Is anyone's business affected by politics?

[Jack Arnott]

First off, I want no ranting one way or another about either party, etc., you are free to start your own thread on that.
I am specifically wondering if any of you are impacted business wise by politics. The question comes up because of the recent goings on in Washington.
For me it is more evident in sales than in services. In services, most of my jobs are annual, so things that come and go during the year don't cause too many problems.
The obvious exception is government entities, and their budgets.

But in sales, I had a client two years ago who went out of their way to tell me that they were waiting to see what happened with the debt ceiling "crisis" before they would issue a Purchase Order (PO). I hadn't thought too much about it before that. (I mean I think about politics all the time, and have to deal with religion, and such in my work, but not about waiting to see what would happen with such before making a purchase, or sign a contract.)

The main event was the presidential election last year. I did not sell one thing in the 30 days leading up to the election.
It was weird.

I have one client who calls me, and always asks how business is. And I never know how to respond, because he always means, that day, or that week. And I trend much broader than that.
I can easily go days, or a week without a sale. And I did take a downturn when the economy collapsed in 2008, but it was not a bust. I dropped by percentage points, not factors. And generally speaking, things have always been up, and picked back up after that. It also seemed that my customers who resell experienced the same thing. A slight drop, and then returned to normal, and beyond.

But that month was eerie. Not to start, but by the time we got there, it was obvious. People were only concerned about that one thing, and NOTHING else.

By coincidence, I took a, planned months in advance, vacation the week after. The first few days were no big deal. But suddenly by Thursday the week after, the emails and phone calls were piling up. And I was gone, with one part timer to take care of it all. In the month beforehand, there were recurring sales that happened, but these were on PO's that were issued before the fact.

The kicker was replacement diaphragms for the drivers I sell. I don't sell a lot. A couple a week. Tops. There is the odd times when a rig gets hit by lightning, and I have to overnight a dozen.
But after the election, I had three orders in one day for replacement diaphragms. Not a backlog, from when I was gone, but three sales in one day. This might seem like nothing, but again, this had never happened before. And in hindsight, it was even more eerie that I had not sold a single replacement diaphragm for the entire month. I can see not upgrading, purchasing, etc. more than the not maintaining. But that people were waiting to see what happened before they would buy replacement diaphragms? That was the part that really stood out to me. After the fact.

I have been trying to see if there is any trend on at the moment. But as far as I can tell there is not. Sales business usually picks up after the summer months, for me. And that has been holding true.

Are, or do, any of you have short term fluctuations in sales/services because of political activity?

Inquisitively, Jack

 

[kristianjohnsen]

Re: Is anyone's business affected by politics?

First off, I want no ranting one way or another about either party, etc., you are free to start your own thread on that.
I am specifically wondering if any of you are impacted business wise by politics. The question comes up because of the recent goings on in Washington.
For me it is more evident in sales than in services. In services, most of my jobs are annual, so things that come and go during the year don't cause too many problems.
The obvious exception is government entities, and their budgets.

But in sales, I had a client two years ago who went out of their way to tell me that they were waiting to see what happened with the debt ceiling "crisis" before they would issue a Purchase Order (PO). I hadn't thought too much about it before that. (I mean I think about politics all the time, and have to deal with religion, and such in my work, but not about waiting to see what would happen with such before making a purchase, or sign a contract.)

The main event was the presidential election last year. I did not sell one thing in the 30 days leading up to the election.
It was weird.

I have one client who calls me, and always asks how business is. And I never know how to respond, because he always means, that day, or that week. And I trend much broader than that.
I can easily go days, or a week without a sale. And I did take a downturn when the economy collapsed in 2008, but it was not a bust. I dropped by percentage points, not factors. And generally speaking, things have always been up, and picked back up after that. It also seemed that my customers who resell experienced the same thing. A slight drop, and then returned to normal, and beyond.

But that month was eerie. Not to start, but by the time we got there, it was obvious. People were only concerned about that one thing, and NOTHING else.

By coincidence, I took a, planned months in advance, vacation the week after. The first few days were no big deal. But suddenly by Thursday the week after, the emails and phone calls were piling up. And I was gone, with one part timer to take care of it all. In the month beforehand, there were recurring sales that happened, but these were on PO's that were issued before the fact.

The kicker was replacement diaphragms for the drivers I sell. I don't sell a lot. A couple a week. Tops. There is the odd times when a rig gets hit by lightning, and I have to overnight a dozen.
But after the election, I had three orders in one day for replacement diaphragms. Not a backlog, from when I was gone, but three sales in one day. This might seem like nothing, but again, this had never happened before. And in hindsight, it was even more eerie that I had not sold a single replacement diaphragm for the entire month. I can see not upgrading, purchasing, etc. more than the not maintaining. But that people were waiting to see what happened before they would buy replacement diaphragms? That was the part that really stood out to me. After the fact.

I have been trying to see if there is any trend on at the moment. But as far as I can tell there is not. Sales business usually picks up after the summer months, for me. And that has been holding true.

Are, or do, any of you have short term fluctuations in sales/services because of political activity?

