.

In the meantime, America’s  great medical entrepreneurs and doctors and scientists (some from outside America too) have figured out how to extend our lives to the point where we are now living not 2 – but 15, 20 or 30 years past the point where the government starts paying benefits.   So we need to either decrease life expectancies, which seems rather evil, or move the retirement age out to be in line with our ever-increasing life spans.  The blunder the government made at program inception (and one they seem to make with every program in one way or another, do they not ever learn anything?) was not to index the age at which benefits start to life expectancy.  It is just as stupid as not indexing other benefits for inflation.  The Germans have already taken steps to address this.  Are we less capable than Germany?  The obvious solution is to move the retirement age out to be more in line with increased life expectancy.  Is that so hard?  See here for a discussion of how some countries have done this.

Instead we have Demunists trying to take over health care which will have the nearly immediate effect of reducing life expectancies.  While that might help in the long run, it is not the optimal solution I would submit.  And it does not address the other driver of our entitlement crisis, the fact that health costs rise faster than economic growth.  It actually makes it worse.  The country senses this.  Is it any wonder that Commocrats will get wiped up in the fall elections?  Not that I trust the Republicans to do the right thing.   But with them any legislation will likely be only marginally destructive rather than utterly destructive as it will be under the Demunists.

Steny Hoyer was just interviewed on CNBC and I just love to hear the nonsense that spills out of Demunist leaderships mouths whenever they open.  Speaking about the state of employment and the Democratic shift to prioritizing jobs in an election year, he went on about how if we could just get the policy mix we had in the Clinton years back in place we could counter all the damage done in the Bush years.  Obviously he is referring to marginal tax rates and Demunist’s desire to fleece everyone who has anything to fleece of whatever is fleeceable.  It really makes one wonder whether there is a brain or a Democratically preprogrammed computer in his head.

To anyone who remembers the golden 90’s, one is struck by the differences with our currrent circumstances.  In the 90’s, we had the Peace Dividend with the fall of Communism and a general rightward tilt in terms of economic freedom worldwide, the elimination of the S&L Crisis, the development and dispersal of a wide variety revolutionary new technologies in the Internet, cell phones, computing and medicine, and conclusion of the Uruguay round of world trade talks which set the stage for globalization.  In other words, there were gale force tail winds which Clinton expertly sailed.  These tail winds allowed him to raise taxes without killing the golden goose.  In fact that was a prudent tightening of fiscal policy for the time as it helped reduce the level of growth that otherwise would have taken place and helped keep inflation from getting out of hand.

The economy, with such strong underpinnings, succeeded wildly DESPITE the tightening of policy that tax increases represented. Demunists like Hoyer for some reason believe that higher taxes CAUSED the prosperity of the 90’s.  A stunning misreading of history for one at the highest levels of policy making in our great country, and one that sadly pervades the Democratic worldview.

Now fast forward to today.  I will agree for the sake of argument with the left that the Iraq war, while it had the positive benfit of ridding the world of Saddam Hussein, was nevertheless ill-considered in that it enatngled us for years in the middle east with great cost and with an arguably deleterious effect on our standing with many friends and foes, with whom we now find ourselves at a loss of traction on subsequent issues ranging from sanctions on Iran to combatting terrorism and many others.  Economically the problem is that it just costs alot and thus increases pressure on the federal budget and hence on the need to raise taxes.  In so many other ways the current situation also differs from the 90’s.  Rather than Tail Winds we have gale force Head Winds.

First is obviously the epochal credit crisis and its aftermath.  Rather than being on the cusp of a great surge of global wealth creation, as we were in the 90’s, we have just witnessed spectacular wealth destruction.  Demographically we are on the cusp of a bubble of retirement and have promised the retirees massive state pension support in the form of social security and medicare.  Foolishly, as is usually the case with Washington, the age for retirement was not indexed to life expectancies, which have lengthened greatly since the programs were enacted.  So we now can expect to pay many more years of benefits to tretiress than was contemplated at program inception.  Other head winds include the fact that there are increasing numbers of religious fanatics who want to end the way of life of the West.  The general tilt of politics has been towrd less freedom rather than greater for the last 5 years globally.  It would take years to overcome these head winds under the best circumstances.

