Too cool to be good?

Don’t get me wrong, my friends, my associates and my business all come from the United States. The last thing that I want is for the US to stay on this downturn any longer. But things are looking bad right now. Not only Obama´s nominees are dropping out like amateurs in a poker game, but the rescue plan is just awful. I don’t know what will happen next and that may be the problem.

This is just terrible, thousands of people are losing their jobs and businesses are cutting on costs, all this brings the scenario to a bitter end. Judd Greg withdrew from being the secretary of the commerce talking about his disagreement with the Obama administration as a reason why. But take into account that is the second nominee to withdraw. This after a week in which the Obama team had seen three nominees left the table.

Obama seems to be lost in the middle of the worst crisis of our life time. When we need someone to assure us of a better future we watch the administration fighting to resolve problems. Not only on the nominee side but also on the rescue package. Geithner was part of the team that saved Wall Street from catastrophe leaving in the process billions in the pockets of those greedy CEOs.

The US economy won´t stop its free fall until trust is built again. This won´t happen until Obama can make the market trust him. Wall Street so far is not looking good, it has been going up and down but ending below the 8000 mark.

So what we need?

Someone willing to make tough decisions.

What will be of the future will be a matter on how fast things turn around in the rest of the world. So far the US looks like it is not going to make any progress any time soon. The core of the problem is far too complex for the current administration.

The economy is going down mainly because no one is hiring or investing in the future. Even tech companies are cutting costs. This means that unless people feel confident that this crisis is over there will be no turn around.

Obama may make things much better with the right team. Instead he is going for a consensus that seems to go nowhere. Suddenly Republicans are going into attack mode hitting the administration hard enough turning the public opinion against the rescue package. Democrats and Republicans agree on stimulus package of $789 billion dollars cutting billions of dollars to programs bringing the final toll to an insignificant number that will do nothing to bust the economy.

Most economist that I trust on listen to said that at least the US economy needs a trillion dollars to start a decent recovery plan. I believe the figure will be enough to bring back the lost trust in a weak system.

Take these points just to understand what I would do to improve in the short run our situation:

1- Don’t bail out banks, buy the toxic assets but wipe out stock holders, giving billions of dollars so big shot executives give themselves millions in bonuses is not only stupid, it should be illegal. Obama does not understand this.
2- Buy stock from troubled companies so they have an inflow of money, stock holders will benefit for the rising of price, but also the government that will own part of those companies.
3- Create a state fund for entrepreneurs in which states could allocate money into local banks to finance new projects, giving the new companies tax benefits encouraging people who lost their jobs into getting in a new business.
4- Let foreign people come to work, give working visas to investors, open your doors so the common man and woman that want to live in the US and want to take their money to the country. This will not big huge investments looking for quick returns, this will be people committed to make a living and to work in the US.
5- Let as many students as you can in, some of them will seek to stay bringing to the US a powerful amount of smart brains. When the economy starts picking up they will be the ones in great position to make a recovery last longer.
6- Encourage states to improve their school systems, give the necessary resources so they don’t have to cut on fundamental programs related to education.
7- Don’t go protectionist, keep your borders open to commerce, that will mean that you must improve your productivity and innovation.
8- Regulate, yes it sucks but rules must be clear so when banks go into reckless behavior they must pay for it.
9- Bring back the troops, although this is much more complicated than anyone could predict, the economic cost will easily pass the one for the economic program – yes Republicans don´t mind paying for war but complain about recovering the economy – saving billions of dollars. It will also easy the excruciating labor that those brave soldiers have carried for way too long.
10- Create a motor power based on green technology, as we are seeing the devastation in an extremely dry Australia we have to realize that the world is entering a face in which we not only have to worry about all the problems that we face right now, we have to add that mother nature just have had it with us. The world needs to find a balance between progress and conservation.
As in a strategic game there could be an infinite number of possible solutions that take us to the same bright end. This is a young administration that has faced tons of problems but that is still on time to make the right choices.

Obama is smart enough to change the course now and get things done as he truly believes they should be. I just hope that he moves quickly in the right direction, all of us depend on the well being of the US, some of us most than others. I believe that the world is not ready to have other super power, not yet.

Let me entertain you

Take a look at the best performing companies in the US. Most of them are in the fast food business or in entertainment. This means that no matter how sordid the world seems, we will always cling to unreal thoughts that make us laugh and get us distracted for a while. We are sick of hearing how Madof embezzled for decades.

