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Historical February–March 2009 article. Dates, prices, services and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
OK, it’s that time of year. Enough of the partying, enough of shoveling snow, it’s time for my New Year’s Predictions. Yep, you heard it, oops, you read it, here first. Hawkeye is going to peer into his crystal ball – I always feel so much more erudite, if not smarter, when I refer to myself in the third person, he said – and tell you what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, and next month. Brace yourself, baby, the roller-coaster ride isn’t over yet. Bull in mind that predicting the future is no easy task. (I was going to say “Bear in mind,” but the stock market is already bearish enough.) After all, if it was easy to predict the future, everyone would do it. And when everyone did it, think how boring life would become.
If everyone could predict the future, we’d all be gazillionaires. We’d each have bought the stocks that were going to soar by 1,000% and we’d each have sold the slow turkeys that did a dying pirouette into the sewer. Your retirement account wouldn’t look as if it’s been living on Slim-Fast and going to the gym each day. Of course, if we each had bursting bank accounts, it would all equal itself out.
A new car would cost $100,000 and that Starbuck’s banana-latte would cost $34.31. Middle class would still be middle class, only with a lot more digits. It’s like if everyone was seven foot tall, none of us would be tall. So you see, looking into the future loses its cachet if we can all do it. Fortunately, that ain’t the case. You don’t, alas, have the capacity to know what will happen tomorrow or next week, much less next month. Let’s get real: You have trouble anticipating what’s going to happen tomorrow morning! I, on the other hand, by virtue of many years of training and long and hard and arduous effort, have the knack. That’s why my portfolio has lots of General Motors stock in it. Oh, I know, worry-warts will say that GM almost meaningless and it has lost 90% of its value. So what!
I know the American public and I understand our insatiable desire for bigger, louder, and faster.
In no time at all, we’ll be buying those SUVs again and pumping the pump. Varooom indeed!
I also, and this is going to make you very envious, have a good deal of Merrill Lynch stock. Yes, I know: Once again you’re going to say that this is a bad investment, that the stock is virtually worthless, and it is now owned by Bank of America. Ha, you naive person. That may be true today, but wait! You see, the big boys (and, sorry, they are all boys) at M-L know what they’re doing.
They purposely let their stock deteriorate to next to nothing so it could be purchased even more cheaply. I’m sure they bought stack and stacks of stocks – I did – in anticipation of the turn-around.
I figure that M-L will own Bank of America in no time. And finally, the rest of my investments are in Charter Communications. Sure, it’s easy to pile on the bandwagon and say, “But Hawkeye, this stock is hardly worth the paper on which it is printed!” Yes, that’s true today.
But look at the Charter line-up, will you? There’s one bad television show followed by a mediocre show, and those are sandwiched between two poor shows, one boring and one frenetic. Given the American taste for bad TV, Charter is a gold mine.
I mean, anyone can buy a stock that has good potential and is on the upswing; it takes a real maven to pick bad stocks that will do well!
Now that you recognize his predictive skill, you are no doubt wondering where Hawkeye obtained this spyglass to the future. (Ain’t that third-person great?
He sounds so eloquent!) It’s not as if you can take a course in the future, after all. Nope, school isn’t helpful.
After all, most history courses are looking backwards. Isn’t that odd? Why bother going to school to learn what’s already happened? That never made no sense to me, not neither. How helpful is it to know what happened anyway? It’s not like you can do anything about it. So if Hawkeye didn’t learn about anticipating, projecting, and predicting the future in school, just how did he gain his remarkable insights? Ah, dear reader, the answer is so simple that it will blow your mind. Lean a bit more closely now, please, because I am lowering my voice.
This is, like, a secret, like, between you and Hawkeye.
The Obama presidency begins a new chapter in U.S. history.
To begin with, it’s about time that we elected a non-white guy to be the head honcho. White guys have some skills, to be sure, but this is the twenty-second century after all. (Or is it the twentyfirst?
I can never keep this straight.) Better late than not at all, we finally opened the Men’s Club to an outsider. Beyond his race and background, though, Obama brings other much needed qualities to the table.
He is eloquent to beat the band.
I know, after the past eight years, you may be wondering not only why a president needs to be eloquent, but if it’s even possible for this to take place. Prez Bush garbled the language so badly, it wasn’t just his foot that was in his mouth, it was his yard and mile. (Get it?) The only defense that can be offered for Bush’s inarticulate and garbled speech is that it perfectly matched his thinking. How’s that for a defense? So Obama offers us a new chance.
He has already redefined our country in some important ways for everyone globally, and for us as well.
He holds the potential to help us think differently about the role of government and the responsibilities that each of us carries. And he can once again help us feel good about the direction of our country. Mind you, this won’t be easy. Thanks to W and his pack of cronies, Obama inherits the biggest mess we’ve had in decades. Think St. Louis Rams as the U.S. government, and the picture becomes alarmingly clear.
But be optimistic, dear reader. It’s possible that the Rams could be in next year’s Super Bowl and it’s possible that Obama can turn everything around.
The good news is that his odds are better than the Rams. So that’s how I did it.
It wasn’t easy, as you can see. Like most important tasks, seeing into the future requires not just tenacity and focus, but an outof-the box mindset as well. Candidly, if I’d know what all was going to be involved in obtaining this gift, I – I mean, he – might not have pursued it. That’s moot now, though, and the gift is mine; oops, make this his. So buy those stocks and sit back and count on your investments. You heard it here first! And, alas, I see that I’ve run out of column-inches, so I don’t have the space to actually share those predictions with you! I’m sorry but they can wait until next month. Until then, look both ways before crossing the street, buy low and sell high, and pray for the president. Both of them.
Following up from a previous column. Alert readers will recall that I asked who you’d APPOINT to be the president.
This person didn’t need to be elected, didn’t even need to be a politician.
The choice was yours. How’s that for some responsibility! Well, In Your Ear readers are a savvy bunch – go figure – and submitted a list of interesting names to be nominated for Prez.
With appreciation for the contributions, I offer them below. Barack Obama was the most-named person. There was a four-way tie for second place: Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Colin Powell, and Warren Buffett.
Then the rest of these folks were appointed by one person. Former U.S. Senator Jack Danforth NYC Mayor Bloomberg Sister Mary Pat Rives, “whose service to humanity in the form of education, outreach, medicine, and inter-faith would set the example for all the rest of the nation and world” Theodore Roosevelt Paul Newman John F. Kennedy Oprah Winfrey Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! Scott Cowen, the President of Tulane University, “for his work before and after Hurricane Katrina” The Loop’s Joe Edwards. “He has big ideas, is very genial, has an ego is smaller than the Pageant, has managed a successful business, remembers the Cuban Missile Crisis, is optimistic, and is probably a Democrat (in the best sense of the term).
I underline JOE Edwards, not John Edwards.
I can tell that Joe hasn’t had a $400 haircut in his life.” And as an illustration of just how diverse our country and our readership is, someone named Dick Cheney. Honest.
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, February–March 2009.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times2009_02.pdf, printed page(s) 8; PDF page(s) 8.