But of course America elected Barack Obama and a Democratic congress.  So we are not going to have the best circumstances for growth.  Instead we have people who believe that raising taxes will somehow spark risk taking.  It won’t.  We have people who believe that more regulation will spark risk-taking.  It won’t.  We have people who believe that it is a good idea to send 100s of Billions of Dollars to the third world to atone for climate changed caused by our past development and as if that wasnt bad enough, to double the cost of energy to our own economy and then try to tell us that there will be a net benefit in the form of “green jobs”.  There won’t.

Will raising taxes and returning to the glorious Clintonian past by tightening fiscal policy be the right prescription in the current circumstances where we have Head Winds rather than Tail Winds?  It won’t.

One of the reasons Demunists trot out to justify their insane proclivity to destroy our health care system is that in the current system too many people go bankrupt and lose their homes due to health expenses they cannot handle.  And to some extent this may be true, and perhaps we should do something about it.  Unfortunately, the solution they have proposed, while it might save some of the people who would otherwise have been impacted thus, will in fact create others who would not have been bankrupted by health expenses, but now will be by the mighty hand of government.

One of the main tenets of Commocratic health care is the mandate that ALL Americans purchase health insurance or face fines.  Whether you have purchased a qualifying plan or not and thus whether you must pay a fine or not will be tracked by the IRS.  Putting aside for a minute the outrageous invasion of privacy that will result from the IRS having godlike powers to inspect our personal lives,  this will mean for many people that they will be subject to tax penalties when they cannot afford the mandated insurance.  And of course, once they cannot pay these taxes, they will have usurious additional penalties piled on top of those.  The IRS makes credit card companies look like pussycats when it comes to tacking on fees and penalties for non-compliance.  And in the end, the IRS will put a lien on your house and you may lose your home.   Not a nice result.

As a full time market participant, I have been accustomed to keeping CNBC on next to me all day long.  I don’t any more.  Read this article which suggests that General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt has put pressure on the network to be less critical of President Obama,  I believe he has.  There is much more pro-Obama speech there now.  Anchors now defend the insane health care legislation.  That was what clinched it for me.  Mark Haines started snorting derisively about those who speak of ‘death panels’.  Mark, I bet you have not read the work of Ezekiel Emmanuel (Obama’s health care advisor and member of the Comparative Effectiveness Research board authorized and funded in the 2009 ‘Stimulus’ package) , have you.  Read it and then tell me that Death Panels is too strong a word for what Demunists are trying to do.

To be honest, I do still watch it until 9AM Central.  The Fox Business News host in the morning is just awful.  I miss Rick Santelli and Larry Kudlow and Art Cashin, but you cannot have everything I suppose.

Why would Jeff Immelt put the screws to his business media outlet?  Well, it could have something to do with all the green energy work that GE is going to get from the government.  That will mean GE sells a lot of wind turbines.  In exchange for becoming an Obama supporter, Immelt got a seat on the Economic Recovery Advisory Board and the promise of fat government contracts for the “Smart Grid’ and green energy projects.  And GE needs it to stay afloat.  I puke when the GE commercials touting the smart grid come on, you know, the ones with the scarecrow suggesting the Wizard of Oz?  And what about the commercials where the ‘GE Employees’ sing awful 80’s movie soundtrack tunes.  My God those are painful.  Those commercials are ‘paid for’ by US tax dollars.  GE Capital was a major recipient of federal bailout funds under the ‘Stimulus Plan’ and TARP (actually the Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program).  While that probably made some sense, because the commercial paper markets were dead, it still reeks because in advertising for all this feel-good green energy work they are doing they are recycling dollars they will earn from supporting the outrageous cap-and-trade legislation which will bring our country to its knees and result in massive government intervention into the everyday lives of Americans.

