Posted by
thekeenobserver on Thursday, April 30, 2009 3:29:47 PM
St. Patrick's day, March 17-- America's favorite traditional, non-official holiday.
And going back to March 17,1976, it was a St. Patrick's day to remember for all investors, when on that day the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 13.78 to 1009.21, and actually closed ABOVE 1,000 for the first time.
Yes laddies, the green beer on Wall Street was flowing in abundance on that storied St. Patrick's day. It touched off a wild wave of optimism: Brokerage houses across America, whose staffs had been withered down unrelentingly in a grinding 3-year bear market, were now beginning to hire again.
Spring 1976 was indeed a time for optimism in America:
The Alaskan pipeline was well underway, and was creating a new frontier of jobs above the Arctic circle. In the lower 48, large industrial companies were gearing up for new production, as orders for capital goods came pouring in.
GM was only 3 months away from introducing its brand new, beautifully designed "B- Body" line of cars that auto pundits predicted would be a huge success . The classified ad pages were expanding. It seemed as though everyone at once was starting to hire.
College grads and Phd's--who were working as gas station attendants and waiters-- now were getting replies to their resumes, as jobs offers in their fields of study actually began appearing in their maiboxes.
For the U.S., it was good times ahead after a terrible, frightening 3-year recession, that had seemed like it would NEVER end.
But then in November, 1976 came the election of James Earl Carter; and like a plane with a unconscious pilot at the controls, America's economy began another downward spiral to yet another teeth-clenching, gut-wrenching recession.
On the day after New Years, January 2, 1980, the Dow Jones had closed at a pathetic 824.57. In early 1979, inflation had reached a startling 11.3%, and by March,1980, it had soared to 13.5%. And interest rates dealt the final coup de' gras to Carter's economy, rising from an abysmal 11% in 1979, to an agonizing, staggering 19% by Jan 1981.
It was the first time in history that all three indicators simultaneously had been in such distress, and a new term emerged to define the debacle --stagflation.
But although Carter's ineptness ruined the economy, let give him at least SOME credit-- he had done it passively (unintentionally). And he did possess SOME business management expertise, because our beloved 39th president actually had spent much of his life running the family peanut farm in Plains, Georgia.
But now, we are under the wonderful economic tutelage of Barack Obama, our know-it-all, supremely confident anti-president, who professes to have all the answers to revive our grievously wounded economy.
But unlike Jimmy Carter, Mr. Obama has never run anything in the private sector, not even a Koolaid stand as a child in Indonesia, or even so much as a paper route during his adolescence in Hawaii.
Attention Wall Street... look out below!
Yes, Mr. Barack H. Obama-- the Harvard-educated lawyer--he's got all the answers... all the spiffy retorts...and all the solutions. Got a foreign policy problem? Blame Bush. Got a problem with high deficits? It's not his fault-- that too started with the "Boosh" administration.
Yes, Barack's an expert at blaming everyone but himself. He's just so smart; so prestigious, and "too cool for school." Plus the leftist media will support the his infallibility "to the bitter end"-- and it may get here sooner (2012) rather than later (2016).
Just you wait there a-while, Mr. Obama.
Our radical leftist 44th president may be facing a little surprise ahead, and it's the one thing he hadn't figured into his Machiavellian plan for ensnaring our fragile economy within his mega-government web of Socialism.
Mr. Obama can seize the auto industry, ransack the banking industry, tax the energy industry to oblivion, control the health care industry, plus whatever else the congress is willing to cede to this insatiable fascist.
But the one thing that our anti-president didn't figure on, is something immune to his politics, immune to his personality, immune to the slanted liberal media--even immune to congressional legislation:
The one economic indicator that cannot be fudged, manipulated. spinned (spun), or misinterpreted, can be found on Wall Street -the NYSE--the "home" of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
(music)"Oh give me a home... where Obama can't roam..."
Right now Wall Street "experts" (propagandists) claim the Dow is on a roll--recently closing above 8000-- up over a thousand points from just a few weeks ago.
But in the parlance of the insiders (who really influence market direction), it's nothing more than a "sucker rally"-- the result of tens of thousands of solicitations by individual brokers trying to earn a living, "jaw-boning" hapless small investors to..."Hurry up, now is the time to get in before the next big move up."
The next big move up? Somewhere out there Gordon Gekko must be smiling.
But is now the time for greed on Wall Street---or fear?
With all those stellar economic events lurking on the horizon, the real insiders (the "smart money") knows that the market has nowhere to go but down--way down--possibly to 4900 in the next 18 months.
And no wonder. Wall Street and the market ALWAYS looks out ahead 18-24 months; that's why the insiders make the money that small investors unwittingly yield to them, as they buy high in unrealistic optimism, and sell low in panic.
It's always been that way on Wall Street...except for now.
As we look out ahead for the next year or two, it may be a long time coming before ANYONE (either a smart-money insider, or average Joe investor) ever sees these levels in the market for another 20--30 years.
But why?
The American economy has never before experienced what's on the horizon-- the intentional destruction of our free markets-- courtesy of our know-it-all (except for Wall Street) anti-president, Barack Obama.
Let's take a quick economic inventory of what's in store for Wall Street (and Main Street) in the next 2 years:
-higher income taxes--less disposable income for consumer spending
-higher business taxes for both small and large companies
-more government regulations for both large and small companies
-higher energy costs
-dollar inflation from rampant deficit spending
-cap 'n trade carbon taxes on energy
-card check (forced unionism) which will drive up business costs for everyone
-high unemployment--the result of clean air regulations on heavy industry
-higher energy costs for electricity- i.e. clean air penalties for coal-generated power
--higher corporate taxes for American companies doing business overseas
--more IRS audits driving U.S. capital offshore-- less domestic business investment
The Obama administration (regime) has a 5-year plan--it's all been figured out. Tax all fossil fuel energy. De-industrialize the Midwest and the South, where they burn coal. Force the auto industry to make cars nobody will buy. Force the banks to accept unnecessary bail-out capital, and then decide to whom they may lend it.
So expect a rapid transformation for private business from the free market to a government-planned economy, where you'll still own it-- but Big Brother now runs it!
And how do you think Wall Street will react to this? The same way it did from 1933 to 1945-- the last time a socialist president assumed total control, where the government can introduce itself any time, anywhere, into the private decision-making apparati, and levy restrictions on what private enterprises will be able to do within their own boardrooms.
EXAMPLE: Recently King Obama "summoned" all the credit card companies to Washington to tell them..."you can no longer 'overcharge' your customers." So just where in the Constitution is the president allocated the power for that? And where was the outcry from the private sector against it?
Now an emboldened Obama will soon be telling banks what interest rate they can charge, what private companies can produce, what type of workers (union) they can hire, how much they can produce--and at what price.
Is this a free market...or economic fascism?
So the Dow-Jones to 4900? Why not, as Obama's economic fascism takes hold and begins to strangle everyone's bottom line.
What effect will it have on the heavy industrial companies and energy companies? And what will happen to the transportation industry, the small business community, and the individual taxpayers themselves?
It's all so very simple: As government controls and regulations go up, everyone's bottom line will go down-- way down-- and taking down the stock market, our economy, our 401K's, and dashing the hopes and dreams of everyone who had the outlandish notion that they could some day become financially independent.
And now, it's all about to be dashed upon the rocks of Obammunism.
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