The President and the Genie
There’s a full run of witty ramblings about Presidents in this month’s New Yorker. They are very much in the absurdist style of early Woody Allen (Without Feathers), but this one stuck me as the most amusing:
“The first two wishes had been easy. Sure, President seemed like a reach, but George W. Bush figured you only came across a genie in a lamp so many times—you might as well go for it. As for the chocolate milkshake, well, that was a lark. Later, he would claim that he was just testing the genie’s powers, but in truth he’d really wanted that milkshake, and in his heart he never regretted it. The third wish, though, had proved more vexing than he’d ever imagined; and, to his own surprise, the genie’s suggestion was starting to make sense. “Explain it to me one more time,” W. said.
“You see, master,” the genie said, stroking his goatee, “high earners provide the capital for business infrastructure and equity markets. Therefore, sweeping tax cuts for corporate income, coupled with steady deregulation, will stimulate growth, the benefits of which will necessarily trickle down.”
Years later, with the country in a shambles, the President privately wondered if he’d been too quick to accept the genie’s supply-side logic. But by then the genie had his own problems: his 401(k) was all but defunct, and he found himself embroiled in a major lawsuit over whether or not he had assured a previous client that “all the riches of Araby” were tax-exempt.”
The whole run is pretty funny . . .
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Source:
MORE APOCRYPHAL STORIES OF THE PRESIDENTS
Yoni Brenner
FEBRUARY 23, 2009
http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2009/02/23/090223sh_shouts_brenner
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February 19th, 2009 at 5:00 am
Hey, did anyone notice that we are sitting near the lows again? :-=))) And the transports amongst others have taken out their lows and show a truly ugly chart:
http://www.google.com/finance?q=INDEXDJX%3A.DJT
Did we spend this much time on humor and non-marked stuff back when we made the lows last year? Where is the “just get me out now”-fear? Where is the headlines and the breaking news? Can we bottom with big beta names still seeing this much action and attention? I’m not hearing alarm bells ring at the level we heard in October and November in the news media and on the blogs.
Gold and the dollar are rocking, most everything else is dropping, expiration is righ here righ now and stocks have been trading very quietly around 780-800 for nearly two full trading days. A violent move in the next few days is to be expected, imho. Steady hands will buy with a view to look away for a long period i.e. expecting a weak recovery in profits a couple of years from now and they will require a big discount to buy equity rather than bonds. My guess is that absent more favorable news very soon, buyers will not show up in great numbers until 600-670 on the S&P 500.
As for gold, it’s making new highs in nearly every currency but the dollar and the yen and is eight years into its bull marked. So naturally there are a lot of bulls and media attention, but one would expect that the water cooler talk was all about junior minors, that m&a and IPOs was all the rage in this space and that the prominent hedgefunds and mutual funds where overweight these names. But that is not the case. And most of the miners are very cheap vs the metal and their now lower production costs. Not predicting anything, just saying.
February 19th, 2009 at 7:04 am
“…Genie, I’d like to invest with someone who will never lose me money, always make me some, not a lot, just enough, a solid ten percent, or so return, year in, year out…”
POOF!
…and I found myself at lunch with a kindly chap from Fairfield Greenwich.
February 19th, 2009 at 7:39 am
Everyone always blames MacGraw, but according to the goat, ’twas MacGregor what violated him.
February 19th, 2009 at 10:31 am
Check out these ads for investing. Talk about nailing it.
http://www.stillad.com/ae-investimentos-surreal-1596.htm
If you are a fan of advertising the whole site with steal time from you. I just spent the last half hour cruising through this
February 19th, 2009 at 11:18 am
Trickle down indeed.. all the way down… into the toilet. What an unmitigated farce. Sure sounded good especially to the elites.