Switch to Fox Business Channel and do not buy GE appliances or anything else made by GE or its subsidiaries.

It is rather rich to hear Pelosi and Hoyer call those who are shouting down their congressional representatives and others at Town Hall meetings Un-American.  Those with by far the worse reputation for shouting down those with whom they disagree tend to be liberals, especially campus liberals.  They do what they can to stop those with whom they disagree from appearing in the first place, and failing that, even at really fine institutions like Columbia University, they just shout them out.

The paranoid left believes the recent protests are orchestrated, when they clearly are mostly not orchestrated.  They profess to wonder why we cannot have a rational debate.  The president bemoans the fact that there is so much misleading information and gosh-darned erroneous rhetoric out there;  please just report it to us when you see it.

What you do not see in the press is any acknowledgment of WHY reasoned debate is pretty much impossible, on either side.  Talking to a member of Congress or the Administration is like talking to a brick wall.  They show up with canned and irrelevant politic-speak.  They are not really going to listen to you or take account of your views or even think, much less actually READ the history changing legislation on which they are casting votes.  They, almost without exception, speak from a talking point sheet composed by their leadership.  In other words, it is all bullshit.  And then Claire McCaskill (D-MO) asks, apparently in all seriousness, “Don’t you trust me?”  Bwah ha ha ha ha ha ha (tears rolling down cheek and falling heavily to the floor).  You have got to be kidding.

It is no wonder then that the only reasonable approach to changing the outcome is just to shout the loudest.  Just say No, No, No or some other slogan that can be chanted over, and over, and over….  Pelosi and her ilk have only themselves to blame.

As reported here, Barack Obama, the man currently pretending to be the President of the United States of America, said when discussing his insane nationalization of the health care system that will bankrupt the country while simultaneously reducing the quality of care and taking a giant leap toward a country like the one presented in the movie Logan’s Run : “The American people have to realize that there’s no such thing as a free lunch.”

Coming from the leader of the Frree Lunch party that is pretty rich.  Under Obama’s leadership, the number of taxpayers that pay no income tax will breach 50% for the first time.  Yet many of those 50% that pay no taxes whatsoever will benefit from the programs, like nationalized health care, that Obama proposes.  Is that not the quintessential definition of a free lunch?  Obama’s slickness is starting to make slick Willie look positively tacky.

Antichrist’s Adjutant: Henry Waxman	Dumb as a Rock, but just as dangerous when thrown at your head – 3rd in line for the Presidency, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

These are two of the most powerful Demunists and Commocrats in Washington, Waxman, Chair of the House Energy Committe, and Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives.  Waxman is from Beverly Hills, 90210 country, California.  Pelosi is from San Francisco.  Obviously their state is governed so well, that we should use it as a pattern for the country.  Oh, wait, their state issues IOUs to pay people that banks will not even accept.  Their state is bankrupt as a result of Demunistic and Commocratic, stars in your eyes,, blinders-on, incapable of thinking of the consequences  mismanagement.

Here is the language of Obama’s chief political advisor, David Axelrod:  “Ultimately, this is not about a process.  It’s about results.”  In other words, in words reminiscent of Stalin-era communism, “The ends justify the means.”

Or take the language of Nancy Pelosi speaking about the need to reduce carbon output on her spring 2009 trip to China.  “Every aspect of our lives must be subject to inventory.”  How do you do that?  You send jackbooted ACORN “community organizers” around to gather the GPS coordinates for your home in the process of gathering census data, so they know where you live.

Or take the Cap and Trade bill sponsored by Henry Waxman.  Before you can sell your home, you will have to prove to government auditors that you have made it energy-efficient.  What will they do if you haven’t?  Maybe fine you?  Maybe take a lien on your home?  I do not know.

