Depressing Report from the Front Lines of the Economy

Big conference today. So I'm sitting down on the sidelines with a big-time CEO and there is another investor/analyst type guy there and he asks the CEO guy the most boring, annoyingly jejune question that people in my profession can ask (but that always gets asked)..."What keeps you up at night?" (I am always hoping that the guy answers, as I would, "my three year old" but I guess most CEOs don't have three year olds). And in typical fashion for a know-it-all finance dork, it is not just "What keeps you up at night?" full stop, it is "What keeps you up at night? Is it China's potential unsustainability, is it a resurgence of counter-party risk, is it the effects of major central bank's exit strategies, is it fragility in the global economy, is it freakin' Santa Claus entering your business with lower cost elf labor...yadayadayada....eyes glaze over...

But then the CEO guy laid it out straight for all of us and it was bracing..."You know what keeps me up at night?" (Pause here to know that this guy runs a US-based, global company that does business all over the world, has thousands of employees and can spend hundreds of millions of dollars whenever and wherever he wants) "The United States Senate. They don't have a clue."

There you have it folks, what I would consider a man at the helm of the bread and butter of the US economy, a man who single-handedly can create jobs here or abroad...thinks the US Senate is the biggest impediment to his business. Not the after effects of the financial crisis, not tin pot dictators around the world, not lackluster demand, not rising energy costs, not labor strife, not competition. None of these things.

THE UNITED STATES SENATE!!!!!!!!!!

ARGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!