Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Business Gives Up on Obama

The Orange County Register has an interesting piece about business leaders blasting Obama. Of course. Most Business leaders have given up on Obama. They are poised to discreetly fund a Republican challenger. Oh, not all business people have given up on the Chosen Won. Significant portions of Silicon Valley still love the guy, even if IPOs are close to half a decade away (and thus cash-out points for Venture Capitalists are ever more distant). Hollywood loves Obama too, no one in Hollywood cares if films make money or not, they get paid up front regardless (because they expect cheating on the residual/profit sharing to be so rampant they don't bother or care). But most business leaders have given up on Obama. Because he's made them significantly less wealthy.


Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's Vice-Chairman, has said that:

"I think I've been in the top 5% of my age cohort all my life in understanding the power of incentives, and all my life I've underestimated it," Warren Buffett's business partner, Charlie Munger, once said. "And never a year passes but I get some surprise that pushes my limit a little farther."


Machiavelli said it more succinctly in the Prince: that a man will sooner forgive the murder of his parents than being made poor. Obama has made the wealthy corporate leaders of America, well most of them, significantly less wealthy. Not poor, but not what they expected.

The first to be affected were property moguls. Guys like Donald Trump. Shopping malls, luxury condos, office towers, were all hit hard by the recession, and Obama piling on investment choking regulations, uncertainties, and costs. Cheap interest costs did not combat people not shopping (and closing of anchor stores like say, Borders) at malls, or not buying luxury condos (at expected prices) or cutbacks in office space. These folks were sunk-cost trapped, they could not just dump and run. So you had considerable push-back from these types, and Trump flirted with running against Obama.

The next to be affected were those CEOs with significant stock in their companies, or compensated with options. Which is most of the big company CEOs. As long as cheap money from "Helicopter Ben" Bernanke and Turbo-Tax Tim Geithner pumped up risky assets like stocks and bonds, all was well. Even if their companies long-term growth prospects in the US were about zero. They didn't care -- they were making money. China was going to grow forever! And reality set in. Even before the stock market turbulence, earnings were sliding, in internal reports these guys were reading, and they knew enough that stock prices would slide too. Making many if not most of their options utterly useless. And reducing their paper wealth in stocks significantly. Often at 30% or more haircuts.

So if you want to know (Brian Calle of the OC Register is correct, this is very unusual) why Steve Wynn of Wynn Resorts, or Bernie Marcus of Home Depot, or Andy Puzder of CKE are blasting Obama, it is because he made them significantly less rich. He lost them money. And they in turn will do their best to fire him.

No, it is not a "done deal." Obama has many cards to play. Republicans could select someone unelectable (Michelle Bachman, who while admirably Tea Party conservative, is hated by most White Professional women who in my view hold the key to victory). Romney could prove weak and McCain like in confronting Obama (a likely bet). Rick Perry could be painted as George Bush Returns. But very likely, Obama will not be raising huge amounts of money from Corporate America. Sure, Hollywood will kick in. So will Silicon Valley. But that's about it.

Meaning, Obama's likely to play big, some Gotterdammerung attempt, to change everything. Failing the usual Chicago method of digging up dirt or phony court challenges, expect lots of riots and race-baiting. It is the Chicago way.

28 comments:

Anonymous said...

Another generous shot of Whiskey!!In many ways Obama is Richard Nixon like in terms of popularity at this point in time.
Nixon was very unpopular as the stock market corrected throughout 1971, and as Vietnam conflict continued.
Then a minor-miracle occurred:the stock market rallied, Nixon anounced a plan to exit Vietnam if reelected, the democrates against all logic nominated the ultimate liberal socialist George Mgovern.
Nixon was reelected in a landslide victory, yet 18 mos. prior was given very little chance of being reelected.

Anonymous said...

"But most business leaders have given up on Obama. Because he's made them significantly less wealthy."

That was the whole point. Misery loves company. It is not so much that losers thought Obama would make them rich as it was that they wanted to rich to be taken down a peg. Mission accomplished. Schadenfreude.

Anonymous said...

Hey Whiskey will college educated chicks vote for Governor Goodhair Perry?

