The Most Urgent Problem

The headline says it all: The US media is more about hype and selling inches/hits than it is about informing the national debate or the American population.
To call for President-elect Obama to engage today in a meaningful way in policy formulation to resolve the financial crises is hugely inappropriate. President-elect Obama has no statutory authority to take any action as president until after he has lowered his hand on the day of his inauguration, having just taken the oath of office. Today (and tomorrow, and the next day) he has absolutely no authority under the Constitution of the United States.

I wish President-elect Obama all the best when he is President, but today he is still President-elect.

Time and time again, history has shown people doing extraordinary things while naysayers scratch their heads trying to figure out how they did it. When Tiger Woods entered the Masters, some just felt Tiger had some nerve. Did he really think he had a chance to win? Long story short, give Barack a chance first he may surprise you.

Before the Masters, Tiger was favored, but the sports-talk radio guy in my area was saying how wrong that was--what has Tiger Woods done to be the favorite, and c'mon, there's a better chance he'll miss the cut. So I called in. I didn't identify myself, but the guy knew my voice. I just wanted to tell the guy that he had it really wrong--that not only could Tiger win, but he could win by a lot.
http://golf.fanhouse.com/2007/04/03/tiger-woods-first-masters-win-ten-year-anniversary/


Just 21.

That's how old he was. That's what made it so startling. Actually, that's what made it so scary.

No one had ever dominated a golf tournament, a course, a competition, like this ever before. Not Nicklaus. Not Palmer. Especially The Masters, golf's most celebrated tournament.

When someone rules the game as 21-year-old Tiger Woods did iin 1997, against the sport's greatest players, all you can do is shake your head and wonder in amazement at the gifted golfer.
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/espn25/story?page=moments/36

What an idiotic column.

There are so many people facing foreclosure and those who have lost their jobs are soon going to be behind in their mortgage payments as well. Why then doesn't the governement allow homebuyers to skip one or even two of their mortgage payments with no penalty (the load companies make enough profit on the interest that they would not hurt. For those who are behind - this could help them catch up on payments. For those in good standing it would mean money that could be spent elsewhere thus helping the economy. That this would be done during the Christmas Holidays might mean that people would be able to spend money for Christmas thereby helping retailers. One thing for certain - with all the houses going by the wayside there better be an increase in homeless shelters. And wouldn't keeping people in their own homes be even better!!!!

If Obama wants to help the economy, he should resign immediately as president elect.

I feel that the intentions of this article are genuine, and as someone whose IRA is down about 35% on Wall Street, I wish the suggestion on this article could be put through. Unfortunately, Obama at this point cannot do anything other than give some cues on his economic directions, and hope that Wall street and the upcoming Christmas shopping season will lift the economy until he takes office on January 20, 2009.
Until then, Obama is like a person who has bought a house, but he cannot move in, or do any remodeling -either economic or whatever - until the current owner moves out of it on January 19, 2009.

We need incremental stability and gains on Wall Street, as oppose to sudden bursts of buying by speculators, rises in share values, and then selling by those speculators to scoop up the risen values as profits. That leaves the rest of the passive investors -like this writer- back to square one, and the markets drained off to the previous lower level. That is why I prefer cues by the president-elect that will inspire confidence to the average investors, and set the markets in a slow upward course - rather than specifics that may be exploited by speculators betting on those specific segments and scooping up their risen values a few days later.

Plus, Baraq Obama has raised global expectations, and he has to prove to international audiences that
he is real. That will help global markets to stabilize, and probably start to edge upward as well. Lets not forget that we are interconnected, and unless market confidence make a circle around the globe, we cannot revive the financial markets just by ourselves. Nikos Retsos, retired professor