I have argued that when fascism comes to America, it will come from the Left, not the Right (see Liberal Fascism).  So it is.

With the news today that the Tribune Company has reopened negotiations to sell the team with a second bidder, I thought it time to opine on the Cubs chances this year.

A couple of years ago I had a letter hand delivered to Andy MacPhail by a friend of the family who was in town to watch a Cardinals game in MacPhail’s box at Wrigley.  In the letter I offered to be the team’s Moneyball guy, as I have some ideas on what it takes to make a winning baseball team.  I did not know that MacPhail would soon be gone.  My letter made its way to Jim Hendry and I have his reply letter in which he kindly declined my offer of assistance.

Things would be better for Cubs fans had he not declined my offer.  Recall that last year the Cubs had arguably the best team in baseball.  They ended the season with a whimper in the first round of the playoffs against the Los Angeles Dodgers due, I submit, to the fact that Lou errantly failed to start the electric Reed Johnson in Center Field in favor of the aging Jim Edmonds, and started Fukudome in right.  Fukudome did nothing, Edmonds failed to spark the team, Johnson did not even have a single defensive inning or at-bat and the Cubs predictably but unnecessarily disappointed fans who had really believed that 2008, the 100th year of Cubs futility, would be the year they redeemed all those millions of fan-years of expectations.

So in the off-season, you might expect Hendry to keep the team together for a repeat.  Though I had resolved not to give a damn about the Cubs going forward, I did tune in in mid-April.  I was surprised when I saw the damage done to the team.   Not only did they not keep the team together, they traded away its heart by dealing away Kerry Wood and Mark DeRosa.  The clubhouse chemistry between DeRosa and Theriot was the core of what made the Cubs a contender last year.  Gone.  The feel-good story which had Kerry Wood in a comeback role as closer was finished.  Gone.  Wood was not the best closer in the game, but certainly he did a serviceable job, and he has a winning disposition.  Also a good part of the team chemistry.

Why did Hendry deal these two players?  According to news reports quoting Hendry, it was to make room for… Milton Bradley?!?!#?*!?  Aaron Miles at second for DeRosa and Kevin Gregg for the Closer?!?!#@?!?  Where to start.  Gregg has proven to be several notches below Wood in the closing role.  Aaron Miles is a serviceable player, but he does not have the spark with the rest of the team that causes guys to play above their baseline capabilities.  And to top it off, they acquire the games biggest head case and worst clubhouse guy (possibly excepting Manny Ramirez) who comes in to hit … .110.  You could not have made worse moves.  It just isn’t possible.

So it is too bad that I am not working for the team.  And it is too bad that Cubs fans will have to wait more decades for a shot to see the Cubs win the fall classic.  I will be surprised if the Cubbies finish above .500 on the season.  And then their other core players like Derrek Lee and Aramis Ramirez will be past their winning years.  Once upon a time I was a Cubs fan.  Now I am an angry ex Cubs fan.

In December the Fed announced that it would target Fed Funds at 0 to 1/4% and it also announced that it would be in the market for agency debt and treasuries, effectively monetizing the debt of the United States.  The dollar, which had been strengthening in the flight to quality as risk positions were eliminated in the aftermath of the financial market meltdown, dropped sharply.   Yields spiked down on the theory that the Fed would be buying treasuries in competition with those fleeing risk.  Importantly, this also put an end to the commodities drop from July of 2008 to December 2008.   Over the next few months, markets fluctuated in a range near their December levels and the dollar strengthened as people were worried whether the world was ending.

As is became clear in the spring of 2009 that things had stabilized somewhat, the implications of extraordinary money creation by the Fed, along with a ridiculously wasteful US stimulus spending bill and a less wasteful Chinese stimulus plan started to become clear and markets reacted.  Ten year treasury yields have just about doubled in 6 months.  Crude oil prices have more than doubled.   Even Corn prices have risen 55%  despite the decimation of the chimerical ethanol industry.  Such price moves have happened in most commodities as it has become clear that there is a rising long term risk of inflation.

