President Obama's 100 Days

Getting settled in a new job, a new city, new friends, and juggling a love life, hasn't left me much time to write. However, I watched President Obama's speech and Press Conference marking his 100 Days in office.

Much has been hyped by the constant 24 hour Cable/Mainstream Media on President Obama's first 100 days, particularly with their incessant need to grade his first 100 days, as if he was a student.





Being in a planning role, it always boggles my mind when people continue to spotlight on instantaneous results and what's happening now, without a thought to what does it mean for the future.




It's 100 days into a four year term, and I personally think the challenges we face today requires us to be little more thoughtful and to realistically assess the current situation. We need to make sure that we rigorously contemplate the implications of the various policy proposals, in order to ensure we have some probability of meeting success.

Yet predictably, the idiot masses still want their 10 second soundbite or their minute in the news cycle of their "gotcha moments".




With all the hoopla and the superficial, but utterly predictable punditry out there, it was a relief to come across this really moving and introspective photo diary of President Obama's first 100 days.


It was taken by Callie Shell, who first noticed Barack Obama as an extraordinary politician at the 2003 DNC Convention, where he gave his first soaring national speech. She found him so compelling, that she trailed him during his Presidential Campaign.

The most emotional point in the video occurs 10 minutes into the video story, where she gives insights on the moments she was trying to capture with her camera.

Watching it, I was filled with such pride and emotion at having such a caring, intelligent, and capable leader as our President.

It's definitely worth the time to take a moment to watch this video at Time.com .

What were they thinking???

I am stunned by the sheer stupidity of Congress. What on earth possessed them to pass a rushed piece of legislation to tax bonuses for Financial Intitutions receiving Federal Bailout money?

First of all their spontaneous reaction to "populist" rage is now open to questions of constitutional legitimacy, and secondly, they look like idiots just reacting without thinking. I get the anger over the sheer greed and thoughtlessness of AIG and Merrill Lynch for giving bonuses to morons who brought about this financial crisis. But to compound this mistake with an another one is ridiculous.

We should not have laws passed on whims of "populism". It was just as dumb when people voted to legislate the California Constitution to define marriage. It would be just as stupid for Government to enact legislation based on the whims of polls, pundits, or the Stock Market. President Obama said very thoughtfully in his interview on "60 Minutes":

The one thing that— I've tried to emphasize, though, throughout this week, and will continue to try to emphasize during the course of the next several months as we dig ourselves out of this— the economic hole that we're in, is we can't govern out of anger. We've got to try to make good decisions based on the facts, in order to put people back to work, to get credit flowing again. And I'm not going to be distracted by— what's happening day to day. I've gotta stay focused on making sure that— we're getting this economy moving again.

Furthermore, in response to Steve Kroft's question on the legitimacy of the bill passed by the House, that would "impose a tax of up TO 90% on the AIG bonuses and on the bonuses of anyone making more than $250,000 a year who works for a financial institution receiving MORE THAN five BILLION IN bailout funds"

President Obama had this to say:

Well, I think that— as a general proposition, you don't want to be passing laws that are just targeting a handful of individuals. You want to pass laws that have some broad applicability. And as a general proposition, I think you certainly don't want to use the tax code—is to punish people.

We have no idea on the implication of what they have done. Furthermore, what kind of precedent does this set for the future? There needs to be a holistic view on what's the right thing to do. The point of leadership is to set policy with a strategic goal, and not to be distracted by the latest policy "trend". Action for the sake of action is not necessarily a good idea, and in the business world, if you don't have the right strategy driving your action plans, it will soon drive you into a ditch and bring a number of inefficiencies within your organization - not to mention have people running around like chickens with their heads cut off.



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Class War Delusions

Someone in my past, once mentioned "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand. At the time, I had never read the book, so I had no idea that it was almost a literary bible for conservatives. For those of you who do not know what the premise of this book is, it's basically about this character named John Galt, who decides he's tired of supporting other members of society, and so decides to withdraw from society. Essentially, the most selfish and unchristian character you would ever read about, outside of Charles Dicken's character "Scrooge".

Stephen Colbert has a very humorous take on the synopsis and the key message of this book:

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The question "Who is John Galt?" is also answered towards the closing of the novel — John Galt is a man disgusted that non-productive members of society use laws and guilt to leech from the value created by productive members of society, and furthermore even exalt the qualities of the leeches over the workers and inventors. He made a pledge that he would never live his life for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for him, and founded an enclave (Galt's Gulch), separate from the rest of the country, where he and other productive members of society have fled.

