I have zero tolerance for Republican Worshippers anymore.
Today, on Rush Limbaugh's show, Tom Sullivan was the guest host. Listening while working, and jotting down notes, I was stunnd - stunned, I say! - by the incoherent, braindead analysis of the economy spouted by this Tom Sullivan individual.
Sullivan was talking about a national survey that asked a question in regards to whether or not people felt "good/confident" about the overall economy. Apparently, the results were overwhelmingly "no." (Golly gee--wonder why?)
To paraphrase Sullivan: "I just can't comprehend this. I just don't understand. Housing purchases are skyrocketing, everyone is buying a new home, people are buying consumer goods, and Bush is creating good-paying jobs. I think people just skew the results of these surveys by not clearly articulating what they have experienced."
On and on went Sullivan, with the most amateur, know-nothing analysis I have heard since, well, Rush was on the air last week. Sullivan trumpeted Bush as the God of Job Creation, and The Savior of the American economy. To end his bubble-headed speech, he said this about "Bush's economy": "The numbers speak for themselves."
Indeed Mr. Sullivan, the numbers do speak. Has Mr. Sullivan ever analyzed the debt statistics? The asset bubble? The housing bubble stats? The overvalued stock market? Current household debt-to-income ratios? Current bankruptcy stats? The slide in corporate earnings? The accounting scandals to inflate earnings? Corporate bankruptcies?
The numbers do speak for themselves.
The best, current book to read about the Wall Street side of this financial mania is Maggie Mahar's Bull! A History of the Boom 1982-1999. I'll do a full review of the book shortly, but this is my most highly recommended book of the year. I just fell in love with this book.
As a financial person, I loved this book. Better yet, it is the ideal book for the non-financial person who wants to understand the dynamics of the financial world, because it tells the story of the bull market in plain language, for all to understand. Mahar writes like one who, through careful analysis, came to the side of the bears, and clearly understands the role of the Fed, the government, and Wall Street/corporate shenanigans in the whole affair. She writes a "who's who" of the financial industry, including stories of contrarians like David Tice, Gail Dudack, Jim Grant, Jeff Vinik, Sir John Templeton, Warren Buffett, Kurt Richebacher, Jean-Marie Eveillard, etc.
She tells the great story of Dudack being "gored" from Wall Street Week with Louis Rukeyser, because she called a bear market based on the facts. Then she tells us how the Big Dog analysts (read: bulls) came to be so wrong, and why. She sums up the AOL-Time Warner merger with the perfect Dudack quote, preceeding her commentary:
In the twilight zone that we've entered, things of substance - bricks and mortar - are trash. What people value is paper--AOL's stock." So AOL, an Internet arriviste with a powerful brand name, and not much else, was able to capture Time Warner, a company with real assets, nearly five times AOL's revenues, and verifiable earnings--earnings that the SEC did not constantly question.
Mahar is heroic; she quotes Chesterton and Kindleberger, and properly denounces Cisco, mutual fund managers, and CNBC (also known as "Bubblevision.")
If you have any interest at all in the pure free market view of the current Wall Street/corporate/financial debacles, this is a great place to start learning and understanding the basics. Though it's not entirely perfect, Mahar should get a medal for writing this very important book.
