Politics worth crying about
Today's Financial News - Posted March 16, 2009
The world of politics is rich with entertainment these days. The financial markets hate politicians, but when the world’s leaders get this active, it is impossible not to track their action.
By Andrew Snyder, TodaysFinancialNews.com
Baltimore – (TFN): It is business as usual in the world of politics. There are three topics worth laughing at, worrying about and arguing against as we kick off a new week and hopefully a fifth day of Wall Street bullishness.
First, Congress is handing out billion-dollar bills like they are Halloween treats, yet it complains when companies spend the cash on anything but political contributions. AIG (NYSE:AIG) is on the hot seat for having the audacity to pay contractually obligated bonuses and credit-default swap obligations with bailout money.
Washington has never kept its promises and now it is trying to get the business world to forget about its obligations. When our leaders bailed out AIG and so many other banks over the last few months, it failed to realize investment banks do a whole lot more than lend money to Joe the plumber. They have all sorts of financial obligations, many of them overseas.
Now that billions of American taxpayer dollars are sprouting up in European bank accounts, our elected officials have egg on their face. But of course they are elegantly passing the buck. “How dare our banks pay their bills with bailout money,” they scold.
There is nothing like a good laugh to start a week off right.
Poor, poor OPEC
Even more astounding, OPEC is calling on the U.S. do to more to fight back the evil fangs of a recession. Apparently, it is okay for the world’s oil producers to get filthy rich and use oil as a weapon when Americans demand massive quantities of the dirty stuff, but as soon as the world closes the spigot it is our job to fix the mess and prop up the global economy.
Why do I have a terrible feeling the Obama administration is busy working up some sort of global bailout package with billions of dollars reserved for oil producers? The G20 would not get behind last week’s notion of a synchronized global stimulus, so now Obama has to write the check himself. If anything even remotely close to that happens, it is worth arguing over, maybe even fighting.
Speaking of fighting, are you ready for Cold War 2.0? The Kremlin has confirmed Russia is ready to put a few of its top bombers in Cuban or Venezuelan hangars.
According to Russia’s chief of strategic aviation forces, Anatoly Zhikharev, “Chavez has proposed to us a whole island with an airfield that we can use for temporary basing of strategic bombers.” That is not a move it wants to make to be closer to its American friends.
Currently, Russia has the capability to send its bombers to North America’s eastern coast, but without refueling capabilities, the planes can stay in the area for less than an hour. With airfield capabilities just ninety miles south of Florida or in Latin America, Russian planes could make the commute in short order and hang around for quite some time.
Of course, this is most likely a desperate tactic used by a handful of financially devastated countries to gain at least a little bargaining leverage and to test out a new, softer president. Nonetheless, it is worth worrying about.
After eight years, now he talks
Not all the world’s political and financial news is scary. There is plenty of good news. For one, Dick Cheney came out of his cave over the weekend to say this whole financial fiasco is not the Bush administration’s fault. Good move. But still, nobody has seen or heard from his old boss since inauguration day. Chances are G.W. is too busy wiping the tears of joy off of his face to appear in public.
Finally and possibly most importantly, all three major indices are in positive territory so far today. That means there is a decent shot at a five-day winning streak. That is something we have not heard of in months.
Maybe all of this laughing, crying and arguing is starting to pay off.
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