• en_US
  • es_MX
  • Community Resources
  • About Us
  • Archives
Thursday, May 8, 2025
No Result
View All Result

  • La Jolla Village News
    • Top Stories
    • News
    • Features
    • Opinion
    • Education
    • Arts Entertainment
    • Sports
    • Business Directory
    • Expert Advice
    • Real Estate
  • Beach Bay Press
    • Top Stories
    • News
    • Features
    • Opinion
    • Education
    • Arts Entertainment
    • Sports
    • Business Directory
    • Expert Advice
    • Real Estate
  • Peninsula Beacon
    • Top Stories
    • News
    • Features
    • Opinion
    • Education
    • Arts Entertainment
    • Sports
    • Business Directory
    • Expert Advice
    • Real Estate
  • Downtown News
    • Top Stories
    • News
    • Features
    • Opinion
    • Education
    • Arts Entertainment
    • Sports
    • Business Directory
    • Expert Advice
    • Real Estate
  • Uptown News
    • Top Stories
    • News
    • Features
    • Opinion
    • Education
    • Arts Entertainment
    • Sports
    • Business Directory
    • Expert Advice
    • Real Estate
  • La Mesa Courier
    • Top Stories
    • News
    • Features
    • Opinion
    • Education
    • Arts Entertainment
    • Sports
    • Business Directory
    • Expert Advice
    • Real Estate
  • Mission Times Courier
    • Top Stories
    • News
    • Features
    • Opinion
    • Education
    • Arts Entertainment
    • Sports
    • Business Directory
    • Expert Advice
    • Real Estate
  • College Times Courier
    • Top Stories
    • News
    • Features
    • Opinion
    • Education
    • Arts Entertainment
    • Sports
    • Business Directory
    • Expert Advice
    • Real Estate
  • Mission Valley News
    • Top Stories
    • News
    • Features
    • Opinion
    • Education
    • Arts Entertainment
    • Sports
    • Business Directory
    • Expert Advice
    • Real Estate
  • Home
    • About Us
    • Contact Us
    • Community Resources
    • Report News
  • Publications
    • La Jolla Village News
      • Top Stories
      • News
      • Features
      • Opinion
      • Education
      • Art & Entertainment
      • Sports
      • Business Directory
      • Expert Advice
      • Real Estate
    • Beach Bay Press
      • Top Stories
      • News
      • Features
      • Opinion
      • Education
      • Art & Entertainment
      • Sports
      • Business Directory
      • Expert Advice
      • Real Estate
    • Peninsula Beacon
      • Top Stories
      • News
      • Features
      • Opinion
      • Education
      • Art & Entertainment
      • Sports
      • Business Directory
      • Expert Advice
      • Real Estate
    • Downtown News
      • Top Stories
      • News
      • Features
      • Opinion
      • Education
      • Art & Entertainment
      • Sports
      • Business Directory
      • Expert Advice
      • Real Estate
    • Uptown News
      • Top Stories
      • News
      • Features
      • Opinion
      • Education
      • Art & Entertainment
      • Sports
      • Business Directory
      • Expert Advice
      • Real Estate
    • La Mesa Courier
      • Top Stories
      • News
      • Features
      • Opinion
      • Education
      • Art & Entertainment
      • Sports
      • Business Directory
      • Expert Advice
      • Real Estate
    • Mission Times Courier
      • Top Stories
      • News
      • Features
      • Opinion
      • Education
      • Art & Entertainment
      • Sports
      • Business Directory
      • Expert Advice
      • Real Estate
    • College Times Courier
      • Top Stories
      • News
      • Features
      • Opinion
      • Education
      • Art & Entertainment
      • Sports
      • Business Directory
      • Expert Advice
      • Real Estate
    • Mission Valley News
      • Top Stories
      • News
      • Features
      • Opinion
      • Education
      • Art & Entertainment
      • Sports
      • Business Directory
      • Expert Advice
      • Real Estate
    • Find Your Newspaper
    • Archives
  • News
    • Features
    • Opinion
    • Art & Entertainment
    • Education
    • Local Sports
    • Report News
  • Event Calendar
  • Business Directory
  • Subscribe
  • Advertise
  • Digital Editions/Archives
SDNews.com
Home La Jolla Village News

