I am still hacking away at Obama's book and i think it is time to make a couple of comments. Like I said before, The Promised Land, is a good book and a good read with all kinds of interesting insights gained.
However, since Obama just wrote or published his book, i assume it is still his current way of thinking. So I think it is time that I explain to him where he got things wrong or misinterpreted. The first has to deal with "environmental" policy and the second has to do with the "2008 financial crisis."
We'll deal with the environmental issue first. Obama says that he had to crash a party of BRIC nation leaders (i.e., Brazil, Russia, India, and China) in order to convince them to endorse his thinking on the environment. Now i see nothing wrong in Obama's approach to the problem, but i do have a problem with BRIC itself. Who the f--- is BRIC when it comes to economic power anyway? Brazil? Russia? India? China?
Really? Have you looked at the market value of BRIC's companies recently? I have and here is what i found out.
In 2020, the market value of BRIC's companies in terms of the Global 2000 came to $8.6 Trillion. Compare that to the U.S.'s market value of $25.9 and the other non-BRIC and non-U.S. companies of $19.8. BRIC accounts for less than one-third of that of U.S. companies and less than half of that of the non-U.S. non-BRIC companies. Now I ask you this. Who the f--- do you think should be setting environmental policy? BRIC, the U.S., or the rest of the world? Shit, in my way of thinking, Obama's move wasn't necessarily bold in breaking in on BRIC's party at the environmental summit in Copenhagen. It's what he should have done. Why should anyone be surprised with Obama's boldness. It some ways reading his book, it seems Obama even thought he was being bold.
One last comment on BRIC. Here are the 2020 global 2000 numbers for Russia, Brazil, and India. Russia = $0.4 Trillion; Brazil = $0.3 Trillion; and India = $0.8 Trillion. How scary can they get in economic terms. Come on. Do you really think they should be setting environmental policy?
Now on to my second issue with Obama--the 2008 Financial Crisis. Obama's tales about what he and Tim Geithner did together to pull us out of the 2008 financial crisis was so wrong that i almost got discouraged to the point that i quit reading The Promised Land. I am glad that i kept on reading, however, every time Obama mentioned "Tim" later on in the book i just about puked.
I am not sure how many of my followers have read the Performance Evaluation Report Card (PERC) Methodology that i offered my readers, but i think that if you did, you will note that within that document, Tristan and I talked about how we put together a list of banks in trouble as a result of the 2008 financial crisis. We said we put that list together in one-day. If the truth be told, it was more like in two-hours. The list was smaller than the FDICs list of troubled banks, yet essentially every bank that the FDIC shutdown was on our list. Our list represented about 3.5% of all the banks, and more like 0.5% of all bank assets.
Now Obama went on and on about Tim Geithner's "TARP" (remember TARP?) and Tim's "pressure test" idea, which they ended up taking about three-months doing. Obama thinks that it was the result of "Tim's" pressure test idea that saved us from the Great Depression of 2008. In two hours of analysis, using FDIC-certified data (which by the way is probably the best source for such data) Tristan and i performed our own "pressure test" and we knew right off there was not going to be a Great Depression. Two-hours! And long before Tim's pressure test was completed.
What saved us from the Great Depression of 2008 was not Tim's brilliant thinking, but the everyday middle and lower class American who kept paying his mortgage because his "home is his or her castle". And they did so, not even knowing the value of their castle at the time. That and after the fact the markets had dropped nearly 60% in value, wise investors knew that there were great investments to be had at bargain-rate prices. Those are the two reasons we pulled out of the 2008 financial crisis. Tim Geithner had nothing to do with it. In fact it was the likes of Tim Geithner, Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke, and Alan Greenspan that created the 2008 financial crisis in the first place.
And TalkMarkets thinks i am a "niche" writer. It makes me wonder if they would publish this as an article.
I would be interested if any of my followers would like to comment.
I don't think much politics gets published here. It's just too polarizing and too many of the authors are biased one way or the other. It's also doesn't have much to do with investing and this is an investing site. Why not send it to one of the many politics sites. Seems like there are more and more of those every day.
In that case invest in the United States and buy an index fund for the S&P 500. You also might want to get a smaller index fund of the Russell 2000 to go along with your S&P 500 one. When globanomics gets to be the norm, buy an index fund of the Global 500 or Global 2000. These are the best and safest investments that you can make. If you want, i will tell you what investments funds i invest in. Last year my investments went up nearly 40% and that was from a fund geared mostly towards the NASDAQ. This year i split my investments up into two different big company U.S. funds and i am doing well again, beating both the DOW and the S&P averages--again.
Politics and investing--i am learning the two should never meet. I find it curious that on a business, economic, and investment front that one cannot critic the policies used by either a democrat or a republican. As a financial conservative democrat (did you know that one even existed) i reserve the right to continue to criticize so-called "investment" decisions that i think are counter to the betterment of the United States (e.g. TARP, infrastructure without balancing the budget).
Go ahead and erase me from those who you read if you think i am too political. I am sure you will find other "blogs" on TalkMarkets who will tell you Gamestop is a good investment--and they won't mention political policy at all. I doubt if you will hear anyone talking about "balancing the budget" because that has only been done about three times in the last fifty-years.
I have been accused as a "niche" blogger and that might be true. After all, globanomics is really what i am all about. And globanomics as the word implies is a "global economic and financial" concept that will bring a smarter way for the totality of global investments to be made. It is good for the world. It is good for the United States, China, Europe, etc. It is also good for investors. Globanomics even claims business is superior to economics.
I am sorry, but for the time being, i think i will stay with my TalkMarkets blog. If the editors of TalkMarkets and the readers of my "blogs" think i am just too political to touch, then so be it My readership will drop off to nothing and i will just be ranting to myself, which btw, is not a bad way to go.
Respectfully.