He generally fairs well with white women, but that is in Texas.

Nine-of-Diamonds said...

Good post. However, I am a little surprised you didn't mention the flash mobs in conjunction with your comments on real estate.
In short, flash mobbing this decade has taken an ominous turn. Traditionally, Black rioters have been confined to the general vicinity of high-minority populations. The riots in Watts, Newark, and Los Angeles all followed this pattern. The only businesses to suffer were the lower class Asian & Indian establishments that traditionally offer services in depressed areas.

Nowadays the violence is literally on wealthy Americans' doorsteps. High-end stores in Georgetown, DC were hit about a month ago. The mayor of Kansas City is dodging bullets at Country Club Plaza, one of the most expensive commercial developments in the state.

This is the sort of thing needed to turn pro-0bama dead enders in the upper class against him. SWPLS support diversity so long as it's poor whites who reap its "benefits" (working class White males are statistically most likely to be targeted in hate crimes). For them, it's always been lily white school districts with perhaps Asians as the only minorities. And gated communities, overpriced urban shopping areas, etc etc.

Now minorities are beginning to "diversify" SWPL havens, with even heavy-handed policing only able to do so much. Witness the violence during Bike Week earlier this year, with blacks shooting at an army of police officers. Will a Gucci-loving Human Resources chick stand a chance in this environment?

The great unspoken bargain between 0bama and White SWPL Democrats was that he would maintain the relatively peaceful (for wealthy whites) status quo that has existed thus far in America's cities. He has, of course failed. Leftist professionals (even SWPL women) won't stand for their trendy urban areas being turned into Dodge City. In the near future, they will have little patience for minority politicians who fail to keep the peace. From 0bama on down.

Anonymous said...

Whiskey,

Who do you predict will win the presidency in 2012? I think that Perry is our only hope but others are pointing to Bachmann and Romney but I doubt it.

Whiskey said...

That's a very good point Nine. I had forgotten that issue -- Flash mobs = greatly degraded property values.

Whiskey said...

Perry IMHO has a problem with White Middle/Upper class professional voters in overt Evangelical Christianity, which is a style issue they despise. He might win them over if he can be charismatic, I have not seen enough of him and women's reaction.

White College women are the key to undoing the Obama and Dem coalition. Peel them off and like a keystone removed, the whole bridge collapses.

Anonymous said...

White Women still have a 7 point favor for the Dems.

Nine-of-Diamonds said...

"I think that Perry is our only hope"

As stated, White professional women are the key. Consider:

-Perry is not quite good looking enough. He lacks the sex appeal of Rubio or Scott Brown.

-Feminists will whip SWPL women into a frenzy over the Gardasil issue. "My Body, My Choice" is a Lefty sacrament. It extends to issues like STD vaccinations as well as abortions, so this will hurt him BADLY.

-Evangelical beliefs, references to God, and praying for 0bama make him a "square".

-Poor grades from college make him seem like an anti-intellectual. It's doubtful that he can pull off the studly-but-dumb jock routine very well. If he does, it will be portrayed as George Bush III.

Anonymous said...

"Poor grades from college make Perry seem like an anti-intellectual"

I'm mystified as to who might choose to vote based on grades? Professors? Students? Anyone who has been to college knows the fraudulence of grades--do they still to chose to belief grades measure worth?

Perry, Bachman, Palin... every candidate that I have the slightest interest in is so often declared unable to win, that I will again sit out this election. Why bother: everyone is in agreement, Communists, Democrats, Republicans alike that no candidate except a RINO can beat Obama. Why vote for a RINO? Why choose half-hearted oppression when you can have the real thing?

Mil-Tech Bard said...

SWPL women made up the majority of new small business start ups after 2001. This was strongly tied to the number of female real estate agents during the property bubble.

These women owe Obama nothing but contempt.

The worst the Republicans will do with them is their sitting out the 2012 election.

Nine-of-Diamonds said...

"I'm mystified as to who might choose to vote based on grades?"

You have to understand what we're trying to explain here.

