Warren Buffet, Angry Egypt, And Tax Increases – Wingin’ It Wednesday

Today on ”Wingin’ It Wednesday”, our panelists Carol Ross, Warren Caudle, and Mike Stagg joined “Mornings With Ken and Bernie” to discuss rising tensions in the Middle East as well as some good old fashioned fiscal politics.

Here’s what the panel had to say:

1. Warren Buffet says Jamie Dimon would be a perfect replacement for Timothy Geithner as Secretary of the Treasury.  What are your thoughts on his recommendation?

Carol Ross started us off:

The interesting things is why buffet thinks he'd be a good person for it, because he's use to dealing with fiscal mismanagement. Actually he didn't say it quite that way, but that's what he meant because after all Jamie Dimon was able to survive and prosper through his company JP Morgan/Chase's 6 billion dollar trading loss. And Buffet thinks that shows Dimon knows how to handle really bad situations and fiscal mismanagement.

He also knows about the US treasury department because he oversaw the transfer 25 billion from the US Treasury to his bank under TARP, even though it was widely reported that JP Morgan/Chase was in better shape than most banks and didn't need the money.

Warren Caudle added:

First of all, to call President Obama "anti-Wall Street" is really a stretch of the imagination.

One thing I will say about Dimon is that he comes out of the real world. He's not a college professor and he's not a professor from Harvard. He did get an MBA from Harvard, but he's not a professor. I'm so sick and tired of these economist that teach at Harvard that have all these answers to the questions and just totally screw things up.

 

Mike Stagg countered:

I don't think there's a chance in hell he becomes Treasurer. He was part of the whining crowd. Dimon was leading the chorus of the Wall Street crowd who were complaining about the restrictions that were being placed on them.

I think the best names I've seen float around is Shelia Bair who used to be the head of the FDIC. She basically ran the FDIC through the banking crisis. She wasn't popular with the Wall Street crowd and wasn't particularly popular with Geithner because of her policies.

 

2. Egypt's Morsi hasn't heard from President Obama since Morsi declared himself and the two legislative bodies dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood to be above the reach of the nation's judicial branch.  Do you think President Obama is trying to distance his administration from Morsi even though he helped negotiate the truce between Israel and Hamas.

Warren Began:

I don't know that Egypt has this long history of having benevolent people in charge, generally whoever is the most ruthless gets to be in power and get's to stay in power.

What are we supposed to do now? Go back in there and start killing people? I think not.

We're going to play some kind of roll in this thing behind the scenes, not sure what that roll will be, but I know whatever ill we play it's going to come back and bite us.

Mike countered:

The franchise has a new face on it, but the operating model is the same.

They are the largest Arab nation in terms of population and they border Gaza. They will have to do with what happens over there regardless of who's running it.

I think the fact the President hasn't called over there in a couple of weeks isn't a big deal. They have a cease fire that seems to be holding and probably will until the Israeli elections. The President is not running Egypt so there's no reason to be meddling in the internal affairs there on a regular basis which seems to be our problem to begin with.

Egypt is Egypt, Morsi is in charge, he helped negotiate a cease fire, good for him.

Carol commented:

Like the old song, It's beginning to look a lot like Carter. Carter had his Ayatollah and Obama now has Morsi.

Obama and Clinton are one day praising Morsi for helping to broker the truce and the very next day he trashes the judges as he already did with the military. Morsi waited long enough to wait for the ink to dry on that 4.8 billion dollar loan from the IMF. That was what it was all about, the Benjamins. By the way, still pending is a billion dollar debt forgiveness from the Obama administration.

I would say it's a little late for distancing anyone for anybody. What egg on their faces for praising this guy. He's a thug.

3. A growing number, now five in the Senate and one in the House have said they would violate the pledge not to raise taxes, so long at Democrats agree to changes in entitlement programs.  Do you think this is the beginning of compromise or a complete sell-out of principle?

Mike began:

Principle? Come on. There's no principle here.

First of all I reject the notion that there's a fiscal cliff. There is no fiscal cliff. The Bush tax cuts will end, that will be okay, but a miracle will happen; on January second all the Republicans will be able to come back in and reinstate the tax cuts for everybody but the top 2 percent, so they will not have voted for a tax increase for anybody.

Second, Social Security and Medicare are not entitlements. You pay in and you get back, that's not an entitlement program. It's something you paid for.

Carol countered:

By the way, what are the Republicans caving in to? The President really has not put forth a plan other than the usual canard of "tax the rich, tax the rich, tax the rich".

Even if you took all the money from the rich it's not going to solve the fiscal problems that we have because they have spent like drunken sailors.

The bottom line is you're going to get blamed, so grow some you know whats and stick to your pledge.

Warren commented:

I'd say that all of this - if it wasn't so serious it would make a good Marx Brothers movie.

Michael Mills came up with this idea to grow companies through debt. He literally made billions of dollars and revolutionized business in this country. Congress look at that and said, "That's a hell of an idea, why don't we just sale bonds and we can grow government".

But nobody wants to pay taxes, so we'll just sell bonds. It's a borrow and spend policy. This deal everybody is in on the gig. On one hand there are people getting something for nothing on the welfare side. On the other hand you get people getting something for nothing in the million dollar contracts, commissions for building projects. Everybody is in on this gig. None of them in Washington want to change it.

Now it’s your turn to tell us what you think about today’s Wingin’ It Wednesday topics. Who got it right, who got it wrong, and who was way off? Let us know in the comment section.