The Wisdom of an 8th Grader!

Two posts in a week - what a record. Perhaps I am getting the hang of this.

Last night our new President addressed Congress, D.C. leadership and the nation to lay out his economic and legislative plan to rescue the U.S. from our economic woes. Picture this... I am sitting with my 1o year old at the kitchen table, preparing a school project (a time capsule of sorts on the life of Hank Aaaron - I told you we were really into baseball!), my wife is chatting with two former FFI students in the living room, my youngest son is taking a bath, my oldest son is sitting in the family room watching Obama's speech, and I didn't have a clue were Nicolas was... Until mid way through speech he came down the stairs, planted his feet firmly at the base of the stairs and asked, "Where does he think all this money is going to come from?" He had been watching on a TV upstairs. The kid who has a pretty good mind and beyond his years in this thought process was watching, thinking, and really was stumped by this lack of logic and clarity.

My wife has an Masters in Business and I have a Ph.D. (granted not in macro economics) - and we are surrounded by some pretty bright people, who I also asked this question of and low and behold even a friend who IS a macro economic scholar couldn't answer the theoretical (yet very important question). I am trying very hard to raise some objective thinking kids, but an incident like this just demonstrates how hard that is in a place and time where those in charge don't make sense. This morning no one in the media is asking/answering this question, they are merely talking in terms of how good people felt after the speech. OF COURSE THEY DID! He said what they wanted to hear and did not use a critical ion in their bodies/minds to ask the simple question that even an 8th grader could ask. If we spend more we will save more... What? One can apply all the mumbo jumbo of speech writing (which I used to do) and economic jargon but it does not change the fact that a statement like that is highly illogical and just bad politics.

I am watching today to see if by chance those that actually invest in our economy have something to say - right now they are saying they don't buy it and the Stock Market is down over 125 points. Every time Obama has spoken about the economy the market takes a hit. We'll see. Thanks Nicolas for stating the obvious.