0bama's support amongst most Whites is, simply, a disaster. Approximately 60-40 or 65-35 against. If we had the same electorate demographically that Ronald Reagan had, he'd be doomed.

However, due to increased nonwhite immigration the Republican candidate has to do even better than this. He will need to sweep all white groups to win a decisive victory. The one White demographic that the Republicans still need to win is SWPL professionals. In particular, females.

These people are precisely the type of credentialists who believe that good grades and academic pedigree prove that a candidate is competent. It seems ludicrous to you, but that's how they think. At the same time, these people will turn around and call Conservatives "racist" for wondering why 0bama's transcripts are sealed.

The only way to win with them is to offer up a technocrat whose academic credentials are beyond reproach, and who can debate 0bama effectively. (I also meant to say in my earlier post that, according to several Texans, Perry was a mediocre debater when running for office. I listened to his speech on revitalizing Conservatism earlier this year, and I noticed that his delivery even when speaking from a prepared text is not good. Yet another red flag).

Commander Shepard said...

It's silly for anyone businessman or not to think there was going to be some grand recovery. We're in a period of massive deleveraging, consumer spending collapse, and government fiscal retrenchment.

It's also silly to blame a sitting president for the economy. Nothing infuriates me more than the stupidity displayed by that mindset. If you think certain policies work or don't work, that's fine, but by definition a market economy is driven by the market, and not by the invisible hand of bureaucracy, especially in this day and age where governing hardly exists, rather small cliques of interest groups jockey for spoils, and political leaders driven more to office by status and cushy jobs that await them afterward rather than public service. The problem is the system.

Obama will be re-elected. He still has the backing of Wall Street (something that was never mentioned). He really went to bat for them, especially against his own base, many of whom demanded prosecutions, tough regulations, economic appointees who would take a hard line against banks, etc. Obama's support from Hollywood, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and other Meccas of money is obvious, they're prospering just fine. Luxury car dealerships have backlogs of customers. They can barely keep up with demand. Apple stores (the chief name brand of SWPL) are pact everyday. This downturn is not hurting everyone. Plus the political competition against Obama is very weak. I'm just not seeing what you guys are.

I agree with Nine-of-Diamonds. Minority politicans once an oddity or even a status symbol for a city are on their way out.

Nine-of-Diamonds said...

"It's also silly to blame a sitting president for the economy."

0bama ignores the Middle Class's economic situation at his peril. Clothing, food staples, and fuel are more expensive & purchasing power has declined in large part due to his decisions. Primarily re: monetary and energy policy. A handful of wealthy people paying lower prices for high end goods will not save him.

Nevertheless, due to the power of incumbency I would give him about a 55% chance of winning in November, especially if Palin, Bachmann, or Perry are anywhere on the opposing ticket. Expect the bottom to really drop out by 2013-2014, as his health care "improvements" kick in and the entitlement crisis worsens.

Anonymous said...

The Democrat Party is remarkably stable, drawing the same percentage of the voting population with every presidential election, win or lose.

Elections are decided by Republicans and the muddled. If a conservative like Reagan is nominated his base becomes energized and votes heavily. Such conservatives then pull the muddled over to the R vote.

RINOs never have that property. Bush I threw the election by going RINO.

Bush II, like his dad, ran as a conservative, and then governed as a RINO.

I don't see Romney winning the South. Which is to say, he can't get the nomination.

A Cain or Bachman could pull a Reagan on 0bomba. The former would take the race card out of his deck. The latter would draw enough angry voters to get over the top.

The Wan's economics destroy NAM job prospects. It will get much worse. Eventually NAMs will start to terrorize SWPL women. That's what the future holds.

NAM youth unemployment is already explosive. In 2012 it will be katy-bar-the-door.

peterike said...

An interesting chart here showing how Obamanomics has devastated the upper classes:

http://nalert.blogspot.com/2011/08/millionaires-vanish-data.html

However, with a cut-off at $10 million, it doesn't show the real upper brackets, which I expect have been doing better than ever under the King of Crony Capitalism (aka the Ultimate Pimp).

