Wednesday, September 24, 2014

GENIUSES AT WORK

But before that,I did get ahold of Massimo who describes his situation as "being away."  No details, but apparently should he be found in Italy there would be all sorts of awkward court proceeding involving his friendship with a lady whose husband has apparently decided to formally seek resolution of a--to understate the case--failed marriage.  These things are messy in Italy and whilst Massimo claims that his relationship with the lady in question was merely "paternal" as he puts it, he adds the qualifier, "lately," which for Massimo could mean 3 months or thirty years.  Then again, he's older than I am and the ravages of time…  Oddly--or perhaps not--there is another lady involved; a friend of the ravaged husband who was until some time ago was a friend of Massimo's as well which tends to make me agree that "being away" is an excellent strategy.  Massimo's wife is well by the way in case anyone is interested.

Massimo did say one interesting thing about Italy.

"Charlie," he said.  "Qu'est Dragi?"

"What?  He's the head of the ECB."

"No, primero est Italiano."

…and when you look at it that way….

Anyway, whilst Massimo was dealing with Italian affairs, The Leader was off in New York doing nothing more that creating the most God-awful traffic jams you have ever seen in midtown in addition to making two of the most ludicrous speeches of his career equating the slaughter in the Middle East to Ferguson, Mo. in one and calling Climate Change (whatever that means) as the greatest global risk of the century when everyone who was supposed to listen didn't bother to show up.  Meanwhile, his boys, Jacob/Jack and Billy the Dud were finding ways to make fools out of themselves without any help.

Jacob/Jack announced new Treasury rules against the scourge of inversions, which may or may not be enforceable much less constitutional, but are certainly meaningless by any objective standard.  While he was doing that, Billy the Dud was blabbering about how important it was to maintain zero interest rates lest the dollar rise and make the U.S. uncompetitive in world markets.

Now let's see if I can describe this: on the one hand we have a political tool who has no business or credentials to be the Secretary of the Treasury, dealing with the world's most uncompetitive tax code and attempting to make it even more uncompetitive in order to score political points and Billy doing what he rails against China and everybody else for doing, demanding that we manipulate the value of our currency in order to gain competitive advantage.  One has to ask, are these guys born dumb or do they somehow become that way?  And yet there is wonderment as to why business confidence is not higher.  These stalwart guardians of out economy can't figure out among themselves as to whether they are pro business or agin' it.  Inversion for tax reason?  Why not just the hell out period and try it again someother place?  Which, as I have said before, is exactly what you are going to see happen in the insurance business unless somebody shoots Dodd/Frank stone, cold dead.  Which makes it real personal:  number 2 son works for State Farm.  I'll take the grand kids but I don't want him back.  21 years was enough.




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