HEADING EAST

With Christmas coming, we begin tomorrow our annual pilgrimages to see the grandkids. Wife, dog and 2,347 wrapped Christmas packages will be on the Interstate at 0-dark-30 (as we used to say in the Great War) heading East. That means you are going to have to survive with only intermittent pieces of genius for the next few weeks. Sorry. One thing to look out for, however, is the progress being made on financial regulation while everyone is focused on the Health care bills and wondering whether the Senate is going to be ale to vote on it's disaster before the New Year. Because of all the noise there is not enough focus on the disaster-in-the-making that could well wreck our financial establishment and put us beyond the eight-ball internationally.

If one is looking for a road map one need go no further than Sarbanes-Oxley which, enacted in haste has been regretted in leisure and resulted in the loss of billions if not trillions of dollars since its birth. One thin about SOX is that it can be removed or amended relatively easily and the terrible fall-out from its existence reversed because we control it. Financial meddling on the other hand is going to involve everybody world-wide and undoubtably result in a loss for the United States of its preeminent position in the world of finance. THis will not be a good thing: it will result in a loss of money, jobs influence and prestige. It will hasten the decline of the dollar both in value and has the world's reserve currency and force our institutions to engage in markets under rules set by other people and their institutions which will be in many ways unfamiliar to us. In the coming weeks, I hope to discuss this view a bit more fully, so stay tuned. In the mean time I'm really happy the good folks in Copenhagen are all over this Global Warming thing. It's going down to 13 tonight with 40 MPH winds and I understand that up around Hudson Bay it's -29 (-54 wind chill) and 23 Polar bears froze to death. God Bless Al Gore for keeping us cool. Moron.

See ya soon.