Well, Heckuva Job Bushie is back in Texas, DeadEye Dick has been wheeled to his crypt in Virginia and President Obama is running the country.If you were listening carefully, at about 12:01 PM, you could hear this enormous wind sound as 72% of America let out its collective breath after holding it for, oh, the last eight years.
Unfortunately, Heckuva Job Bushie left quite a mess to clean up.
Anybody see what happened to the markets today?
The Dow had its worst Inauguration Day ever.
Now you could say its just the GOP-sympathetic investor class selling/grumbling over a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress now running Washington.
And that could be.
If it is, it's pretty ironic, since Heckuva Job Bushie is the first president in the last five to leave office with the market levels lower than when he took office.
Bush was good for business?
Ha! That's like saying Bernie Madoff was good for investors!
That said, the big sell-off today could also signify really bad problems coming down the pike.
For instance, Citigroup's stock now stands at $2.80. The bank itself is insolvent, so frankly I don't care if any shareholders still stupid enough to be holding Citigroup stock lose everything, but guess what group of people will be taking on the cleaning up of the Citigroup financial implosion when it comes?
You got it - the American taxpayer.
And I wouldn't be surprised to see Bank of America follow suit in quick succession.
And again, guess who will be asked to clean that mess up?
Uh, huh.
And remember, the U.S. doesn't actually have any money. We're either printing it or borrowing it from the Chinese, if they're still willing to lend it, that is.
Pretty bad space to be in where two of the country's three biggest banks are insolvent and in need of a fire sale.
But that's where we're at.
Heckuva job, Bushie!
All that deregulation, the wink-wink at Enron-style business ethics, the cronyism, the celebration of debt in the form of real estate purchases and consumer purchases - it has brought us to a very, very bad place.
So as Bush slinks from town and heads back to obscurity in Texas and as Barack Obama takes office, remember that when all the hype, all the noise, all the parties and pomp and circumstance are over, we are still up #$%^'s creek as a country after these last eight years.
It's going to suck cleaning up the mess the Bushies left.
It's going to hurt.
A lot of people are going to feel the pain.
Hell, a lot of people are already feeling the pain.
But as President Obama has told us, it's going to get worse before it gets better and we have to be ready for that.
I just hope that the people responsible for this mess - the greedy hedge fund managers, the bankers, the brokers, the credit card companies and all the rest of the parasites who made a bundle of faux dough during the "Bush boom" - feel it too.
But I'm dubious about that
Prove me wrong, Mr. President.
Please, prove me wrong.
Now let's get to work and start cleaning this mess up.
I'll get the mop.
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