Dear President Obama,
I’d like to tell you a story. As a boy I walked into my fathers office with a book. It really isn’t a book per se it is more like a tome - in the old days the Encyclopedia Britannica would include a set of books called the “Book of the Year.” Anyway, I’ve got this book and in it are the statistics and subjects that cover the milestones in the given year. The year in question is 1979. So there I am, some time in 1995 in my old mans office with this massive book cracked open, and I pose a question: “Dad, Why didn’t you invest all your money in the Dow Jones Industrial Average in 1979?” My father looked over the nose of his bi-focal glasses, and simply said “You and your sister needed to eat.”
Well I was not gonna take that for an answer. I mean for crying out loud, do you have any idea how much money we would have made if you had just done that! What could have been easier? Just take a little of your paycheck and invest it or live cheaper and we could have an awful lot of money now! My old man took this enthusiasm as an opportunity to give me a lesson in economics and money management, actually Mr. Obama had you been present for that lecture, hundreds of millions of Americans would have more than a fair shot at prosperity now.
Back to the lecture. So the Oldman asked me for the book. Dad pointed to the table on interest rates for the time, and the asked me a question “Joe(my name’s not Joe, but lets just call me Joe) If I told you that the US Government would give you a guaranteed return of 10% or you could risk your entire nut in the stock market what would you do?” My answer was “No way pop. I’m not going to take that bet.” Then I pressed him further, “Why didn’t you buy those bonds and make 10% for 30 years?” Then he launched into the concepts of inflation and price controls and disposable income and all the rest. By the end of it I said simply. I get it. “We needed to eat.” Then he gave me the save for a rainy day lecture, and why that is the breeding ground for success as well as survival, he called it “insulation from poverty,” and how to save through diversification and how to use debt wisely.
So fast forward to August of 2008. The old man calls me up “Joe, 50% chance of rain.” He was talking about you Mr. Obama, you are the rain. But, I had prepared for your socialist redistributive economic philosophy, while preparing for the usual financial setbacks. Actually I noticed that a whole lot of people began to go into a similar mode of anticipatory economic survival. Companies shed workers to protect capital, operations in Union friendly states began to diversify in “Right to Work States” or out of the country entirely. The job losses mounted and mounted and you and other Democrats took this as a golden opportunity to win an election, because Americans often work under the false assumption the government can cure what ever ails them, so they went Big Government, they went for you Mr. Obama, and they regret that choice.
Now, if you had been in that office with my father and me, you would have known exactly what to do. Alas this was not so, you reached for the Federal Credit Card, and man you spent, and spent, and spent, and now you are a failed CEO millions of employees, trillions in debt, trillions in deficit, and all you can talk about is some poor broad who you canned on the bases of ten minute snippet taken out of context, right before you go on your one hundredth vacation or play your next golf game.
This isn’t even funny anymore, this is a disaster.
Respectfully,
Joe Doakes
