Are we nationalizing corporations or are they nationalizing us?

One of the big trends I’ve followed closely recently has been liberalization.  A number of social democratic countries including Italy and Sweden have followed a trend started by Lady Thatcher in the 1980s by selling off large portions if not entire portions of government-owned and subsidized businesses.  Utilities, communications, and transportation companies that were previously state-owned were sold off showing gains in both productivity as well as money to tax payers to free the funds up for better use.  (Think schools, research and development, and personal use.)  The Swedish model has been such a success that many countries try to emulate it.

Meanwhile back in the United States, we sit on the verge of nationalizing the automobile industry and we have just expanded state ownership of financial institutions to include an Insurance Company.  Is this where we really want to be?  Also, if we are going to place taxpayer dollars into the private sector, what about other failing markets like health and the airline industry?  Is any one really thinking about the ramifications of this as well as the rules of engagement and disengagement?  I don’t really think so and I’m frankly worried that our monies are not going to our national priorities.  They are going to industries with more political presence that strategic.

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My Voting Strategy: A Better Tomorrow

Most of mother’s family comes from Missouri.  They call it the show-me state.  It’s considered one of those bellweather states in elections because they tend to go with Presidential winners.  I think I know why.  Like a good Missouri denizen, I never take anything on blind faith.  When I say, I have faith in something, it’s because I’ve tested and tested and tested it so that I have faith the thing will happen again.  To me, faith is confidence. I think that is the legacy my mother taught me.  This is also why I became a Buddhist.  The Buddha’s teachings about faith are all about that kind of faith.  Sogyal Rinpoche is a teacher in my tradition and explains this type of faith far better than me.

How do we arouse this faith? The only way is to begin by using our ordinary intelligence. Through the wisdom of studying, reflecting deeply, and meditating on the teachings, we examine them, just as, in the famous example, Buddha says we must examine gold:

O bhiksus and wise men,

Just as a goldsmith would test his gold

By burning, cutting, and rubbing it,

So you must examine my words and accept them,

But not merely out of reverence for me.

 So in the Buddhadharma, faith is not blind faith, but one proven through reasoning and investigation.

 I like to test things and examine things so that I can always be completely confident in them which is probably why most of my life I’ve had jobs doing research. This is also how I approach my voting strategy.  Even when I had a certain amount of doubt in John Kerry, I still voted for him because I had faith–given our experience with President George W. Bush–that Senator Kerry could do no worse.  I didn’t think he would be Harry Truman, but I knew he wouldn’t be George W. Bush.  Afterall, we know a lot about Senator Kerry from his war record and his senate record. 

This year, I have I had to put away habits of years and a lot of assumptions I’ve lived with for a long time.  I always saw the choice issue as that one issue where I would draw my line in the sand.  That one issue that told me the mettle of a candidate and if he truely wanted to leave me to my constitutional rights or inject his religion and worldviews into my life.  I was, at one point, a Republican because I came from a Republican family.  But, I voted Democrat more than Republican election-after-election.  This is because I studied the modern Democratic Party and Republican Party. I voted Democratic because I believed they were the party that stood for fair play.   I knew this because of the legacies of FDR, JFK, Truman, and Clinton.

I am a democrat because I’m basically a Crusader Rabbit.  I’m all for the little guy.  That is probably why I love Harry Truman.  He was a President that fought all of his life for the little guy as a little guy. The powerful used to put him down even as President by calling him  “that Habadasher”.  Harry the Habadasher was the one that had to make the decision to end a long World War with the use of a weapon of unimaginable destructive power.  Who would have know this farmer’s son would rise to a place where he had to make such a decision?  Do you think any one could’ve have imagined that he would one day make that decision?  When we vote for a president, do we ever know what kind of decision they will have to make?

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Is the Market Bearish on Obama?

I’ve been hesitant to mention this in a post because at this point my data is quite anecdotal.  In order for me to say this with the kind of peer-reviewed, academic authority, I’d have to do an event study and frankly, I’m don’t teach in the kind of school where I could send a grad student off to check out my gut on a whim.  I do have access to Bloomberg numbers, so I may look at this over winter break, but right now I have to stick with my main line of research and finish a few publishable papers instead of ones based on a piqued curiosity that would never go any where helpful.  But I have done the old fashioned on-the-napkin count of the number of times McCain’s gone up in the polls and the market staged a mini-rally and the number of times Obama’s lead widened and the market dropped.  Interestingly enough, the eyeball method shows a pattern.

I’ve noticed that the markets rally on the days that McCain moves up in the polls.  For the last two weeks, just eyeballing the patterns has been pretty amazing.  This doesn’t mean it’s a statistically significant relationship.   Again, I’d have to do some kind of event study and run some statistical regressions to claim that. However, this showed up in today’s Zogby poll which validates my gut.

