The National Debt
By Mike Myatt, Chief Strategy Officer, N2growth
Today’s post on the National Debt will be short and to the point. While I could easily digress and reduce this discussion to a partisan political diatribe, I promise to resist the temptation. This post is written for every American citizen regardless of political affiliation, or socioeconomic status. Every American, as well as future generations of Americans, now share the burden of our rapidly mounting financial obligations. While I could throw figure after figure at you about the ridiculous hole we have dug for our children and grandchildren, nothing is as powerful as taking a few minutes to study the national debt clock. So the only thing I ask of anyone reading today’s post is this: to study the clock and make known whatever your feelings are in a very loud and public fashion. Unless America unites its collective voice about our current levels of deficit federal spending, and forces the government to stop the madness, we all will face a much tougher road than is necessary.
What’s wrong with our economy? Why can’t we seem to fix it? Where do we go from here? If you listen to our new administration, they’ll tell you that they have “our best economic minds” engaged in solving this crisis, and therein lies the problem…Put simply, the real problem with economics is that most economists don’t have a clue…An economist is commonly defined as “an expert in economics, especially one who studies economic data and extracts higher-level information or proposes theories.” If you closely examine the preceding definition, you’ll quickly see that one of the problems we face is that our nation is trusting a small handful of academic theorists to turn the titanic around. What we don’t need is more academic rhetoric from over-glorified analysts studying data and putting forth theories…What we do need is action from those that actually understand the real issues…business leaders and entrepreneurs.
Today’s announcement by President Obama that he will reduce federal spending by $100 million dollars is nothing short of laughable. This move insults the intelligence of all Americans, and is nothing more than a pathetic attempt at pandering and political posturing. In today’s post I’m going to begin by giving you some simple math to consider, while I offer a historical perspective on why both Obama’s strategy and tactics are fundamentally flawed and doomed to fail…
As the old saying goes, “The times they are a changing.” For those of you who are not regular readers of the Myatt on Mondays posts, Monday is the day that I often set aside to answer questions from readers. However in today’s post I’m going to switch things up a bit and ask you to answer a question posed by me. While I have given frequent counsel about how to successfully navigate the many challenges posed by these uncertain economic times, my question is this: “In the last 90 days what proactive changes have you made within your business which have placed you in a better position to survive the changing economic conditions that are presently vexing many a CEO?” In the text that follows I’ll give you a few places you might want to look at if you haven’t already…
I received quite a few emails (more than 200) about Monday’s post entitled “Obama’s Early Report Card.” Most of the comments were in support of my observations and opinions, however there were a few (very few…3 to be exact) dissenting views that took exception to my assertions that President Obama is single-handedly destroying our free market economy and replacing it with Socialism. President Obama is in way over his head, and I’m not the only one who thinks so…In addition to sharing a few more thoughts on the topic at hand, I’ll also cite other notable opinions on what we’ve witnessed in the few short weeks since President Obama has been in office.
Today’s Myatt on Monday’s question comes from a small business owner who asks: “You were very outspoken in your opposition to candidate Obama during the election. You have been very quiet since President Obama’s inauguration, and I would appreciate your assessment of his first two months in office. How do you feel he is doing thus far?” Actually, I’ve been waiting for this type of question to surface, so in today’ post I’ll provide an initial assessment of his actions to date, and let you draw your own conclusions…
Good money after bad…this is perhaps the most apropos description of the current proposal to bailout the big three US auto makers. Have we learned nothing? Are we again going to let fear mongering subject us to more flawed decisioning? The lack of management and accountability for the trillion dollar government bailout of the mortgage and finance industry has been nothing short of amazing to me. Do you sincerely believe the appointment of an “auto czar” and the submission of business plans is going to make a difference? I don’t; it’s simply more political gamesmanship, more of the same, and will result in nothing more than throwing good money after bad. In today’s post I’ll share my thoughts on the auto bailout…
It seems as if the more layers of the onion we peel back on the chaos in the capital markets the worse the news seems to be. I have long been a believer in the axiom ”where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” and trust me when I tell you that the fire is far from being under control, much less extinguished. You see while most of the attention in the mainstream media has been focused on the debacle in the real estate and public markets, the next wave of failure is about to rear its ugly head. In today’s post I’ll share what I believe is the next segment of financial collapse set to rock the investment world…
“The Recession…It’s official.” I don’t know about you, but I’m less than impressed with the experts just now arriving at the conclusion that we’re in a recession when I’ve been talking about it 