Sales of consoles and their video games were up in December even when everything else was falling. Movies are doing fine in this terrible economy, sports still get large crowds – although advertising is down – and concerts are scheduled as planned, meanwhile even tech industries face a tangled outlook.

This modern coliseum of entertainment is just part of well known effort to keep us from our ailing state of mine. Sports are a powerful force in shaping our lives, so do movies and lately real like video games – You Tube is the beginning of a new era of entertainment. But this also applies to politics, no wonder why Sarah Palin´s pregnant daughter got that much attention and the outstayed Blagojevich is a permanent gaga show.

I was watching the Australian open men´s final this last Sunday, and for a moment I completely forgot about the myriad of problems that we face, the millions of jobs lost, the negativity among many Republicans that just don´t seem to get it –naysayers to the stimulus plan – and finally my own despair.

Then I realize that we all need some distraction. It is good and it is not. As artists and big shot stars are destine to be in the spotlight – so we are distracted from our pity lives – politicians are also victims of the same parody. We are jealous of their success; we want them to fail – big.

Being frivolous about Britney Spear´s life is nothing to be ashamed of, her falling life enthused much more our TV sets than the raising price of oil. In the middle of this never ending economic crisis we tend to watch more sitcoms, funny movies, sport events, concerts, gossip about the stars, we hope that another politician gets caught with a prostitute – democrat – or that a gay man – republican – falls for a cop in the airport´s bathroom. Their subpar professional performance is part of their job.

From a strict business point of view being in entertainment is the right choice, recession prove? Even Tony Soprano heard complains that the mob was no longer recession proved – but good entertainment is. Unless we see Las Vegas in a harrowing free fall, there is nothing to worry about if you own a casino.

Fast food restaurants such as McDonalds are doing great, if you still want to feel like you can eat out – changing Zagat´s for Dennis may seem inappropriate – but when the economy is falling from a cliff, millions will do just that. One surprise was the poor performance of Starbucks, they are not just doing badly, they are also closing up hundreds of stores and plan to lay off thousands of employees.

Things are not just looking dim; they seem to be getting worst and with no exit in the near future. Obama only plays cool as he goes for a delicate consensus –laconic at least when we need certainty and punishment. If he only had the Bush determination to bully people around to make his top priorities work – it may have been Cheney bullying people around – we could be seeing a rapid increase in short term spending, plus reform in health care and social security. I wish that some oversight over Bush policies was also an Obama priority. He did made a statement on the sordid close to $20 billion in bonuses given by Wall Street last year. What we did not hear from him was the claim that these jackals should disgorge the money that was actually tax payer´s money. In any case these news are just part of the distraction, whether it is done on purpose we don´t know, but the final outcome is just as reveling. We are embedded by which poppy will the Obama family chose.

Needleless to say there is a sense of urgency in every word that is being expel from Obama, like Bush before him, everything has to be done at light speed, nothing short of a fully approved law will be allow when it comes to accountability. If you don´t do what I want, as fast as I want, then you will be to blame for this whole mess. He may chided lawmakers for their flimsy performance but without getting much reaction from them.

We got TVs that are running out of time, Obama has been pushing so analog TVs have more time before they go into history. We really don´t want millions of Americans thinking or reading the news instead of laughing at Rush Limbaugh or Bill O´Reily. We have to ban HBO before it runs too many Chris Rock´s performances. We want people to be entertained, we don´t want them to be entertained and think. That just won´t be right.

There is nothing wrong with any of this; we – the people – have to distract ourselves from this surreal world. Nowadays that we live more into private islands when we don´t seem to care much about social interaction – in the good all fashion manner – TV has been great at making us users of byproducts that keep us from thinking straight. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

What we have to worry about is the increase of distraction to epical levels – something that could unmoor our savage inner self – the sense that every event has to be bigger and better than the one before, that athletes have to run faster and farther than ever before, that TV shows have to be funnier and cleverer than anything before, that economic growth and recoveries have to be faster and greater, that production has to increase, that productivity has to be better, that barriers have to go down. Grandeur is our new god.

Obama was a good show – I am not saying that he is not smart enough to be president because he may be one of the smartest presidents ever – but he unhinges me with his rhetoric about change when he nominated Tom Daschle, Nancy Killefer and Timothy Geithner to the highest ranks when they had some tax problems.

