State of The Union or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Debt Bomb.

Oprah crying on one hand, a commodities bubble building on the other.  It's bread and circus time in America, with the politically correct cult of personality delivering the constitutionally mandated speech that is supposed to assuage my fear over the direction this country is headed.  I shouldn't be scared though, because in the name of civility, elephants and jack-asses are going to adopt the buddy system and hold hands.

Sorry,  fiscal apocalypse doesn't recognize a meet-and-greet.

 For a bit of perspective, total assets in America equate to about 100 trillion dollars.  The national debt has just surpassed 14 trillion.  That's just the federal balance sheet; Begin to add state and local deficits, pension funds, corporate debt, and, God help us, mortgage debt, you begin to wonder if it's not better to just suck a gas pipe and dream good thoughts.  Looking at the future prospects of  Social Security's solvency makes  Europe's euthanasia programs start to look fairly reasonable.  Sorry, God...I didn't mean that.

Alas, my cynicism should be conquered by the oratory adroitness of the leader of  neo-Camelot.  Arthur will tell us to build more solar panels, and with her eyes, Guinevere will tell us to eat less pork.  Oh, goody!  Can Soylent Green be far behind?

Our problems are not rooted in competitiveness or innovation.  References to "Sputnik" and the race to the moon are poorly reasoned  analogies.  The Chinese bogeyman is not waiting for us under the bed.  Our problem is the federal government, and by proxy, state houses and governor's mansions across the country. Government spending is sucking the oxygen  out of private capital formation in America.  The capital will travel elsewhere in the world and take the job creation with it.  Technological progress demands working capital, not higher government revenues.

So too, enough of the idiocy of  investment in infrastructure in this country as it relates to the building going on in China.  Theirs' is a problem of delivering basic services to a billion-three population.  Ours is a problem of corrupt government contractors wrapping themselves in the Bacon-Davis act.  If we're looking to repair infrastructure, let's begin with our energy infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico.  So far as I know, there is no I-phone app that can extract oil or natural gas out of the earth.  Ironically, most infrastructure inroads are traversed by the issuance of municipal bonds, and we all know where those babies are headed.

Although it was a pleasure not to see Nancy Pelosi throned behind the president, I do feel there was someone who needed to be sitting between the Speaker and the Vice-president: Ben Bernanke.  Isn't it about time we acknowledged the Federal Reserve as the defacto fourth branch of government?  Is QE II any less of a government program than fiscal stimulus?  Monetizing a sovereign debt doesn't fall under the dual mandate of the fed, but that is exactly what is happening.  Gone are the days of Paul Volcker raising interest rates and sending farm combines down Pennsylvania ave. into Reagan's oval office. A real banker. A real president.

I  also didn't notice Jeffery Immelt,  former CEO of  General Electric and the president's new ducky choice to head another ad nauseam council on jobs, in the chamber.  Perhaps he was huffing some smelling salts after seeing the, dare I say, windfall profits  the venerable GE CAPITAL division recorded.  Aren't negative interest rates and dollar carry trades awesome, Jeff?  Sure beats those scary days in the fall of 2008, huh?  Now your the straight guy in the ongoing comedy of Keynesian economics in this administration.  Makes sense...makes perfect sense.

The biggest erection our wizened corporate media could get over the speech was actually the Tea Party response given by Rep. Michelle Bachmann.  Republican women are disliked in general by NBC, but the long knives really come out when this woman speaks.  Perhaps it's because she knows what she's talking about, but really I think it's because she disagrees with laws that allow babies to have their heads compacted or spines severed as long as their still in the womb.  But I digress.  Bachmann, a former attorney who prosecuted tax cheats for the U.S. Treasury Department, ( Timothy Geithner notwithstanding) apparently was quoted as saying she wanted a population "armed and dangerous."  The Giffords shooting has Liberals retroactively declaring this hate speech.  Consequently, her response was judged by where her eyes were focused during her monologue, not by the words themselves.  This is what passes for punditry at NBC...where Jeffery Immelt use to run things.

Bachmann's response was fine.  She stated the obvious: government is bankrupting the country.  I like the armed and dangerous part, though. I'm armed and dangerous, but only to myself.  I'm always going to leave one round in the chamber just for me, just in case these demented fiscal dragoons ride down America for a second term.

Sorry, God...I didn't mean that, either.