Pollster John Zogby: “Is McCain making a move? The three-day average holds steady, but McCain outpolled Obama today, 48% to 47%. He is beginning to cut into Obama’s lead among independents, is now leading among blue collar voters, has strengthened his lead among investors and among men, and is walloping Obama among NASCAR voters. Joe the Plumber may get his license after all. “Obama’s lead among women declined, and it looks like it is occurring because McCain is solidifying the support of conservative women, which is something we saw last time McCain picked up in the polls. If McCain has a good day tomorrow, we will eliminate Obama’s good day three days ago, and we could really see some tightening in this rolling average. But for now, hold on.”

The pollsters see a pattern also.

One of the things that I can’t understand about my Shrieking O-pod neighbors is that they just may be voting against their own self interest.  I have one friend that owns  a local bar here in New Orleans.  Another one owns an Inn.  Both would sell their businesses outright for the right price and the properties are quietly on the market.  Of course, the tourist trade is off in New Orleans, and getting the right price would be extremely difficult, but this right price basically means the two of them would have a nest egg to  get some property elsewhere and live a reduced, less stressed life style.  That is, IF OBAMA doesn’t get elected. This is where they start shrieking at me, the minute I try to discuss the errors of their ways.

You see, these friends haven’t built the Obama tax increase on Capital Gains into their price.  They are assuming they could just walk away with the “right amount”.  From what I can tell from the Obama tax plan (which morphs more than Odo, the changeling, on a season’s worth of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), they may have to double their price to come out where they want.  This would be an almost impossible feat in today’s real estate market, let alone the real estate market in New Orleans for entertainment and tourist venues which has been way off since Hurricane Katrina.  This recession is not helping anything either.  This is something I don’t think they’ve quite placed into their equations or their voting decisions.

I’ve been laughing (that kind of laugh where you really are on the edge of hysterical and want to cry) recently that with the current bad bear market, I’ll be dying at the podium instead of retiring.  My pension plan has lost about 1/3 of its value–paper losses which would translate into capital gains (and taxable big time with the Obama plan) when the market finally recovers.   If this is the case for me and the nose diving market, I bet I’ll be sending my relatives next to the same innkeeper’s for that big bed and down the street to the same bartender for some time. No cushy retirement on the beach for me.

If the Zogy polls are an indicator, investors in the stock market have a similar perception of an Obama Economy and it is not bullish.  These are the folks who make major bucks off of stocks that increase, when companies earn money right?  Well, the speculators can switch their bets and try to make money betting on companies NOT making money too.  (This is basically a short sell.)  So when Obama pulls ahead, they bet on the businesses loosing money scenario.  That’s the consensus of the market and that what causes it to move in a big way.  Let me just say, that I think that increased regulation is coming down the tubes either way, and that investors are actually welcoming this, so while I would put that in as a ‘control variable’, I don’t think it would show up as a signficant one. But again, this is just a discussion at this point and not a look a formulation of a model.

Well, this hunch of mine coupled with the rough numbered count of ups and downs on a napkin appears to be supported by polls.  Just wish I worked at a highly endowed school so I could send some Obot grad student off to do the real analysis for me.  It wouldn’t get published anyway, but at least I could state emphatically that it’s a statistically significant relationship instead of just eyeball economics.

The Truth that Dare Not Speak its Name

This is a suggestion posted in an earlier thread here and I think it’s a good one.  It also poses a great question.  Do you want to live in America where every one is afraid to speak their mind?

Perhaps people should conspire to run an ad about this chill. It could begin, “This election, why are so many people afraid to put up signs or talk politics with their family, friends, neighbors, or co-workers? [Video could cue on vandalized property and newspaper clippings on Oviolence such as the women attacked at the subway station.] Why are people behaving so uncivilly? [Video on photos of Sarah Palin is a C people, the Nailin’ Palin porn video, and the Sarah Palin blow up love doll.] Do you want to live in an America where people are afraid to speak their mind?

I’m thinking out loud. What do you think?

For months, PUMAs have been discussing the personal attacks we’ve endured since the campaign.  We endured them as Hillary supporters in the primary.  We’ve discussed the vehement attacks and threats on Tavis Smiley and many blacks who either maintain a neutral or slightly critical view of Obama.  I read that Micheal Reagan, conservative commentator and son of one of my least favorite presidents, will not appear on MSNBC any more because of the number of death threats he gets.

Is this America or some kind of fascist state?

What happened to our right to dissent?  Where can we find that most American of Values–the right to free speech?  Why is it that some many of us have completely given up on putting bumper stickers on our cars, hanging out with old friends, or even showing an inkling of outrage for the misogyny directed at Sarah Palin?  What is going on here?

I think almost all of us, at one time or another, have talked about our reticence to mention that we’re not supporting Obama.  It is because we are attacked personally or we just get some kind of shrieking LALALA from friends and family who stick their fingers in their ears now when we come around with facts.  What is the deal with this?

So, ask yourself what Steve Mather asks:  Is this the kind of America we want to live in?

Then ask yourself this:  How can we stop the suppression of free speech and thought before it cannot be stopped?