Over the past few weeks, I’ve been punishing myself by watching Fox News. Specifically, I’ve tuned into much Hannity and O’Reilly as I could stand. My record so far is 10 minutes and that included commercials.
I flipped on Fox News again today to listen to some idiot commentator biatch about the state of America. Here’s a synopsis of his rant…
“There have been no stimulus plan jobs created. This is just like the TARP bailout – money is vanishing. We’re running the country into the ground. The value of the dollar is tanking. The cost of oil is going through the roof. Inflation is out of control. The unemployment rate is skyrocketing. We should have let the private sector take over and fix the economy.”
The only thing – the absolutely only thing – this bozo was correct about was inflation. But, even on the point of uncontrolled inflation currently existing, he was dead wrong.
Uncontrolled inflation won’t set in – if it does at all – until 2010. Why? There will eventually be too much money in the market. We’re printing money we don’t have to cover the damage caused by the last 8 years because there was no other option except for failure. Nobody wants Osama bin Laden to “win,” right?
The simple fix to stave off inflation is to raise interest rates. But, the Fed won’t be able to do so until 2010 because mortgage/loan rates need to remain attractive to consumers. So, by next summer, we could easily be paying $4.75 a gallon for gas and $4 a gallon for milk unless the Obama administration actually properly manages inflation.
Even then, the spike in cost of goods (oil, food, metals, everything) during the upcoming inflationary period won’t be much more than we saw while bush was fcking our country in the a$$ during his last year in office. Remember the cost of goods last summer?!?
As of today, and assuming nothing unforeseen happens diplomatically, you can bank on the following. Fox News, feel free to use this info rather than the bullsh!t you’ve been pushing on your network.
- The dollar won’t become overly weak like it was during the end of bush’s tenure.
- Oil will not exceed $100 a barrel unless hurricane season hits the Gulf hard or a major conflict breaks out in the middle east. Demand will definitely not drive up the cost of oil as Americans are now forced to conserve. However, by the summer of 2010, oil can easily hit $150 a barrel if inflation skyrockets. Note: I can’t imagine oil dropping to below $50 a barrel in the foreseeable future. So, XOM is a stock buy to consider..
- On that note, inflation will remain in check until late 2010/early 2011. If inflation becomes a problem, everything from the cost of food to plastic to gold will be troublesome to the economy if it hasn’t strengthened by then.
- Stimulus jobs have already started to be created. More jobs will be created this summer.
- The housing market has hit near a bottom. Well, currently existing home prices will fall more before rising in 2010/2011 but you couldn’t pay me to build something new.
- Unemployment numbers will level off around the same time the recession ends – by the end of 2009 or early 2010.
To recap, our country’s absolute biggest foreseen threat is skyrocketing inflation in 2010. Since we have a worthwhile administration in place, I assume they’ll figure out a way to stave off inflation. If not, unlike the gop, at least they tried to fix the mess bush’ Iraq war has caused.
Side Note: GM is slowly but surely dying. The only reason the government saved GM is because we can’t have all of those (blue and white collar) employees laid off at the same time. Simply put, it is more affordable for the country to have workers standing on an assembly line building god knows what compared to standing in the unemployment line (without benefits) collecting checks without doing nothing. So, once the economy recovers and the jobless rate drops below 7-8%, GM will no longer exist.
P.S. If you review my blog over the past year – and, I’m tooting my own horn – you’ll notice I’m never been wrong about matters regarding the economy. Don’t bore yourself – ha! – there are over 550 total blog postings you’d have to sift through to find those relating to the state of the economy.
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