Diddled by Dire Doldrums

Or How Obama Can Handle Bunk Banks And Turgid Traders

The screaming on Wall Street is audible on Main Street. But in the Beltway it is business as usual. Not that Tiny Tim Gerthner and his boss Ebenezer Obama are not trying. But a political establishment as entrenched and deviant as the one in Washington D.C. Is slow to change. Forty days in that ideologically driven desert, where no new ideas dare bloom, would cause most Messiah's to despair.

Meanwhile the charts and entrails of companies past are scattered on a lot of empty desks where traders used to work. Talk about a culture without any new ideas! Hearkening to the Tijuana tea leaves is probably not a good strategy either, at the slightest sign of smoke everyone declares a conflagration and more selling ensues. Panic is running amok and fear is the only emotion I can detect when I hear the voices of traders crying out in the eternal darkness of the emerging end.

The only thing is, Obama has seen a lot of despair, working in the inner city. He hears the boys on Wall Street whining and caviling away. He knows the difference between a warped sense of entitlement and real need from experience. The people he is trying to help are living in a world that has been broken much of their lives. They are the working class. They are the rest of us who used to work but now sit around waiting for retirement checks that have shrunk or disappeared.

We shuffle off  to work at McDonald's to try and pay our medical bills. We grind out one more day at the gas station to pay for subscriptions we can't afford. We care for our parents and our kids just like you but without the same resources. Do you think everybody can trade useless paper for a living and this country will just keep running?

We are paying for homes that are now worth less than we paid for them. We don't listen to Rick Santelli or Larry Kudlow telling us how to think. We are too busy caring for our families and our world is crumbling around us. That is happening faster than you midget mavens of the media can imagine.

Obama has spent his life growing a thick enough skin to shed the diatribes of the people who think of him as just another,  “..........  …............!”  Not that any of those sophisticated folks in Armani Anti-Recession Power Suits would ever dream of thinking such a thought. Perish the whole idea! Not in the world of people who used to think they were sharks but seem so very scared of the dark right now. Obama is the only one with a flashlight guys.

If the guys on The Street think the rest of us are waiting for them to lead us out of the doldrums though they might think again. We are the ones taking our money back. The wealthy have few other ideas yet and may actually suffer more real losses. This world has changed fundamentally. For a change the wealthy are less prepared. The rest of us are not in the market and are not coming back any time soon. Even our retirement fund managers are holding cash because they are trying to make sure their paychecks don't bounce.

Oh yeah, about those paychecks, the system is out of balance. That is what Obama is trying to get across while juggling the failed Banking Industry the failed Auto Industry the failed Real Estate Industry and at least seven more I can name that are failing right now. Being paid millions while investors are losing their shirts is so over. Getting paid immensely for acting as unnecessary conduits for cash has no future.

The whole apparatus of finance is so arcane and ancient and totally based on access and privilege that it creaks and reeks. In an Internet world we can trade our money for ownership without your help. The wealthy are learning that fact too. The world is passing you by and you don't even detect the tsunami. The tide is out so far you could walk to the Bahamas. When it comes rolling back in it is going to sweep all of you away in one generation.

Real innovation in finance is happening in the rest of the world. Look around and see the future. That is what is happening right now! The future of business and trade is growing wings and will fly over you and past you. It will have no place for you if you don't become part of the change.

This is going to be painful but standing there screaming because Obama took your Binky away won't help. Get a clue, use your brains and help us invent that future. Finance will look a lot different in a decade. You won't be there if you don't change. That is our final answer. We are the investors with our lives in the game!!!