In any case, the world was shocked about his performances, his speeches draw thousands of attendees and his inauguration set a new record – that makes my point. Obama is a celebrity, but every politician is one. The difference is that so far, he is trying to make things better. I hope that he is able to restart the US engine as fast as possible. I can´t take another oxymoron.

Now that Obama has become the first black president of the United States there is no other minority that will drive that much attention. He was the first and everything after this is not much news. Although another Sarah Palin could do the trick for a while – that is until something happens with Britney Spears – cause the genocide in Darfur is just boring. Maybe Craig could seduce another man, or Spitzer get another prostitute, because illegal wiretapping is not good news. We are not interested in important stuff; we do not like the boring news about famine or the human abuses in Cuba, not just from Fidel, but in Guantánamo.

Don´t blame the media, blame yourself, cause you didn´t even finish this article, or you did and thought it was really boring. Maybe next time I should put some “naughty” thoughts in here – that will make the news. In the mean time, the entertainment industry will win big, unless of course you are in the porn industry – and you need a bailout.

All the Eyes in the Right Place

Today something incredible will happen, Obama will be sworn as the next President of the US. The immense magnetism that this is causing around the globe may be enough to bring one or two UFO to look down on earth and say, what is all the fuzz about?

Millions are going to Washington to admire an event as unique as the current world situation. Obama is the hope of a world in need of someone strong, with leadership, smart, curious, but most of all, with an aura of hope.

The heavy bag that Obama must hold on his shoulder is not the only problem that we face, we also need to find a lasting confidence in his economic team and his choice to be a foreign affair erudite must solve a myriad of devastating issues around the globe.

Hillary Clinton is tough and energetic and Emanuel seems like the Washington insider that will give Obama advice like a good lawyer – the one that takes your house, money, car, alimony… – well you get the point – giving him the leverage to negotiate in this tough economic times.
Obama may have recruited the best available team of experts, people proud of being eloquent and enchanted about reading an analyzing. No more friends in top places, no more ignorance running rampant on the highest jobs, no more corruption rewarded as if that was the right thing to do.

I will try to make a positive note despite the fact that Obama was never my choice, but democracy has given the world a unique opportunity to understand how things really work, and how simple they are.

We need to understand a basic premise, have Bush not been so tremendously wrong about so many things, and therefore people so desperate for change, would Obama have been elected?
This is an exquisite fact to analyze, cause as Chris Rock brilliantly put it, blacks need to achieve extraordinary things just to keep up with average white people. The same thing applies to most majorities and small countries. This may be bad for blacks, Latinos, Asians and other minority groups in the US who as a whole are more likely to achieve little. But the ones that actually achieve more than the average Joe, are prompt to be hail as remarkable examples.

Obama is that case, for what seems to be a fact, he is smart and capable of discerning the most complex matters into simple pieces that are read and reread until the final outcome that looks adequate. We look for the panoply that his image portrays on our actual misery, that sentiment reflects the need of a change in the course in which the US was heading under Bush. As Cheney vied and did not feel remorse of the spitting and destructing of the constitutions, many others see that as a closed chapter that hopefully will never be seen again.

What we must avoid is to think that just one man may bring panacea to the world, that the only presence is enough to turn things around and make this whole mess to be dissolved. If we are to bode about the outcome of this, we may as well be positive, things are down so much that it seems impossible to get any lower, but you never know.

In any case the status quo always needs slight adjustments and credible changes, right now we must wean from our current unsustainable situation, if we think of sacrifices that end in a happenstance, we may be understanding the first step of a sacrifice that needs to be done, and the sooner, the better.

Good luck to Obama on this tough journey, we all believe that a feasible future is hard to achieve, but is doable. On this epochal moment we need to cling into what we think will be best for the common good, the maudlin past that long ago offered homes and cars to hard working people is in shadows, the future is much more dim, but we haven´t seen abject poverty jet, we can still stand and create a new world.

The future scurries and we can´t hold it back. We must now stand behind the new elected leader and hope for the best, no stymie will hold back the opportunity that we must seize. In few months we will see a big difference, when Obama shows up on your TV and tells you that he and his team are doing all necessary to improve the economy, you will feel certain that is true, and work harder to make it. Bush lost that faith that people grasp to, Obama must encourage the people using his leverage to succeed in this tedious times.

Now is the best period to achieve so many things that need to be fix, let´s hope that the new leaders are at their best to take the risk and turn things around so the prosperity that was promised actually comes, this may be the time to claim that, “hard work is the only thing you need, in order to succeed.”