Essentially it has become the battle cry of the ridiculous and delusional right wing idiots still left in the Republican party. Case in point, Chuck Norris, who is ready to declare himself President of Texas. Essentially, Chuck Norris has declared his intent for treason and sedition. So there you have it, crazies like Chuck Norris are pretty much all you have left of the Conservative party.

But what makes it so ridiculously laughable, is this strawman argument that they continue to float, that because you potentially have a higher marginal tax rate, which by the way is only setting it back to the original rates under President Clinton, that this essentially demotivates people to be successful. So there is this movement where they are "Going Galt", and get people to "go on strike" because they feel burdened by their successes. As Austin Powers would say: "Riiiight ...."

Yeah, I would just loooove to see that. If you had the following options:

A. Earning $0 - because you feel demotivated to be taxed on your success.

B. Earning $300,000, and having $50,000 taxed at 36% vs. 33%

Which would you pick? Of course you are going to take Option B.

Secondly, people need to learn the meaning of the word "Marginal Tax Rate". When President Obama stated that those earning more than $250,000 would be facing a higher tax rate, that does not mean that you will be taxed on the full $250,000 at the higher tax rate. It simply means, you will see a slightly higher marginal tax rate for anything you make AFTER $250,000. You have financially illiterate people out there who think that if you make $300,000, that the entire amount would be taxed at 36%.

So by all means, have the crazy right wing nut cases "Going Galt" see how far it takes them. With their "every man for himself" philosophy, I doubt they could continue to exist peacefully as a society on their own.

Talk about Dawinism in action, oh but I forgot, they don't believe in evolution or in science.

Moving Day

The worst part about moving anywhere is the day you receive your furniture and goods, and you find yourself surrounded by a mountain of boxes, with no idea where anything is.

The movers were quite quick in packing me up in Boston. They were so quick, I felt I had to move out of the way, otherwise risk being packed myself if I stood still too long! They were also equally quick in unloading all the boxes into my new apartment. It was all I could do to check off the box number in the inventory control list. It was like playing an odd sort of BINGO, with numbers being randomly called out. In the end, everything arrived, so kudos to my driver Howard Taylor, of Planes Moving Company!



The good thing for me is that, with each move, I am getting a little smarter! This time I took my wireless box with me, as well as making sure all my bedding, pillows, duvets were packed together. That made assembling my bed and getting my wireless access set up relatively pain free. I say relatively, because it always takes longer than one thinks it should.

Now it's the usual shopping trips to IKEA and Bed, Bath, and Beyond for more things one thinks one needs!

One sad note, you can clearly see in this picture, one the white boxes that followed me from Geneva, but never got unpacked - guess I don't need anything in there!

Financial Market Madness

I've been working a lot of hours as I am doing two jobs right now. I am still supporting my old role and business unit, while undertaking my new assignment. Having to deal with a move at the same time has left me with little sleep and time.

However, in the past weeks, I've been fuming about the hypocrisy and the madness of the financial markets. And don't even get me started on the ridiculous inferences that Networks like Fox News tries to put forward, that somehow the Stock Market is reacting negatively to President Obama's policies.

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But what continues to get me is the whiny nature of Banks. Recently, Sheila Bair of the FDIC has indicated that there needs to be an emergency fee assessed to all the banks to shore up the FDIC, otherwise, it may go insolvent.

Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair said the fund it uses to protect customer deposits at U.S. banks could dry up amid a surge in bank failures, as she responded to an industry outcry against new fees approved by the agency.

“Without these assessments, the deposit insurance fund could become insolvent this year,” Bair wrote in a March 2 letter to the industry. U.S. community banks plan to flood the FDIC with about 5,000 letters in protest of the fees, according to a trade group.

This is the insanity that goes through Banks minds these days, the ONLY THING PROTECTING THEM AGAINST RUNS AGAINST THE BANKS IS THE FDIC INSURANCE - yet these morons are planning to send letters to protest this fee increase.

I guess Banks now understand how we feel when they charge us a fee to take money out of ATMs or for maintaining checking accounts!

But the best effort to date on pointing out the sheer stupidity and craziness of "so-called" Financial reporters like Rick Santelli of CNBC, and Wall St. has been tonight's show on "The Daily Show".

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This was a priceless moment of "STFU" by Jon Stewart to the Rick Santelli and Larry Kudlows of the world - well worth losing out on sleep to watch!