9/5/2010 Cheer Up!

Cheer up.  That is the message this week in case you feel pessimistic.

People and the media fling gloomy news at us.  The market is tanking.  The economy is fated for disaster.  Pollution will engulf us.  We are running out of _________ (Fill in the blank.).

Today, a few reminders of reality.

We have always been swamped by lousy news of one sort or another.  Always.  However, we have not always been blessed with the heartening news of the sort we have today.

For instance, never have the earth’s 6 billion residents “lived better, longer, more peaceful, and more prosperous lives.”  So writes Charles Kinny in the magazine Foreign Policy.  Despite the global financial mess, humans today earn more than ever.  You may feel this is not the case.  If you lived in India or China, billions who have escaped the poverty and starvation their parents knew might argue the point with you.

8/29/2010 Regular Folks

            If these times tell us anything, they suggest we could do with more regular folks in power.  As opposed to the elite.

            The late William Buckley said he would rather entrust government of the country “…to the first 400 people in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.” 

Me too.  Lately we are governed by the equivalent of the Harvard types. And too many have always been too “important” to be listed in phone books.

Too many of our congressguys have never held a private sector job. Never. Think about that.  Barely any of the current cabinet have worked in the private sector. They dictate how those outside government should live and work. Yet they have never worked outside government themselves.

They supervise the creation of stacks of regulations for businesses.  Yet they have never worked in one.

They create jungles of tax laws. They levy taxes upon taxes. Yet many have never looked at a tax return except to sign it.

Years ago, a major Ford dealer told me he lost faith in Ford in the men’s room.  He was at a big Ford conference. A bunch of heavies cleared him and others from the men’s room. So that the CEO could relieve himself in private. “I figured if the boss couldn’t take a leak with the dealers there was something wrong with the company.”  His words were prophetic.

8/22/2010 Buckle Up!

            Buckle up.  That is a decent message to read into this week’s tea leaves.  The road ahead may not be the yellow brick road some experts predicted.  Well, maybe the brick road minus a number of bricks might be a better description.

            Buckle up.  The Chinese economy cools.  A natural occurrence for one that has boiled for years.

            You may think this is good for us.  Now those Chinese won’t compete so fiercely for our jobs.  They may not.  Then again, in a slower economy over there, they may grow more fierce.  Remember too, the Chinese buy a lot of stuff from us.  Wish them to suffer and you wish your customers woe.

            Buckle up.  The government recalculated the growth of our own economy.  Downward.  Toward anemic.

            And there is likely more bad news to come.  The balance of trade figures came out Wednesday. Lousy figures.  They will cause the economists to revisit the GDP figures they already lowered. To lower them further.