American Business Has Buyer's Remorse

Conservatively, I would estimate that about 75% of American business that supported Obama is having buyers'  remorse.  I got an earful the other day from a friend at Goldman who cursed the "communist lynch mob" in government, yet who did he and all his Goldman colleagues vote for - not just vote for, but swoon over?  Bingo.  Far from Wall Street, people who make bulldozers are probably feeling the same way.

Now, Barry O is going after venture capital and they are scratching their heads.  They are asking themselves "WTF?  What did we do to deserve this, except go for Big O, like 80%?"   Ah, losers.  You make money, that's what you did.

Where were all these people not paying attention during the campaign?  You could have called BO's antipathy toward American capitalism a mile away.

The good news?  Businesses, big and small, hire people.  If business ain't happy, they will just sit on their hands and many people don't have jobs ("Going Galt" is, I beleive, the hip phrase for it).  And if many people don't have jobs come November 2012,  Barry O will be retired to the lecture circuit.

Business View of Political Landscape

As per usual, the NY Times is slow on the uptake (or slow to buck the idealogical narrative) and is just now getting around to mentioning big business's severe case of "buyer's remorse" over its 2008 support of candidate Obama. I first gave my readers the official diagnosis of BR back in April '09 and have chronicled it steadily since then. The NY Times focuses in on Wall Street, but I can assure you that the remorse is much more intense in other industries. Wall Street is a fickle crowd, they place bets on politicians the way they place bets on investments, so the Dems can certainly win the industry back, but it'll be hard and this spells a big problem. Other business sectors are likely lost for good, they see a failed bet as a failed bet - you suck up losses and move on. No campaign cash is a problem, but no business support takes a big chunk of the coalition that put Obama over the top in 2008 out of the picture. In fact, business is likely to gravitate aggressively to a 2012 candidate who understands the importance of the business environment to national well-being. On a side note, a guy who could very well play the leading role, if not just a leading role, on the Romney economic team takes to the pages of WSJ today to talk deficit reduction, probably the winningest theme for the Republicans going into 2010 and beyond.

Now It Can Be Spoken, Now It Can Be Told

I scooped Charlie Gasparino by like...what...five months? Does Charlie have better sources than me? No. It's just that now such a story is acceptable to run, whereas when I was making my call, we still had a de facto lese majeste prohibition operating within the MSM.

But the bigger point in Gasparino's article than the buyer's remorse is the blackout of all the knowledgable and sensible voices on economic policy within the administration - voices, like Volcker and Summers, which were heavily sold to the public during the campaign, and which I believe enabled Obama to hoodwink folks like Warren Buffett and Lloyd Blankfein into supporting him. I pointed out this disconnect awhile back and wondered why we are getting such miserably destructive economic policy from such brilliant economic stars - either they ain't so brilliant or the administration is not listening to them. The Gasparino scoop suggests it is indeed the latter, which brings up another concern. Why are these folks still working for the administration and in some cases why are they still stumping for destructive policies that they would not have counselled? Furthermore why devote your time and effort if your work and advice is going to be ignored? Is the pay that good? Is the padding of the ole' resume that good?

Watch this space, as I think few economists will want to pin their reputations to this or this. Volcker may be a leading indicator. He has a sterling reputation and nobody doubts his honor, so his recent public jabs at Obama's policy ideas may be an incipient attempt by the economic dream team to regain the attention of the President or else, perhaps, lose their counsel. He may be saying, "Hey, if you want us around (and want to draw on our credibility), you have to listen to us; we're not going to attach our reputations to what you, Axelrod, and Rahm Emmanuel cook up." Let's not forget, Obama had no credibility on economic issues as a candidate. He drew upon the credibility of those he could draw to him, essentially borrowing credibility of people like Volcker and Summers.

The Powerline guys get similar thoughts from Professor Paul Rahe who sees past the putative dishonor of the various economists in Obama's circle to something much more ominous.

Scuttlebutt from Down on the Plantation

So I did a quick canvass of some of my typical - and typically crazy - NYC associates who are, for me, barometers of NYC political leftism.  These are folks for whom Barack Obama inspires all manner of warm, fuzzy, tingly feelings (and who would gladly accept him as King for life of America), who think that Paul Ryan is a raging, right-wing, baby-killing hatemonger, and who undoubtedly would brave the swim to France if faced with the prospect of President Sarah Palin.  In other words, classic NYC elitist leftards.

