Sox First

© art_es_anna

Analysts say the stock market is telling us that Obama should be writing his inauguration address now.

In a recent paper, Social Mood, Stock Market Performance and U.S. Presidential Elections: A Socionomic Perspective on Voting Results, Robert R Prechter from the Socioeconomics Institute in Georgia studied every presidential re-election campaign in US history back to George Washington's successful bid of 1792 and found that incumbents who served during periods of rising stock prices typically do better in the elections than those who served during periods of falling stock prices.

The Dow Jones industrial average has soared 62 per cent since President Barack Obama took the oath of office during some of the darkest days of the Great Recession. Check the record and you will find the Dow was just below 8,000 then. It stands near 13,000 today.

Commentator Bison Messink draws parallels with the way Reagan creamed Mondale in 1984. Sure the economy was in bad shape under Reagan but America had pulled out of a recession and Reagan exploited that. "But speaking of Ronald Reagan, we tend to forget that the American economy was a disaster for most of his first term. When the country came out of the recession prior to the 1984 election, Reagan was able to blame the problems on Jimmy Carter and take credit for the turnaround. Walter Mondale – Carter's Vice President – won the Democratic nomination over a field so weak that his top rival was done in with a rather lame debate quip: Where's the beef?, and was then slaughtered by Reagan in the general election. We won't any time soon see a Presidential candidate carry 49 of 50 states like Reagan did in '84 – we're too Red & Blue for that now – but if the 2012 economy picks up, the anti-Obama message of the right won't gain a foothold, and Barack gets to claim economic victory while indicting Republican policies. He'd win in a landslide."

© dullhunk

At last the Germans have made it clear what they want to do to Greece. They want to turn it into a dictatorship run by technocrats. That's come from no-one less than German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble who has suggested Greece delay elections planned for April. Instead, he has suggested it adopt a technocrat government free of politicians.

As reported here, Schauble does not see this new Greek technocrat government containing Greek politicians.

Writing in the Financial Times, Wolfgang Münchau says Greece must default if it wants democracy. "It is one thing for creditors to interfere in the management of a recipient country's policies. It is another to tell them to suspend elections or to put in policies that insulate the government from the outcome of democratic processes."

The only solution, he says, is to establish a United States of Europe, with one Federal government in charge of interest rates and taxes and all the Eurozone members working as states. "The situation highlights the political vulnerability of the current eurozone rescue strategy. Let us set economic arguments aside for once, and consider the politics. Anybody calling for an increase in the rescue package should remember that solidarity between governments is close to being exhausted. This has happened even before a single cent has crossed a border. It is also the strongest argument for a fiscal union. If you want to shift hundreds of billions of euros around, you simply cannot do this on an inter-government basis, where Germany, the Netherlands and Finland pay for Greece, Portugal and Ireland. For that, you need a federal system. You need it not for reasons of economic efficiency but to prevent a Germany-versus-Greece type conflict. If a fiscal union turns out to be politically unacceptable then we simply have to admit that a transfer insurance system cannot and will not happen."

© therapycatguardian

The law will have to redefine piracy. According to a new Columbia University study, reported here, 70 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds said they had bought, copied or downloaded unauthorized music, TV shows or movies, compared with 46 percent of all adults who'd done the same. As the piece suggests, what if young people who steal content weren't viewed as the problem? Why not persuade the entertainment industry to loosen its tight grip on its coveted, copyrighted material ?

Significantly, the study found that young people didn't expect to get the stuff for free. They were prepared to pay for it. iTunes was cited as a good model.

Indeed according to another study, researchers at the University of Minnesota and Wellesley College who examined box office history found that piracy has never affected Hollywood's revenues. In fact, what they found was that after BitTorrent file-sharing software started appearing online in the early 2000s, it had no effect – none whatsoever – on domestic receipts. They found that only seven per cent of movie fans turned to file sharing as a solution, suggesting that most of us are law-abiding citizens who respect intellectual property.

All this helps explain why the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, which was put on hold was so wrong to start with. There has to be a better and more innovative solution.