I agree that nobody on the Republican side seems to have the right mix to be conservative enough to fire up the base and the Tea Party crowd, while also having the intangibles needed to sway the SWPL women. Perry, while handsome, is handsome in a very dated way. He's like your handsome dad, not the handsome mature guy you'd be ready to shag for a ride in his Ferrari. (Question: would an SWPL woman ever vote for a man she wouldn't be willing to sleep with? I think the answer is a resounding no.)

Also, Perry has that icky taint of the military on him much despised by our urban femmes. And of course the far, far ickier taint of Christianity. If he doesn't start to step far away from the religious stuff, he's toast.

Though I haven't seen him in action, I have read that he's quite good at attack mode and doesn't take guff. If he's not a pure Alpha Dog he hasn't a chance. Though of course, being an Alpha Dog against Obama Zed is tricky, because if you're too tough you get the "racist" label.

It's rather pathetic that given all Obimbo's weaknesses, the Republicans may very well pull defeat out of certain victory.

Mil-Tech Bard said...

Whiskey,

See the link.


Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Millionaires Vanish: The Data LRC Blog from the Wall Street Journal.

http://nalert.blogspot.com/2011/08/millionaires-vanish-data.html

Whiskey said...

The Wall Street Journal notes that:

Luxury shoppers, while a small segment of consumers, wield an outsized impact on the broader economy, earning roughly 50% of the total income in the U.S. and making 48% of total expenditures, according to Citigroup estimates.

So, the few Goldman/Citibank folks making out on Wall Street won't help mitigate the huge loss of paper wealth among the corporate/real estate groups. Heck if you're a junior Wall Street guy and your co-op at $3 million is threatened market value by Black Flash mobs (and it is) you're not loving Obama.

Nine is correct, White female SWPL folks are the key. Though not a woman, Richard Riordan, former Republican mayor of LA, conceded he voted for Obama over McCain because he thought that Obama was more "brilliant" than bottom of Annapolis McCain, and of course unsaid the "need" to have a Black President. Ace of Spades has the full link, yesterday I think. That does exist.

Perry will have Professional White women against him over Gardasil, abortion, and evangelical Christianity (they see it as a threat to personal/sexual freedom). Bachman they despise as a traitor. However Obama is so weak now, underwater in NEW JERSEY! and NYC! that Rudy, Ryan, and Christie are rumored to be jumping in.

At this point, I just want to defeat Obama and avoid disaster. Perry voted for the Texas DREAM act, so I am against him for now on that alone. The others pay lip service but are weak on immigration, but not as bad as Perry. He is aggressive though and that counts for a lot.

Whiskey said...

Thanks Mil-Tech. Great link.

Commander Shepard said...

"Luxury shoppers, while a small segment of consumers, wield an outsized impact on the broader economy, earning roughly 50% of the total income in the U.S. and making 48% of total expenditures, according to Citigroup estimates.

So, the few Goldman/Citibank folks making out on Wall Street won't help mitigate the huge loss of paper wealth among the corporate/real estate groups. Heck if you're a junior Wall Street guy and your co-op at $3 million is threatened market value by Black Flash mobs (and it is) you're not loving Obama." whiskey


Whenever I go to affluent suburbs the places seem to be thriving. Restaurants/bars are pact on the weekend, it's difficult to find parking at high end shopping malls, practically everyone is employed in some capacity, etc.

Yet unemployment is astronomically high almost 25% nationally(the ministry of propaganda's stats of 10% are laughable) sometimes even higher unemployment regionally. There really are two Americas. One for the upper classes and the other for everyone else.

The backlash against black flashmobs would probably be local. We had a similar problem in my own area. During the real estate boom city officials sidestepped the master plan and sanctioned widespread construction including low income apartments. This was done through bribery and mostly benefited developers. A crime wave swept the area and the idiot SWPL mayor and city councilman were clueless and totally out of touch. Often they'd be more interested in "going green" and planting trees rather than focusing on matters pertaining to law and order. Upon election day they were thrown out of office by an enraged public.

Mil-Tech Bard said...

Consider that the increasing number of concealed carry fire arms American states and the increased numbers of violent attacks on working class whites my NAM criminals are positively correlated.

