Back from the Heartland

While in my hometown, I had a pizza from the same shop where I used to get them in high school days. It was as good as ever and practically free: an extra large, 14" pie with everything, including bits of sweet pineapple. Mmmm tasty. All that for $11.75, the same price holding for several years. There never was any inflation - that was a beefer & pension fund induced bubble, thanks to the usual suspects. I guess they aren't "suspects" anymore, though. Almost everyone not in the pocket of the Street now sees that hot money bought all the oil in the world and ran the price to $140/barrel, far, far beyond a real clearing price based on supply & demand.

But nothing has yet been done about this systemic problem. No serious regulation on derivatives or hedge funds. Sham "investments" like ultrashort ETFs and commodity ETFs are sold to the gullible public. At least some 401K administrators and pension fund managers are stopping the "vig" payoffs by going to cheap index funds for most of their equity investments. But a lot more should be done.

Meanwhile, La Grande Boucher (aka Obama) seems to have decided to declare war on small business. The health care plan wants to force business owners to become mothers of their workers by mandating payments for the workers' health care. And he wants to tax them massively, which will inhibit their growth by destroying their ability to amass savings to increase equity capital. He and his lackey, Sheila Bair, refuse to provide some support to CIT, which lends to innumerable small and medium sized businesses. I suppose that's due to their assessment that most small business owners are Republicans.

What other "unintended consequences" exist for Obama's schemes ? The national health care program will increase outsourcing to Asia. As will the "cap & trade" carbon cartel. The Bloviator-in-Chief has a jobs plan, all right: it's a jobs plan for China, India, Korea, Malaysia and the rest of Asia.

Sigh ... it's clear that no one in the Obama administration knows how a business is actually run.

All this troubles me. And the other little "birdie" singing in my ear is this insidious attack on Battleship Ben Bernanke. Until and IF Obama reappoints him, I will be quite troubled and might be unable to get very long again in Obama Fund.

The market needs to set a new intermediate term high (two consecutive closing days in the S&P 960 area) or a pattern of lower lows and lower highs will give the chart a serious negative slant. The recent pullback in the S&P - probably mostly beefer selling and short selling that ended the past few days in a wave of covering) - DID make a lower low. So the S&P really needs a higher high to cancel that poor pattern.

By the way, although Obama Fund missed the recent rally, Fido Fund did participate and is back to 60% up year to date.

Word of the Day

"Booboisie" - noun [$10 or $100, depending on your dictionary]; coined by H. L. Mencken in 1922.
Booboisie means 1. a class of people made up of the gullible and stupid; 2. a segment of the general public composed of uneducated, uncultured persons.
Sentence: After attempting to watch a bit of TV (cable) in Ohio, there is no doubt that the booboisie is now the dominant class in America. And it must even be the growth market for CNBC, as the formerly useful channel is now simply a game show comprised of 15 second bits of fluff.

Le Mot de la Semaine

"Démentir" - verb (transitive), conjugates like partir and sentir.
Démentir means 1. to deny, to refute, to contradict; 2. to belie, to disappoint.
La Phrase: Les actes de l'administration d'Obama dément ses paroles.
Sentence: The actions of the Obama administration belie its words.