It seems as though every time you turn on the news they either have a “Our economic messiah has arrived” statistic for you to show everything is great, or a “We’ve mortgaged our children to the Chinese who are using them to fund nuclear bombs” comment to show everything is terrible.

Gross Domestic Product (what we create as a nation) was downwardly revised in the 3rd quarter from 3.5% growth to 2.8% growth.  Boooo.  Home prices rose nationwide for the 5th straight month.  Yay!  4.94% of all loans held by our banking system are 90 days or more delinquent (which is the most it’s ever been for 26 years) and an FDIC bank bailout fund is running in the red.  Boooo.  Existing home sales jumped upward by 10.1% nationwide (12.7% in the South).  Yay!  The dollar’s value has slid consistently for the past three months and China is going to try and replace the dollar as the interna­tional trade currency.  Boooo.  Consumer confidence is indicating that we will have a busy holiday season which is good for business and job creation.  Yay!

Can everyone just make up their minds?

Truth of the matter is that Commander-in-Chief Barack is being told to spur job growth and stop the housing market deterioration while simultaneously not increasing the national deficit.  That’s a lot like asking someone to run a marathon, but to breathe as little as possible while doing so.

Can’t.  All.  Be.  Done.  Under.  Present.  Circumstances.  Period.

Pure Laissez-Faire economics (the idea that the markets are universally self-correcting and we should just let them do their thing) is dead.  Someone in this global capitalistic game is going to try and mess with the system, so checks and balances need to be in place.

I don’t like running the money printing presses non-stop.  I challenge you to find me one person who actually thinks that is a good and maintainable idea outside of extreme circumstances.  But we are ex­periencing some EXTREME CIRCUMSTANCES.  The black and white contest between ‘government should run everything’ versus ‘government should keep their nose out of everything’ is senseless.  It’s all shades of gray and we’re pioneering uncharted economic territory right now. 

Yes, large amounts of debt will come home to roost someday, no question about it.  But who knows how much worse off we would be had we not been aggressive about addressing the economic col­lapse?  Either way you slice it, the world’s financial waters will be choppy for the next few months.  Join us for a cocktail on the 3rd to drown your concerns about it.