November 6, 2009

Mark the Date

By Tom Bruner

This coming Saturday, November 7, is an auspicious anniversary. It was on this day in 2008 that President-Elect Obama held his first press conference and introduced the world to the Office of the President Elect, complete with official-looking logo. President-Elect Obama addressed the world from behind the President Elect podium at least six times, generally indicating what he expected the outgoing administration to have done by the time he took office, like spending half of the TARP funds that he had helped secure the previous month.

This is a good time to reflect on how far we have come. A lot of the TARP money was used to buy GM and Chrysler, among other things, and some went to help banks buy treasury bonds. Some made its way to small businesses. We may not see some of that money again, so Saturday would be a good time to reflect on what a great time we all had spending it. Several million more of us have enough time on our hands now

to reflect on whatever we want.

But too much reflections leads many to find fault and ask when things will be getting better, which leads others to say, "give it time, he's been in office for only ten months." But of course Mr. Obama has been influencing events for at least a year now by virtue of his time in the Office of the President Elect...longer if we count his time in the Senate hammering out TARP. But even if we only call it ten months, that's still about 20% of a presidential term.

So this Saturday, remember that we will be paying our creditors back with dollars that are considerably smaller than the ones that we borrowed, and as far as we know, Iran doesn't have a nuclear bomb yet. Remember that a jobless recovery is better than no recovery at all, and not having a job isn't so bad as long as the unemployment checks are coming from somewhere.

Most of all, remember that a Tea Party with a few thousand like-minded citizens is a heck of a lot of fun that we most likely would never have experienced if things had turned out just a little different.