What did I learn?  Based on the inauguration scene, they are none to pleased with their new mayor.  DeBlasio strikes them as phony and an a**hole.  There is some serious buyer's remorse setting in and hopes rising that he proves an ineffective nonevent.

Curious.

Too few data points to conclude anything solid, but I'll keep my eyes and ears open for more scuttlebutt down here on the plantation.

UPDATE:  It was even too much for the New York Times.  Bloomberg should have stood up and left.

Financing the War

It started with the shafting of the Chrysler and GM bondholders, moved onto "Pay Czars", "permitoriums" and continues apace with the Boeing/South Carolina sandbagging and now this. The kindest thing you can say about these are that they are undesirable injections of cronyism into the American capitalist system, but you would be sugar-coating to the point of getting it wrong. These are offensive maneuvers in an ongoing war on business (which was predicted along with its consequences).

I told you that American Business had buyer's remorse. CEO after CEO has essentially confirmed this. I told you capital would flee. I told you companies would hoard cash. I told you that hiring, if any, would be in temporary workers. And, the end result, I also told you, would be to get used to 10%+ unemployment. The only way out, the only way to restore economic health, i said, would be fight back and win. I said, Obama would not buckle and stand down. Victory is the only option. Finally, after long last, it seems that many others have come to this dire conclusion. Check out this stunning graph. These are heavy hitters playing to win - most all are making large one-way bets. The last time around these guys bet on the likely winning horse, but hedged bets. This time around there is very little hedging, the nature of the problem is too severe and the stakes are too high - American business and the US economy can't weather the prospect of Obama through 2016 - thus the shift is drastic. I told you that campaign fundraising would be very easy for pro-business candidates.

Wall Street Comes To Its Senses

I've been chronicling the buyer's remorse here for awhile. Looks like at least one industry has learned, for the time being, not to feed the beast that will eventually eat it.

Letting the Enemy Into the House Via the Front Door

I said "Shame" but apparently, there is no capacity for shame in this matter. Obama is out to stamp down on capitalism and the rights of property owners. As a letter to the editor in the WSJ toady suggests, what is the difference between this and what Putin did to Yukos? Not much. Road to serfdom to be sure. This is a BIG deal. If true as reported, this is pure political thuggery of the worst kind emanating from the highest office in the land directed at the heart of American business in the middle of a recession. And, if true as reported, I can only hope that this creates some degree of revulsion among broad swaths of the American populace that believe in basic rule of law. This is dangerous ground. This is how economies are destroyed. Russia's economy began to crater the day that Putin jailed Khodorkovsky and stole Yukos. It fell into disarray quicker and sooner because Russia is solely a commodity economy, but no matter how large and diversified an economy is, the process of destruction is the same, only its duration is different.

Couple things in this article that confirm what I have been saying all along...1) Obama is no moderate when it comes to the American capitalist system, he wants to cripple it, 2) US business has buyer's remorse, no more so than the finance industry, which miscalculated or somehow let itself get snookered. Your typical Goldman Sachs liberal and Silicon Valley independent let their enemy into the house via the front door.

Buyer's Remorse Is The Buyer's Problem, Not the Product's

I will repeat, the shocker is not that he is alienating the public, but that anybody ever thought that he wouldn't alienate the public. If you thought otherwise, you need to reevaluate your political sophistication. The inferior and/or expensive product never regrets being bought. In our case the product is both inferior and expensive.

Buyer's Remorse?

Ha.  So the lefty post-mortems are coming in regarding the Obama years and they are lamenting that there just wasn't all that much "change" as part of Hope'n'Change. (h/t Instapundit)

That's fine, they can lament the lack of complete and utter progressive transformation all they want, a failure of a sort to them.  What they won't do (and I am waiting for an honest lefty to pen one) is assess another type of failure, that of outright backfire.  I laid out what would most likely be a lamentable list of backfire that the lefties could choke on as the Obama era winds down.

- The post-Obama American citizenry will be massively more armed than pre-Obama;

- A post-Obama America will have a healthcare system far deeper in disarray;

- A post-Obama America will less respected around the world, (considered weak by its enemies and unreliable by its friends);

- A post-Obama America will be more bitterly divided and contentious;

- A post-Obama America will have substantially more income inequality than pre-Obama America

 That's just for starters.  What is more terrifying to contemplate for lefties is that America may have less, call it, constitutional solidity by which to restrict the depredations of a conservative (or even just a non-progressive) POTUS.  What would a President Trump seek to do that he would not have considered were it not for a Constitution-flouting Obama??