Higgenbotham wrote:
> That's good news. I've been reading the first few of Roosevelt's
> Fireside Chats to look for markers on the evolution of
> generational attitudes regarding corruption and other issues. In
> his first Fireside Chat. Roosevelt tells the American people that,
> yes, financial wrongdoing occurred, that it is the government's
> job to deal with it, and the government is dealing with it. I'll
> be eagerly awaiting a national television address by Obama stating
> the equivalent, but won't be holding my breath.
>
http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/firesi90.html
That's interesting stuff.
However, I do think that Obama will indeed give that speech. What
has he got to lose? His job now is to blame everything that happens
on someone else. That's the job description of a politician.
Obama is apparently no longer claiming to walk on water. He's no
longer promising a major change on January 21.
In fact, his speech on Thursday was downright apocalyptic:
Barack Obama wrote:
> We start 2009 in the midst of a crisis unlike any we have seen in
> our lifetime, a crisis that has only deepened over the last few
> weeks. Nearly 2 million jobs have been now lost, and on Friday
> we're likely to learn that we lost more jobs last year than at any
> time since World War II. Just in the past year, another 2.8
> million Americans who want and need full-time work have had to
> settle for part-time jobs. Manufacturing has hit a 28-year low.
> Many businesses cannot borrow or make payroll. Many families
> cannot pay their bills or their mortgage. Many workers are
> watching their life savings disappear. And many, many Americans
> are both anxious and uncertain of what the future will hold.
> Now, I don't believe it's too late to change course, but it will
> be if we don't take dramatic action as soon as possible. If
> nothing is done, this recession could linger for years. The
> unemployment rate could reach double digits.
>
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/08/us/po ... ml?_r=1&hp
In another part of the same speech, he did blame the crisis on the
United States:
Barack Obama wrote:
> For years, too many Wall Street executives made imprudent and
> dangerous decisions, seeking profits with too little regard for
> risk, too little regulatory scrutiny, and too little
> accountability. Banks made loans without concern for whether
> borrowers could repay them, and some borrowers took advantage of
> cheap credit to take on debt they couldn't afford. Politicians
> spent taxpayer money without wisdom or discipline and too often
> focused on scoring political points instead of problems they were
> sent here to solve. The result has been a devastating loss of
> trust and confidence in our economy, our financial markets and
> our government.
> Now, the very fact that this crisis is largely of our own making
> means that it's not beyond our ability to solve. Our problems are
> rooted in past mistakes, not our capacity for future greatness.
> It will take time, perhaps many years, but we can rebuild that
> lost trust and confidence. We can restore opportunity and
> prosperity.
So, with that going on, Obama will be sounding more and more like
FDR.
Higgenbotham wrote:
> Great effort. I'm looking for a catalyst along the lines of the 5
> scenarios that Strauss and Howe laid out on pages 272-273 of The
> Fourth Turning to occur, likely next year. They did some excellent
> work laying out these catalysts, considering how long ago it was.
> It seems to me that scenarios 1, 2, 4 and 5 or some combination of
> these scenarios are likely (especially some variation of 1), as
> well as others. In some of my work, I have attempted to gauge the
> market reaction (or panic reaction we might say) to various
> catalysts. There are many questions that come out of such an
> exercise. Generally, the reaction would tend to reinforce economic
> slowdown and debt default of all kinds. For example, the most
> obvious result occurs in the case of a pandemic, which would would
> effectively shut down the economy as a first response. It would be
> an interesting exercise to go through some of these scenarios and
> others and look at what the response of the various markets you
> analyzed might be and how the response might be different under
> different scenarios.
I certainly agree with you that we're waiting for a crisis catalyst,
and it might be any of several things. But whether there's one
catalyst or 10 catalysts, one of the catalysts has to be a stock
market crash of epic proportions. These huge bubbles have to implode
some time.
I wonder if you'd consider taking your research on money markets and
putting the pieces together into a formal article for the web site.
Something like, "Is your money market account safe? by C....
C........." Subtitle: "How long can the Fed keep money market
accounts from collapsing?"
Sincerely,
John