Bailout

I will end up liking the poor bastard. George W, I mean. I definitely have some empathy and sympathy watching him struggle under the burden of his 'checks and balances' country, waiting for those morons in the Congress (one of the 3 'checks') to finally 'get it'. I am watching CNBC here in Belgium at 6:00 pm on this Monday afternoon and from time to time they show one or another dinosaur Congressman pitching his opinion on the matter (like the saying goes: opinions are like a-holes; everybody's got one!).

Problem is that average US citizens, especially those who vote Republican, seem to oppose the bailout for all sorts of reasons of which the most important is this: born and raised misinformed, naively libertarian, inadequately educated, manipulated by the media, and kindergarten immature to even have an opinion on the bailout. In the land of democracy and freedom the average Joe is mad that 'his' tax money is about to be pumped into the pockets of the Wall Street wealthy. Get a life!

One thing is sure, there are a number of sly traders who are in the process of earning billions of dollars in short-selling strategies. Let me give you an example of how freaky this market is today. AAPL was trading 23 bucks lower than last Friday. Give me a break. Here's the best managed company in the world with the ultimate fundamentals any company can only wish for. Piles of cash, top branding, massive growth, iPods that make grandmas get horny, personal computers that two-year olds can operate (and doing this with one arm tied behind their back), and more of that... Two monkey analysts came out of the woodwork and downgraded the stock based on the most bullshit rationale that only half-brains can come up with. Nevertheless, the hit was devastating and 'panic' was king. I bought some Jan 09 puts less than two weeks ago at 110 strike for 5.25 bucks a share and it was trading at 17-18 dollars earlier today! Golly!

Right now my predictions about the level of maturity of US Congressmen and their sense of reality was just proven right. Republicans voted down the bailout 2 to 1 against their own administration. Even Democrats voted down in great numbers. I just can't get it. Thank God I am living in Europe. The Fortis case has proven today that one little country like Belgium together with its two neighbors solved over a weekend a case that had not a snowball's chance in hell to be solved by any US congressman ever born. And I thought that it was us who were the monkeys, so called old-fashioned stiff-upper lip Europeans!

On a final note... folks in US, why do you put all these women in high government places? Seen that stupid cow, speaker of the House? And how about all the Democrats who voted against? Ok, Republicans have an ideology problem. But... Democrats? Darn freaktards!!! Gosh, I like Barack Obama more than the other candidate, but, if this bunch of Democrats is about to govern the country... well I don't know... maybe George W. will not go down as the worse President in History... Maybe his Congress will.