What's Not To Like?

The scripted political conventions are now history, the Federal Reserve has announced a plan to buy $40 billion a month of agency mortgage-backed securities (QE3), oil prices are on the rise, and the market has been rising steadily throughout the year.  One could ask, "what's not to like?"  The messages are quite mixed and are emblematic of the debate the country is having with itself. 

The advent of QE3 certainly looks political in nature, because it could be construed to help the current administration, except when you factor in the fact that Ben Bernanke is a Republican.  Of course, since Romney wants to replace Ben if he wins the election, perhaps it is just a case of Ben seeking job security.  One would hope the Fed's motivations are not quite that transparent.

The election is being framed as a contrast between Big Government vs Limited Government, yet I still can't quite understand how Romney is going to create jobs, since that is what private industry does, unless of course he plans to add government jobs.  Oh yeah, that's right, it is the conditions which have to be altered to stimulate the Great American Jobs Machine.  So, what he is really going to do is cut down on regulation and limit the agencies which are creating laws and regulations which are chocking us.  At least I hope I understand that to be the case.

The President likes to remind us daily how his administration has created 4 million new private sector jobs, which sounds good as a sound bite, until you realize the economy lost 8 million jobs during the recession.  Of course, we all know that is George Bush's fault, because he gave all those millionaires tax cuts and sank the economy.  Hey, but don't worry, Dodd and Frank have given us a brand new set of regulations designed to stop any of those Wall Street types from "rolling the dice" on home ownership in the US.  Oops, I think those were Barney's words, right????

So, I heard a guest on CNBC use a football analogy to describe the election, just after the left released a video recording which would have you believe Romney insulted 1/2 the US population as not being responsible for themselves.  He said that right now there are 2 minutes left in the 4th quarter, with Romney down 10 points and Sanchez as the quarterback for Team Romney.  I wonder what odds the fantasy football fans give Romney?  The media is calling it dead even, but I really think I should contact Rachel Maddow and get her take on things.  I am sure she will be as spot on with an analysis of the election, as she was with her analysis of Chris Christie's speech at the RNC.

The Republic will survive, whatever the outcome of this election, but it is hard to say whether there will be a clear mandate for either party to do anything.  Perhaps the mandate will be to compromise.  After all, once the election is over, the stock market won't have a wall of worry with which to contend, but rather investors will be concerned with sailing right over the fiscal cliff we've all heard so much about.  Oh well, that's another day!