Obamanomics

Dymphna of Gates of Vienna (h/t Larwyn) offers this lesson on "spreading it around":

Obama’s leaky plumbing

Barack Obama discovers a leak under his sink, so he calls Joe the Plumber to come and fix it.

Joe drives to Obama’s house, which is located in a very nice neighborhood and where it’s clear that all the residents make more than $250,000 per year.

Joe arrives and takes his tools into the house. Joe is led to the room that contains the leaky pipe under a sink. Joe assesses the problem and tells Obama, who is standing near the door, that it’s an easy repair that will take less than 10 minutes.

Obama asks Joe how much it will cost.

Joe immediately says, "$9,500."

$9,500?" Obama asks, stunned. "But you said it’s an easy repair!"

"Yes, but what I do is charge a lot more to my clients who make more than $250,000 per year so I can fix the plumbing of everybody who makes less than that for free," explains Joe. "It’s always been my philosophy. As a matter of fact, I lobbied government to pass this philosophy as law, and it did pass earlier this year, so now all plumbers have to do business this way. It’s known as ‘Joe’s Fair Plumbing Act of 2008.’ Surprised you haven’t heard of it, senator."

In spite of that, Obama tells Joe there’s no way he’s paying that much for a small plumbing repair, so Joe leaves.

Obama spends the next hour flipping through the phone book looking for another plumber, but he finds that all other plumbing businesses listed have gone out of business. Not wanting to pay Joe’s price, Obama does nothing.

The leak under Obama’s sink goes unrepaired for the next several days.

A week later the leak is so bad that Obama has had to put a bucket under the sink. The bucket fills up quickly and has to be emptied every hour, and there’s a risk that the room will flood, so Obama calls Joe and pleads with him to return.

Joe goes back to Obama’s house, looks at the leaky pipe, and says "Let’s see - this will cost you about $21,000."

"A few days ago you told me it would cost $9,500!" Obama quickly fires back.

Joe explains the reason for the dramatic increase. "Well, because of the ‘Joe’s Fair Plumbing Act,’ a lot of rich people are learning how to fix their own plumbing, so there are fewer of you paying for all the free plumbing I’m doing for the people who make less than $250,000. As a result, the rate I have to charge my wealthy paying customers rises every day.

"Not only that, but for some reason the demand for plumbing work from the group of people who get it for free has skyrocketed, and there’s a long waiting list of those who need repairs. This has put a lot of my fellow plumbers out of business, and they’re not being replaced - nobody is going into the plumbing business because they know they won’t make any money. I’m hurting now too - all thanks to greedy rich people like you who won’t pay their fair share."

Obama tries to straighten out the plumber: "Of course you’re hurting, Joe! Don’t you get it? If all the rich people learn how to fix their own plumbing and you refuse to charge the poorer people for your services, you’ll be broke, and then what will you do?"

Joe immediately replies, "Run for president, apparently."

Barack Obama A Long Time Ago, In a Universe Far, Far Away

Jawa Report (h/t Larwyn) posts this Star Wars clip:

Dan Friedman's Morning Laugh

Dan Friedman writes:

>"Barack Obama won the election because he saw what is wrong with this country: the utter failure of government to protect its citizens."

--New York Times, The Next President

It's good to start the morning off with a laugh. This has nothing to do with why he won this election, but it will be the reason he loses the next one.

Dan Friedman
NYC

But I'm confused. What's the New York Times?

Getting Rich from an Obama Presidency

The Democrats have inherited an inflationary mess from their sister party, the Republicans. A testimony to the Democrats' incompetence is that their leading economists are talking about the likelihood of "deflation" when the Republicans just doubled the monetary base on top of 2 1/2 decades of Republican monetary depreciation. Rather than make inflation into an issue, the Democrats complain that there isn't enough inflation. The reason is, of course, that their programmatic suggestions, to include Post Office- and New York City-Subway-style government health insurance and "spreading it around", require that our impecunious government spend ever more. As well, George Soros, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Warren Buffett must be paid.

Here are a few pointers about inflation:

1. Buy without holding prisoners. It is time to buy the Lexus, Lincoln or Mercedes you have been thinking about. If you've been saving for a Lexus consider borrowing to buy one instead. Use the cash as a down payment on a leveraged investment.

2. If you are planning to retire, have some gold. My friend wants to keep gold under the mattress. He's holed up with a rifle, bars of gold and dry food. If you're not quite so paranoid, take a look at SPDR Gold TR (GLD) or Ishares Comex Gold Trust (IAU).

3. Consider a commmodity investment such as Powershares DBC Commodity Index Tracking Fund (DBC). This exchange traded fund tracks the Deutsche Bank Commodity Index, which is composed of light sweet crude oil, heating oil, aluminimum, gold, corn and wheat. Commodities have taken a beating this year with oil falling by more than 50% and gold falling about 34% (it is currently about 25% below its high).

4. Consider gold stocks. These have underperformed gold this year and so can catch up to the gold price as well as travel up along with the gold price during the Democrats' inflation. Some examples are Agnico (AEM), Eldorado (EG0), Kinross (KGC) and Randgold (GOLD).

5. Take a slice of Jim Rogers's thinking and buy his commodity index ETF, Market Vectors Hard Assets Producers ETF (HAP). Jim Rogers designed the index to take advantage of the global commodities boom. HAP began this past September (2008) and sold as high as 38 or so before falling to its current $23.93.

With an Obama presidency, it's going to be rock 'n roll time for commodities. Let's make some money!