And that the tipping point for cultural acceptance in most of the recent concealed carry adopting states has been the marketing of stylish small, 10-round clip, 9mm & .40 hand guns to SWPL professional women.

Hand guns made possible by the "Assault Weapon Ban" on large capacity clips.

Mil-Tech Bard said...

Whiskey,

Projecting 2012's election results based on today's economy and Republican candidate electability is a fool's errand.

The key negative economic development through 2013 is the impact of the reduction of government workers.

The number of state & local government employees nationwide will be reduced by about 5-7%, perhaps as high as 10%, over the next 18-24 months from where they are now, and the rest will take outright pay cuts averaging about 5%.

Nothing like this has happened since the Great Depression.

This will have enormous repercussions in the private sector.

From WW2 through the mid-1970's government workers tended to buffer the wider economy from the effects of the economic cycle. After the mid-1970's, the negative kudzu like growth of economic regulation by the various bureaucracies started turning any government spending on public employment into a Soviet style negative GDP modifier.

Thus each economic cycle after that got worse in terms of private sector job creation, save when the Federal President (Reagan was the best example)actively attacked the regulatory part of the bureaucratic state as well as cut taxes.

However, this bureaucratic state has developed huge swaths of "economically safe areas" where public employees have nested -- and associated government contractors -- and feel entitled to their increasing cut of the economic pie. (See Madison, Wisconsin)

Now those "safe areas," particularly in "Blue States" state capitols, are being gutted by the lack of sales & income taxes plus the cut off of TARP cash the Republican take over of the Federal House means.

People are not machines. Reinforcement of adverse expectations can be multiplied. Basically the U.S. is so rich that things can get much worse based on adverse economic expectations alone.

When the public and business are already in a sour mood, reinforcing that mood does not have the normal effects of Reagan-style public employee reductions would have and, in this instance, the numbers of government regulators are not being cut in the Obama Administration & Blue States.

We are now seeing a major-league capital strike due to the insane economic policies of the current administration, which really does represent the mainstream Democratic Party.

The normal things consequent on a decrease in numbers of government employees simply will not happen because businessmen refuse to take any risks they don't have to, particularly in hiring new employees.

This business behavior won't change until after the next election which Obama is no longer President.

California kid said...

Anonymous said:
"A Cain or Bachman could pull a Reagan on 0bomba. The former would take the race card out of his deck. The latter would draw enough angry voters to get over the top".


Cain isn't sexy and White women resent conservative women because they don't openly give off a vibe of resenting their own men.

All Obama has to do is to run his sexy metro-sexual act again, dance on a stage again, bust a few moves, ride a bicycle wearing a helmet, and he will swoop White women again.

Then it's four more years of business-killing regulations, bigger and more frequent flash mobs and wolf-pack wildings.

Anonymous said...

>All Obama has to do is to
>run his sexy metro-sexual
>act again, dance on a
>stage again, bust a few
>moves, ride a bicycle
>wearing a helmet, and he
>will swoop White women
>again.

Failure is not sexy.

Economic success is, in a down economy. Perry will have that in spads.

Whiskey,

See this link:

http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/economy-a-budget/177365-obama-made-his-own-bad-luck-on-jobs

The President recently took to the campaign trail – at taxpayer expense – trying to rehabilitate his image on job creation. Obama claimed that his policies “reversed the recession” until he ran into a “run of bad luck,” but in truth the biggest challenge the economy has faced under this administration is an astonishing onslaught of federal regulations that make it nearly impossible to estimate the cost of adding new employees. In fact, the only Obama “success” on job creation is the hiring of new federal regulators, with employment at regulatory agencies up 13 percent since Obama took office to more than 281,000 federal bureaucrats. Meanwhile private sector employment shrank by 5.6 percent.

snip

In the last Congress we saw the passage of two of the biggest expansions in federal regulatory power in decades (and possibly ever). Obama’s health care law and the Dodd-Frank financial legislation were each about 2,000 pages of broad grants of authority and discretion to regulators, the implications of which are just now beginning to be felt.

