All,
There has been an interesting development on Wall Street lately, and it is interesting to me because I remember watching an episode of Jim Cramer’s “Mad Money” last summer where Jim told us he was supporting Obama, even though he agreed with McCain on Nuclear Energy policy.
It seems from his recent statements he is completely reversing that support:
This from Monday’s edition of RealMoney:
“I don't know about you, but I felt it this weekend. I felt it with friends at dinner on Friday. I felt it during my walk on Saturday and my dinner with friends at Blue Smoke on Saturday night.
I felt it when someone whispered in my ear before the Van Morrison concert that I was right and we elected a Leninist. I felt it at brunch on Sunday, and I felt it as I watched Slumdog Millionaire Sunday afternoon. I felt it when I tried to go to sleep on Sunday night.
I felt the prices, the screen, the action, the sense of a vortex down that can't be stopped, of stocks going worthless, of savings being tattered, of equities without bottom, but this time in slow motion, not like 1987…”
Wow. A Leninist? That is a freakish notion.
It doesn’t stop there. Take a listen to what he said recently on Today (He sounds as sane and reasonable as I have ever heard him sound):
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/29478113#29478113
And I like how he doesn’t let Erin Burnett get away with her ‘happy talk’.
And then this from his show a few days ago:
I love the fact that he actually has a quote from Lenin that sounds so close to what Obama said last week to back up his comparison.
I’ll let this speak for itself, from the Wikipedia article on Leninism:
In his pamphlet What is to be Done? (1902), Lenin argued that the proletariat can only achieve a successful revolutionary consciousness through the efforts of a vanguard party composed of full-time professional revolutionaries. Lenin further believed that such a party could only achieve its aims through a form of disciplined organization known as democratic centralism, wherein tactical and ideological decisions are made with internal democracy, but once a decision has been made, all party members must externally support and actively promote that decision.
This may go down as one of Jim’s better judgments. Last September I felt that the capitalist system we had known since the 1940’s had gone, and that we would need to come together and create a new one, because luckily, capitalism has a way of destroying itself and creating itself anew. Now I wonder if that will be possible to do in the time-span we would all like it to occur. The question I have is: Are we in for a 1982 deep recession and relatively quick recovery, or an 1870’s depression with a recovery period after 5 years, or a 1930’s Great Depression which took well over a decade to correct. My one hope left is that Ben Bernanke can master a recovery on his own – as the sole student of the Depression – as it looks like the new administration and new congress will not be able to help. Will Uncle Ben be the Morgan or the Eccles of 2009?
Tijs Limburg
No comments:
Post a Comment