New president faces economic tsunami (*this headline has been modified from what appears in this week’s newspaper)

Tech by Tech
November 8, 2008
in La Jolla Village News, No Images, Opinion
Reading Time: 3 mins read
0 0
A A
0
0
SHARES
19
VIEWS

President-elect Barack Obama took a law degree from Harvard, helped create legislation on electoral fraud, taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago and touts energy independence and the American military’s withdrawal from Iraq as national priorities. While all that sounds pretty good to me, it doesn’t convey a sense of Obama’s experience in the business world. As he prepares to assume the country’s highest office, Obama appears credentially unfit to wrestle with an economy that’s leaking like my car’s engine and features the world’s largest national debt. Even amid his singular idiocy as a leader, the outgoing President Bush at least has a Harvard MBA. Then again, the American economy — or at least the street-level part of it — has a way of rebounding in the course of domestic affairs. After all, the stock market boom of the mid- and late 1990s was due to fluctuations in manpower, the spread of technical expertise and a better-educated workforce, not just because Bill Clinton was in office. Our elected officials have far less effect on consumerism than they think. Government can’t impose sanctions on the rank and file’s spending habits any more than it can legislate morality. What it can do (and what it fails so miserably to do even on the rare occasions it tries) is simply get out of the way. That’s what Scottish economist Adam Smith recommended in his 1795 essay “The History of Astronomy,” which features the concept of the “invisible hand” – merchants fuel the best consumerism by looking out for their own interests, and each sector thus helps grow the other as if guided by a hand no one can see. (It’s said he was talking about the Hand of God, but that’s a topic for another place.) To hear the media tell it, no such hand is anywhere in sight in the public or private sectors. Mortgages are being foreclosed at record rates; retirement savings are drying up like puddles under the San Diego sun; vital goods and services sport price tags without decimal points. Yeah, banks are starting to lend to each other a little, but that thaw in credit restrictions is the byproduct of a $700 billion government bailout of faltering financial institutions and toxic mortgages. Seven-hundred billion dollar bills would stretch to Mars and back nearly 40 times – but try to imagine 700 billion individual items beyond that tidy concept. You can’t. Neither can I, Barack Obama or John McCain, nor could Adam Smith. The fact of the matter is that such lofty numbers do not trickle down into street-level commerce, because their cash-reserve equivalent simply doesn’t exist. The folding money in your wallet is the only real indicator of the nation’s fiscal health, which means that the American economy is only as robust or paltry as the next guy’s disposable income. If you’ve got an extra 20 on you, so much the better. Despite these wholly difficult times, many people do. Part of that bill will get you the gas you need to get home tonight; the other will rent you a DVD and buy you the dinner you’ll eat while you watch it. As you enjoy your evening, rest assured that the government is talking about a completely different entity when it refers to the economic crisis – a crisis whose impact, at least for now, is as much psychological as financial. I voted for Barack Obama, and I’m glad I did. His talk of energy independence and our withdrawal from Iraq, where we’re waging an illegal and absurdly stupid war, is music to my admittedly leftist ears. He makes sense on these items largely because demonstrable action accompanies his positions – the public and private sectors are slowly embracing greener lifestyles, and 70 percent of the population opposes our military presence in Iraq. The economy? That’s a different matter. It’s downright ethereal, it is, because its workings are inherently private (only you and the guy who bags your groceries know what you bought on your latest shopping trip, and he’s forgotten your order once you step away from the aisle). While I congratulate the president-elect on his victory and marvel at his meteoric rise to the national stage, I’d ask that he rein in his rhetoric on the economic fixes that matter. Adam Smith had it right when he placed his trust in that invisible hand. Too much political posturing on the topic may threaten to turn the Obama White House into the propaganda machine it clearly seeks to eschew. Don’t you let the buzz scare you into submission, buddy, even as a few random pieces of green and white paper flutter onto a distant Martian outpost. — Martin Jones Westlin is the editor of San Diego Downtown News, a sister paper to La Jolla Village News.

