Inauguration and a new president

Ah. It's good to know that Bush's reign of terror is over. Was he the worst president we've ever had? That's a tough question, but he is certainly in the running. The past eight years have seen the US sucked into two quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan, a craptastic economy and eroding consumer confidence. We also witnessed the most anti-intellectual period seen since the Dark Ages.

I woke up "early" yesterday to watch the inauguration. Most of it was pomp and circumstance, but I was inspired by Obama's address. He gave a message consistent with his campaign rhetoric and seems to have a good idea of what to fix. I was also pretty stoked when you said we should return science to its rightful place. Amen to that. I don't know if he'll be able to accomplish everything, but I think he'll give it a good shot. I feel much better about voting for him.

If I were president or had the powers to effect change, but I would start up a big public works program. The economy is in the crapper because consumer confidence is shot. There isn't really a shortage of anything and there is money, but it's locked up because banks no longer feel like lending it out. I don't think throwing money at the problem is really the answer and hasn't worked to date. We gave AIG and Citibank a pile of cash and they spent it on parties and retention bonuses. Uh...yeah. You definitely need to retain the financial wizards that thought it was a good idea to give people on welfare $800k mortgages.

The real solution is for the government to spend money, but it has to do it in the right way. Warren Buffett put $5B into GE, but he didn't just give them the money, he got preferred stock, which means he has a significant voting stake. Why the government didn't get seats on the bank boards in exchange for the money is beyond me, but then I remembered that Bush's primary goal was to enrich his friends and other rich folk. He's a modern day Nibor Dooh - robbin' from the poor to give to the rich. Crazy. What's even crazier is that we let him do it. We voted for him twice - well, I didn't, but somebody must've. I have no idea how he won his second term.

Anyhow, the government needs to spend money to stimulate the economy and to generate jobs, but should get something out of it. The best way is to repair our crumbling infrastructure. We need to repair roads, lay down fiber optic cable for true broadband (not 5x faster than dial-up which is barely faster than Alexander Graham Bell's setup) and most importantly fix our power grid. I don't have the numbers, but I know that our grid is inefficient enough to waste many, many megawatts of power. Fixing the grid would create a lot of skilled labor jobs and laying down fiber optic cable would do the same and boost orders for routers and other telecom products.

Hopefully doing all of that would have a trickle-down effect on the rest of the economy.