http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Cramer-Why-Obama-Is-Bad-for-tsmf-
2364771359.html?x=0

Cramer - Why Obama Is Bad for Stocks

ByJim Cramer, RealMoney Columnist , On Thursday June 24, 2010, 11:15 am 
EDT 

I heard it five times this week, twice Tuesday in a Wall Street bar, two 
times during the day chatting with investors and then last night at 
dinner with a pal, an old pro trader from down the block. All said the 
same word, as if programmed, like pod people in Invasion of the Body 
Snatchers. The word? 

Malaise. 

All of the people who used this term were older, friends from the days 
of trading, wizened veterans of other terrible markets and of course, 
people who came of age during the Jimmy Carter years, where the 
unlamented president talked about the malaise in America and how the 
country was going in the wrong direction, coincidentally in large part 
because of failed energy policies that produced gas lines and a lack of 
energy independence. He talked about a dispirited America where people 
for the first time thought that the next five years would be worse than 
the last five years. When you read the speech -- it can be Googled 
simply by typing in "Carter" and "malaise," the speech was that well-
known, and, yes, well-scorned -- it resonates today as if it were given 
by the man in the White House. I am surprised he's not giving it, but he 
knows better: Carter never recovered from it. 

Malaise. The recognition that things are out of control and there is no 
getting better. The recognition that the president and Congress can't 
create jobs and that we can't stop the spill. The recognition that 
things are out of our hands. One true presidential historian/arbitrageur 
invoked the "pitiful helpless giant" speech, a true throwback, a 
miserable speech by Richard Nixon green-lighting the disastrous 
Cambodian incursion in order to defeat the indefatigable and ultimately 
undefeated North Vietnamese. Given our inability to subdue the Taliban, 
though, maybe the analogy's not that off-base. 

It sure feels like we are stuck in a malaise and have been reduced to a 
pitiful helpless giant, hobbled this time by high debt, huge taxes, an 
anti-business agenda that is freezing job growth and an intractable 
economy. 

To me, the coincidences are leading to what you see on your screen -- a 
collective sense of ennui and "it isn't worth it" because things aren't 
getting better, they are getting worse. That's how you get a market that 
interprets everything negatively and people who are fleeing, not going 
toward, even the best of values. 

I do not mean to be political. It's not like the Republicans are 
proposing breakthrough strategies to get things done and break the 
malaise. But I do hear it, especially from people who have come back 
from Asia, where the can-do attitude of the '80s and '90s or even the 
'40s and '50s reigns. 

Malaise. 

Yesterday's rank insubordination by a key general in, of all places, a 
Rolling Stone interview -- ???!!! -- crystallized the moment, didn't it 
(no pun intended). I only heard two things: one that it was right for 
Gen. McChrystal to be fired and two that McChrystal was right for what 
he said. Given that a plurality of my colleagues voted for President 
Obama, the conclusions were pretty grim for what one soul called a 
"failed presidency." 

Look, in this country it is never too late for Obama to reinvent, broom 
the people who have been setting his agenda, tack toward pro-growth, 
although his one attempt to break with the orthodoxy came when he 
embraced offshore drilling -- a luckless failed presidency? 
And I am confident that the spill, if contained, would provide a lift 
and a revaluation of the malaise. However, I am NOT confident that BP 
will be able to contain the spill. So many maddening things being done 
wrong by one company that I think will have to file for bankruptcy 
because of its gross negligence and the sheer size of the claims. I have 
to marvel that the BP public-relations team struck back today with an 
obvious riposte, as I have begun to read stories about how a bankruptcy 
from BP would be a true blow to the U.S. economy because of the role it 
plays in drilling and finding oil. 

Claptrap. A bankruptcy filing is to eliminate the possibility that BP 
would have to be liquidated. It is a peaceful and orderly way to 
transfer the equity to the claimants while the bonds have a chance of 
paying off. 

This isn't short-term. I am not looking at red futures or weak European 
quotes, despite the fact that the situation there no longer seems to 
have systemic risk and by this time I would have thought Greece would 
have been booted from the EU. Seems pretty strong over there, even 
though I think that a slowly weakening euro may be in the cards because 
the leaders over there want to boost exports. 

Nevertheless, I keep coming back to the malaise, where even good news is 
filtered badly: a rising home price obscured by weak sales that should 
be extremely weak because of an expiration of a credit that paid for a 
year's worth of interest or maintenance charges, or whatever it was 
applied to. 

This malaise, like the Carter malaise, starts from the top, although 
Carter's speech was a thinly disguised attempt to blame the American 
people for the malaise and their unwillingness to sacrifice. 

I think it has to end at the top with a recognition from the president 
that jobs have to be created, uncertainty removed, the agenda shelved. 
He obviously has no intention WHATSOEVER of doing that. And I am not 
saying this as someone who favors or is opposed to Obama, I am saying it 
from the litmus I always use: Is something or someone good for stocks or 
bad? 

Obama's bad. 

His administration is proving to be the champion for those who don't own 
stocks and perhaps never will. Or, worse, he thinks that the average 
working person saves in CDs -- is he unaware of the 25-year campaign by 
all to have retirement savings and college tuitions paid for by now-
tattered stock portfolios? 

I point all of this out because when I say this market is going nowhere, 
I think it is going nowhere because of Washington, not corporate 
America, not the public sector, not the private sector. The companies we 
have heard from this week are brimming with cash, with the Jabils 
setting the tone of terrific earnings and the Apples setting the tone of 
worldwide dominance. 

But it hasn't mattered. 

Malaise. 
That's what we are dealing with. You want to put the conversation in 
stark footing? Corporate earnings aren't mattering because P/E's are 
shrinking from the malaise. 

My most Republican of friends didn't stop with Carter and pegged the era 
as most similar to the 1930s, where deflation, not inflation, was the 
problem. I think that's too extreme, but empirically not easily 
dismissed. I just think that no one reading this thinks the next five 
years are going to be better than the last, even though we just 
experienced a hideous stock market decline. 

There's just no sense of any control. 

To dig in your bearish heels, though, is to see the market fall to 9700 
on the Dow and we get some wakeup calls: BP containment, presidential 
recognition that job creation and not cap-and-trade or financial reg or 
amnesty or Card Check -- all part of his pro-union agenda -- can help 
break the malaise and put us back on the right course. 

As my old friend Steve Galbraith, a great stock thinker, wrote in a 
remarkable piece of research for Morgan Stanley, "Look for the union 
label and sell," a commentary on how companies that were union-dominated 
were good sales. GM anyone? 

Well, what happens if the president wants to put the union label on more 
businesses? What happens if he thinks it's right? 

Guess what. He does. 

Which perhaps is ultimately what this market is saying -- look for the 
union label and sell -- because the president's wearing such a label, so 
bizarre given what we know about unions and profits and lack of success 
of the enterprises dominated by them. 

Forget my politics. Forget anyone's politics. The malaise is here. 

And the stock market knows it more than anyone. 

CMPQwk 1.42-21 9999 
Stop the Democrat party oil embargo ....

--- PCBoard (R) v15.3/M 10
 * Origin:  (1:226/600)