On top of that we’ve seen an astonishing train wreck of new energy regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), including an aggressive effort to discover elements of the failed Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade legislation inside the forty-year-old Clean Air Act. The EPA is now contemplating its most aggressively anti-jobs regulation: an out-of-cycle re-proposal of smog rules that would ratchet down levels so far beyond what is necessary for public health that nearly the whole country would be judged “out of attainment” and over seven millions jobs would be lost. The EPA is also attempting to impose an absurd 54.5 mile-per-gallon fuel economy standard that will take any car worth driving off the market.

snip

In June, the tech sector had just a 3.3 percent unemployment rate, compared to 9.2 percent in the overall economy.

Unfortunately, the Federal Communications Commission, in a politically-motivated move almost certainly being dictated by the White House, is set to go final with its so-called network neutrality rules sometime this fall. These rules are offered as solution to a nonexistent problem of phone and cable companies blocking access to websites or otherwise interfering with their customers’ use of the Internet. But the effect will be to give government regulators control over the economics of the Internet, with an expected result of slashing private investment by about 10 percent and destroying as many as 200,000 jobs a year. The second order effects of slowing down the Internet innovation engine will be felt across almost every other industry.


Things are going to get worse, much worse, economically by 2012.

Anonymous said...

Whiskey,

FYI, don't count on overwhelming Black turnout in 2012:


http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/black-caucus-tired-making-excuses-obama


During a sometimes-raucous session of what’s being called the “For the People” Jobs Initiative tour, a key member of the Congressional Black Caucus told an audience in Detroit Tuesday that the CBC doesn’t put pressure on President Obama because he is loved by black voters. But at the same time, Rep. Maxine Waters said, members of the CBC are becoming increasingly tired and frustrated by Obama’s performance on the issue of jobs. Even as she expressed support for the president, Waters virtually invited the crowd to “unleash us” to pressure Obama for action.

“We don’t put pressure on the president,” Waters told the audience at Wayne County Community College. “Let me tell you why. We don’t put pressure on the president because ya’ll love the president. You love the president. You’re very proud to have a black man — first time in the history of the United States of America. If we go after the president too hard, you’re going after us.”

The problem, Waters said, is that Obama is not paying enough attention to the problems of some black Americans. The unemployment rate for African-Americans nationally is a little over 16 percent, and almost twice that in Detroit. And yet, Waters said, the president is on a jobs-promotion trip through the Midwest that does not include any stops in black communities.


If the CBC is trying to put daylight between them and OBAMA.

He is going to have turn out issues with blacks.

Anonymous said...

Whiskey,

FYI, don't count on overwhelming Hispanic turnout in 2012 either:


http://cnsnews.com/news/article/obamas-approval-has-dropped-36-points-am

Only 49 percent of Hispanic Americans said last week they approve of the job Barack Obama is doing as president, according to the Gallup poll. That is down 36 points from the high of 85 percent that Obama’s approval hit among Hispanics in the Gallup poll in the spring of 2009, his first year as president.

Obama’s approval among Hispanics hit an all-time low of 45 percent in the last week of July, according to Gallup. It has rebounded modestly since then.

Obama’s declining approval among Hispanics came before the administration announced a new policy on Thursday that will allow Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to suspend deportation proceedings against illegal aliens if she does not deem their cases sufficiently serious to require enforcement of the immigration law or if she believes their continued presence in the United States will not be a threat to national security or public safety.

Anonymous said...

I like Perry's attitude and swagger he projects right now. I am firmly against many of his policies, but the sort of attitude he is showing right now plays well with females. However, the election is 14+ months away and nobody has any clue what's really going to happen. Obama was not a household word with 14 months before his election.

Anonymous said...

The obvious x-factor of who gets the R nomination aside, the math on 2012 seems to be the 0bammessiah effect vs. the incumbent effect.

Because the former is GONE, GONE, GONE. His magic negro halo is GONE, GONE, GONE. I suppose 0bama's chances, his opponent aside, are worse than they were in 2008.

So if we get a charismatic R nominee (as in, to the good side of McCain - not a particularly tall order), goodbye 0bama.