Weekend Rants

The DOW is up 10% this week. Good news. Its the biggest gains for this down market since last year, so that is a good sign.... for now. We'll see what happens next week. Its beyond my comprehension to understand the volatility of an entire market based upon one or two news releases. In this case, it was CitiBank and Bank of America reporting first quarter profits so far this year. Who knows what info will come out next week. I'm not holding my breath.

It looks like the majority of the American people are finally coming around to seeing our federal government for what it is becoming... a giant, entitlement system. According to a Fox News poll, 77% of Americans believe that Obama DOES IN FACT believe in bigger government, despite his strong statements that he does not. Furthermore, 56% of those polled think our government is too big and that we should be paying lower taxes for a smaller government. This brings up an interesting irony. Most Americans want smaller government, but we elected a man to the presidency and gave more power in Congress to leaders who openly seek to empower our national government to levels we have never seen in our republic. My belief is that most voters were so turned off by Bush and his policies that they wanted something different, no matter what the outcome. And now we are going to have to reap the consequences for the balance of this term. Hopefully, this majority of voters will wise up and begin electing fiscally responsible leaders into office in November of 2010 that can bring our government back down to reality.

Here is some bad news... It looks like the economic woes we are facing will have a negative impact on the number of employees wasting time and money over the next few weeks watching the NCAA basketball tournament. March Madness usually results in billions of dollars of lost productivity, according to the watch dogs who research this, but they say that workers this year will likely be too scared of losing of their jobs to play hooky for a few days to enjoy the best two weeks of sports that the US has to offer. I look at it this way, though. Unemployment is at a decade-long high, so there will be more of us glued to our flat screen HDTV's that we can't afford anymore sitting on our couches soaking up the action. Might as well enjoy it while we can. Gotta love this country.