President-Elect Speaks

Well, many of you heard the President-Elect speak this morning. I have to say, rather than his normal high hopes and dreams, he was rather honest and upfront with his view. He clearly stated that he and his team feel that the nation is going down a serious economic road and that he wants to address it immediately.

I have to say that I am skeptical on where the money is coming from, but at the same time I do respect that he is trying to do something even before he is in office. Unfortunately, President Bush seems like he has checked out and did so 6 months ago. President Bush is not actively fighting the economy, instead he is letting Paulson and Bernanke do as they wish and so far that has not gone as well as planned.

Now, I want to make a clear statement about one of my major complaints about talk show radio and most pundits; I have never been in charge of or can really even imagine the details involved in running the US economy. We hear day-in and day-out from talking heads on what should be done here or there, but 99.999999% of them have never even run a medium sized, 500-2000 person, company let alone the US economy.

In fact, there may have been no right answers and no wrong answers. It may have been a situation that we just needed to pump money into the economy to stabilize it, not fix it. I would have preferred to see some kind of true oversight on where the money went and how it is being spent. Both the financial experts and Congress failed again.

In the end however, we are back to President-Elect Obama. His approach may not be the totally right one and we will have to wait and see. I do support his idea that this problem that we are experiencing right now is exactly when we need government intervention. Market forces would ultimately solve this problem. Of that I am sure. But, the market forces would most likely drive the economy down another 25-50% before bottoming out and we cannot have that.

The government stepping in and providing some stability and confidence may be what is needed. This is truly the government’s job. There will be many who say that I am wrong on this and that the government does not create anything; it just spends our tax dollars. And they are right. Still, there is a time when we need to just spend, even if it is not fair to all of the people of the U.S., and that time is now.

Let’s see what this new approach is like and if it works. I liked that he called for a moratorium on any pet projects and pork being placed into the new stimulus plan. If we are lucky, he will continue to fight that fight every day that he is President.

I am done. Take you shots and I will respond.