Previous Post

News Briefs

Next Post

OB Library, Cabrillo Recreation Center now in crosshairs

Tech

Tech

RelatedPosts

7 edited
Arts & Entertainment

Fashioning an Icon at Mingei International Museum

by Diana Cavagnaro
May 8, 2025
trio meraki
Beach & Bay Press - Features

Meraki Spaces showcases artists and cultivates creative environments

by Noah Perkins
May 8, 2025
mv library exterior 1 1
Mission Valley News - Features

May events at the Mission Valley Library

by Karen Reilly
May 8, 2025
tennis
La Jolla Village News - Sports

Semifinal singles matches set at La Jolla Beach & Tennis Club

by SDNEWS staff
May 8, 2025
college rolando library
College Times Courier - News

College-Rolando Library holding open house on May 10

by SDNEWS staff
May 8, 2025
New president faces economic tsunami (*this headline has been modified from what appears in this week's newspaper)
La Jolla Village News - Education

La Jolla women raise funds for arts education in schools

by Dave Schwab
May 8, 2025
welcome del cerro 1
Mission Times Courier - News

Beginning of improvements to Del Cerro’s ‘front porch’ 

by Jay Wilson
May 8, 2025
mayor
Beach & Bay Press - Features

Pacific Beach’s Annual Graffiti Cleanup set for May 10

by Dave Schwab
May 7, 2025
Next Post
New president faces economic tsunami (*this headline has been modified from what appears in this week's newspaper)

OB Library, Cabrillo Recreation Center now in crosshairs

Discussion about this post

  • SD News
  • Event Calendar
  • Business Directory
  • Advertise
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Community Resources
  • Staff Writers
  • Subscriptions/Support
  • Publications
  • La Jolla Village News
  • Beach Bay Press
  • Peninsula Beacon
  • Downtown News
  • Uptown News
  • La Mesa Courier
  • Mission Times Courier
  • College Times Courier
  • Mission Valley News
  • Find Your Newspaper
  • Archives
  • News
  • Features
  • Opinion
  • Arts Entertainment
  • Education
  • Local Sports
  • Report News

CONNECT + SHARE

© Copyright 2024 SDNews.com Privacy Policy

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • en_US
  • es_MX
  • SDNews.com
    • About Us
    • Contact Us
  • La Jolla Village News
    • Top Stories
    • News
    • Features
    • Opinion
    • Education
    • Art & Entertainment
    • Sports
    • Business Directory
    • Expert Advice
    • Real Estate
  • Beach Bay Press
    • Top Stories
    • News
    • Features
    • Opinion
    • Education
    • Art & Entertainment
    • Sports
    • Business Directory
    • Expert Advice
    • Real Estate
  • Peninsula Beacon
    • Top Stories
    • News
    • Features
    • Opinion
    • Education
    • Art & Entertainment
    • Sports
    • Business Directory
    • Expert Advice
    • Real Estate
  • Downtown News
    • Top Stories
    • News
    • Features
    • Opinion
    • Education
    • Art & Entertainment
    • Sports
    • Business Directory
    • Expert Advice
    • Real Estate
  • Uptown News
    • Top Stories
    • News
    • Features
    • Opinion
    • Education
    • Art & Entertainment
    • Sports
    • Business Directory
    • Expert Advice
    • Real Estate
  • La Mesa Courier
    • Top Stories
    • News
    • Features
    • Opinion
    • Education
    • Art & Entertainment
    • Sports
    • Business Directory
    • Expert Advice
    • Real Estate
  • Mission Times Courier
    • Top Stories
    • News
    • Features
    • Opinion
    • Education
    • Art & Entertainment
    • Sports
    • Business Directory
    • Expert Advice
    • Real Estate
  • College Times Courier
    • Top Stories
    • News
    • Features
    • Opinion
    • Education
    • Art & Entertainment
    • Sports
    • Business Directory
    • Expert Advice
    • Real Estate
  • Mission Valley News
    • Top Stories
    • News
    • Features
    • Opinion
    • Education
    • Art & Entertainment
    • Sports
    • Business Directory
    • Expert Advice
    • Real Estate
  • Subscribe
  • Advertise
  • Report News
  • Find Your Newspaper
  • Digital Editions/Archives
  • Community Resources
  • RSS Feeds

© Copyright 2024 SDNews.com Privacy Policy