The Fed’s position has been made more difficult by an $800 Billion “stimulus plan” that will be mostly wasted and pending Demunist legislation that promises wartime deficits as far as the eye can see.  But an independent Fed has to be the entity that backstops the system by defending the dollar.  And the only way it can do this is by convincing markets that it will not let the situation get out of hand.  Unfortunately, a guy with the nickname “Helicopter Ben” is most unlikely to be counted on to do so.  As a result we will likely face a dollar crisis, with the result that debt yields will rise massively, as will the cost of all commodities.  As a matter of policy, should the cost be bourne by those who use commodities, notably oil and gas?  This would probably suit the Demunists and Commocrats as it helps their drive to go green.  It is a steep price to pay though and could lead to world unrest.  It also shifts massive amounts of wealth to really bad people all over the world; the Saudis, Putin’s Russia, Chavez in Venezuela, Iran and so forth.  It would be better if the Fed showed some mettle and kept a lid on commodity prices by raising rates, even if only a little.  They may even find that it helps keep long rates in line to help the housing market, even if it costs banks a little as it flattens the Yield Curve a bit.  The bottom line is that authorities cannot create a painless economy, no matter what democratic keynesians say.  The sooner the pain is felt, the better off the world will be in the long run.

If the Fed would only get some balls, we could silence the noise coming from the worlds leading autocracies about dropping the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.  Sadly I would bet that this will not happen.  The world will lose the dollar on Obama’s and the Demunist’s watch.

The ongoing bailout of Chrysler and General Motors cannot be looked at as anything other than a bailout of the UAW.  By some estimates, the American taxpayer will be shelling out $215,000 for every job saved.  The massive waste of time and money surrounding these shenanigans boggles the mind.  Does anyone doubt that these companies will need more and more taxpayer money to operate in the future?  GM will have to reach a market cap it has never achieved in the past to allow it to pay back the money it has received.

If I could do animation I would animate a race of geese around a track where the goose picks up coins and stuffs them in a sack.  It makes it around the first turn all the while stuffing its sack.  As it picks up steam and its sack starts getting full, bystanders – who are all politicians and union members – start pouncing on the back of the Goose demanding that they be given coins.  Eventually the Goose is so overwhelmed that it misses a turn and crashes into the wall just shy of when it was going to hand the baton off to ??? some other industry that requires labor.

In exchange for the massive and unfair taxpayer transfer of wealth to these politically favored workers (why are workers in other parts of the country not receiving similar help?  Why am I or my friends not receiving such help for that matter?), we should ask that union members who benefit forego their voting rights for at least one 4 year election cycle.  After all, this whole exercise is nothing but a huge buyout of their votes.  And they thought Blagovich was shameless.

It is enough to make one wretch and wretch and wretch.

Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, whose pronouncements on energy tend toward the wacky, today said something that actually makes sense.  He called for roofs around the world to be painted white.  This is something that will make a huge difference in ameliorating the heat island effect, and in cooling the planet.  And it is not some mightily expensive scheme that will only line the pockets of the well connected a la Cap and Trade.  It could actually be done in the normal course of things at reasonable cost and will make a difference.

We need more such out of the box thinking to solve our problems.  There are certainly things that individuals can do to reduce the amount of energy that we use.  The government can provide a useful service by collecting such information and publicising it.  It can then also undertake reasonable legislation where necessary, like requiring new roofs be painted white.  Sadly the primary mode of operation for politicians and bureaucrats is to promote insane and risky schemes that will endanger our future prosperity in an unholy alliance between special interests and politicians, with the politicians crafting legislation to benefit the special interests while the special interests help the politicians with campaign cash.  Think Jeff Immelt, one of Obama’s smiling new supporters, and CEO of GE – who now supports the insane energy schemes of the left while expecting lots of business in return for GE.  It is enough to make one sick.