November 24th Edition

Good Morning All,

Friday's late day rally was obviously keyed off the Obama announcement of Tim Geithner as Treasury Secretary, this is a popular choice on both sides of the aisle and around the business world where support for the incoming President is growing exponentially...well seems like anyway. There will be some additional follow-through this morning during the leadup to Barack's noon hour press conference at which the formal "economic team" statements will come to light. So far, so good on the Obama front as slow and steady seems to be winning the race for public support reminding everyone in concrete terms of just how silly the present American system really is. The succession rules need to be changed before the mid term elections in 2010 and ten days post voting day seems to be a reasonable time allowance for the newly elected to take charge.

Most of us have either worked for or with incompetent managers during our careers and been observant of the failings of others in public life or in competing firms. One of the most consisitent measures I have noted over the years is found in the inverse relationship between various managers' confidence levels and the collection of toadies gathered around them. We know that George Bush was not the "decider" he thought he was and that had it not been for Ronald Reagan having chosen his father for the Vice Presidency in 1980, he would have remained an unsuccessful faux oilman. As history has already shown us, it was the Cheney, Rove, Rummie, Wolfowitz and oil business interests that were the real controllers of U.S. policy and that most everyone else were simply courtesans and sycophants with a similar ideological bent.

This Obama guy is quite visibly different; his no-nonsense approach to problems and appointments represents not just a refreshing change but a recognizable remaking of government business based on competence and pragmatism...a polar opposite of what has most recently gone before. Let us hope that this adult approach continues for the long life of his tenure because the world is sorely in need of it.