Model Portfolio timbo56:SSOF1

It has been a very difficult and unpleasant two months. I have made an error in my analysis, that has caused huge losses in my portfolio. Ouch!! My error is that I have always believed that the government will choose the path of minimizing near term pain. And yet, our government, potentially informed by the wisest economists in the world, has inexplicable chosen the course of great near term pain. Why????????? Bush has opposed another stimulus package for reasons that sound idiotic. He wants to see if the first one is working. Well...... unemployment is skyrocketing, the stock market has tanked, big time, IT'S NOT WORKING. WE NEED MUCH, MUCH MORE FEDERAL SPENDING. Listening to Bush and other Republicans, it is as if Keynes had never lived and had never written his masterwork. It is as if the lessons of the great depression have not been noted and widely recognized and discussed. It is as if we are being led by the ignorant, by people who are not interested in economics and rather than wishing to learn, in order to lead us out of the mess they have created, simply fall back on blind instinct in times of crisis.

Without greatly increased federal spending over the next year, we would certainly find ourselves with rising double digit unemployment. There is simply nothing to prop up the employment market. We are in a severe downward spiral, with layoffs leading to lower consumer spending, leading to more layoffs, and so forth and so on.

Fortunately we will have a change in administration, about two months from today. Thank goodness. I certainly believe that the "recovery package" being touted by President Elect Obama is just what the doctor ordered. The direction of the stock market in the mean time will be dependent largely on to what degree attention is focused on the future Obama recovery package, and not the Bush present. I have noted that there is extreme, and I do mean extreme, bearishness in the community of commentators. To me, this is a bullish signal. But I don't want to try again to predict a bottom, because last time it did not work out too well. Hey, but I was right about retail and about the Las Vegas Casinos. So at least I have been part right.