CapitalistMarks

2009! End of a forgettable decade!

Posted on 01. Jan, 2010 by scott in general musings

It was the best of years and the worst of years — ahh, 2009 how we will miss ye!

Had we judged the past year on the first quarter alone (at least in terms of stock markets) it was the worst of years.  Had we judged it in terms of million of jobs lost — right up and through November  then it was the worst year ever.  Had we judged it in terms of political progress for the country and the two major parties then it was horrible.  The government’s response to H1N1?  Incompetent.  The first year for our new President — well, judgement is still out on that one.

But, there is much good to remember about 2009.

From the March lows of the stock market until yesterday the S&P has roared back with an impressive 65% increase (the biggest since the Depression).  And even with the terrible first quarter the S&P is up 23.5% for the year — best in the last 6 years.  Job losses are declining rapidly now and will probably start impressive numbers on the upside as early as . . . well, last month.

As for politics we still have the same old knuckleheaded incumbents running our Congress . . . but there is strong evidence that the average joe and josephine are getting fed up so change is in the air.  Then there is H1N1 — maybe our government learned from their awful response (besides it turned out not to be as contagious or as dangerous as originally thought).

More to the point though is an assessment of the past decade.  Surely 2000 to 2009 is at the top of anyone’s list of horrible decades.  One to forget.  The worst I can remember.

The Bush years, with George’s top down ‘never-saw-a-war-he-wouldn’t-fight’  leadership will probably go down as one of the worst Presidential terms ever.  New Orleans will stand as evidence of his unsympathetic style for a hundred years.  Iraq never made sense and American lives are still being sacrificed there.  Afghanistan, the unwillable war, hangs with continuing pallor 8 years after its start.

Stock markets?  Shoot, in the last 10 years the DOW is down10%, the S&P is down 22% and the NASDAQ is down 42%!  That is the first time EVER that these indices have lost money (negative returns) over a single decade.  Fact is, it is the first time EVER that investment in stocks proved to be worse than putting all your money is savings accounts or even under the mattress!

The political side of things in the past decade were dominated by Bush and the republican’s turn from their basic principles to ‘camouflage-the-spending’ as our national debt doubled and then doubled again.  We now owe $12 trillion.

The scary thing is that democrats are now running things with no oversight.  Spending our way out of the recession was a great short-term cure but watch out when the bills come due — tax and spend democrats are in control (and hapless republicans stand on the sidelines griping as they ignore their own responsibilities).

Unemployment rates more than doubled in this last decade from 4% to 10%.  The number of unemployed went from less than 6,000,000 to a record of more than 20,000,000 people who collected unemployment in 2009.

Health insurance costs (here I am just using my own personal insurance costs with the same company I have been paying to insure me for the last 25 years) have gone up by about 400% — I am now paying in excess of $21,000 per year for coverage with a $1,000 deductible and $4,000 per person out of pocket limit.  Who can afford that?  We need health insurance reform folks.

I could go on but it is too depressing.

So let me shine light on the future.

A new decade starts today.  It can’t be any worse that the last decade  and I fully expect it to be a lot better . . . great in fact. There will be opportunities galore for the creative entrepreneur, more jobs for the unemployed, incredible new advancements in energy, technology, medicine, and so many other fields (some that we don’t even know about today).

Americans are a ‘dig-ourselves-out-of-the-hole’ people.  More than any other people in the world.  Sure, we complain a lot, its part of our system.  But we don’t sit and fret.  We get out and do something.  We improve our lives and have every incentive and opportunity to do it.

Americans have stepped up time after time in the past 200+ years.  We will do it again now.

I can’t wait to see what our country and its people will look like in 10 more years.  What the World will look like.

America will be leading just like it has in the past.

So, forget the past decade.  Turn the page and get on with it.

The ‘teens’ are going to be a great decade for America and for the World.

Count on it!

Thanks to flickr’s jwebb202 for the photo

Tags: confidence in America, confidence in American creativity, health insurance reform, medicine, progress, technology, the next decade, the past decade