Inquisitively, Jack

Just some observartions from overseas:

We have like 8 parties, but I won't rant about either!

I think you were struck by Murphy's Law,don't overcomplicate it :-/

Activities, especially those serving "narrow arts" will fluctuate with government, but in broad strokes (think cycles of years, not weeks).

The one factor that dictates fluctuations the most seems to be lenght of seasons due to weather, as well as "school holidays". It seems certain entire trades, or Public Offices are entirely "dead" for weeks at a time, for certain periods of the year.

 

[RYAN LOUDMUSIC JENKINS]

Re: Is anyone's business affected by politics?

Short term, no. Long term, yes! We have a lunatic governor here. She became governor when our previous governor took a position with the homeland security department. Our current governor and the state legislature that controls her immediately cut funding for a lot of government programs when she became governor and funding for many local and county programs were affected. In addition, she lied to our state and got the ignorant people of this state to approve a temporary, 1% sales tax increase. At the same time the city of Phoenix put into place a 2% sales tax on food that is still in place. These regressive tax policies and the state cuts immediately affected my business. In the past, about 45-50% of my business was government jobs. Now it's less than 10%.

Politics on the federal level does not seem to affect my business that I can tell. It does affect my sanity quite a bit though.

 

[Jason Raboin]

Re: Is anyone's business affected by politics?

Since my main employer is a political / social justice activist, the crazier things get in the world, the more often I am on a plane headed to an event.

 

[John Roberts]

Re: Is anyone's business affected by politics?

Just for clarity are you asking is anybody's business affected by the practice of politics (competing for office), or what politicians do after elected into office (governance)? I expect the practice of politics generates some sound industry business as the never ending election cycles come around, this would be short term and if anything the more contentious the campaign the more sound services consumed.

The affect of governance on business is more of a long term slow moving influence. I won't rehash my entire case for malfeasance, while there are a few observations worth mentioning;

"Uncertainty"... Business needs to have confidence that they understand future conditions to plan and invest for that future. American exceptionalism, seems to be defined these days as making exceptions to obama-care for interest groups. :-( Even though it hasn't gone fully into effect yet, the private economy has been making adjustments and changes for years in anticipation. The recent trend to convert full time to part time workers is a direct result of this law. etc.

Then there is regulatory uncertainty. The Dodd-Frank legislation that was supposed to fix the too big to fail situation, still does not have the regulations fully fleshed out (maybe 40%) and Volker rule is still not defined, yet alone enforced. Not to mention that Dodd-Frank never even addressed Fannie and Freddie, the gov't run agencies in the middle of the housing collapse, who enabled the easy mortgage re-selling environment. (How long have both Dodd and Frank been retired?)

Housing is bumping along the bottom, it couldn't go down forever, and recently that market has been distorted by groups of investors (hedge funds) buying homes, and some pent up actual home buyers fearful of higher future interest rates, closing now to lock in historically low rates. I am not smart enough to predict the near future for housing but the top line numbers can be confusing due to investor activity distorting the private housing market.

Interest rates... This is another huge one for business. Historically interest rates (actually inter-bank rates set by fed) have been used as a gas pedal to speed up or slow down the economy. Interest rates are better at cooling down an over-heated economy than bringing strength to a weak one. When you drop interest rates to near zero, you can't push the gas pedal any harder (One central band for a small euro zone country actually had a negative inter-bank rate for a few months). Helicopter Ben then expanded the economic support by buying up government bonds, certainly not an arms length transaction, but he succeeded in holding down the interest rates on that debt too... Now remarkably in the middle of that historical experiment in monetary manipulation, they decide that they will replace the Fed chief responsible for assembling this massive market distorting (on purpose) debt position. That is like the Hindenburg dirigible pilot putting on a parachute and bailing out before landing in Lindenhurst, How to unwind this without driving the economy into another deep recession is not trivial or obvious. Just the talk about "tapering" (slowing down the debt buying) causes the market to swoon... So we are changing horses in the middle of this very wide and very deep stream. (What's the worst that could happen?)

As if this isn't enough uncertainty, the attention whores in DC are creating two new fake crisis. First about the continuing resolution to fund the government (they apparently don't do actual spending budgets any more), and almost immediately after that we bump into the debt ceiling again. The debt ceiling is a sham argument, since we are borrowing to meet previous commitments we made in good faith. If they really want to reduce the debt, spend less (or tax more :-( ). That means the CR (budget) discussion has actual substance. Without getting into the political side-show involving Obama-care (a massive entitlement spending commitment) one side favors spending less, the other increasing taxes and spending more. Each side argues that their approach is good for the country, I don't think both can be right. One could argue that this drama is more politics than governance, but they are entwined.

Any businessman with half a clue, is wise to be cautious about hiring and spending in this environment. Because of this thoughtful caution the economy bumps along with weak growth and weak employment. As I have been saying for years, if we keep doing what we are doing, we will keep getting what we are getting, and we are still doing what we have been doing.

The above is my short general answer.... To answer your question about my personal business, I believe I am affected in the margin by the economy softer than it should be, but my personal results are dominated by my personal efforts for better or worse (maybe i should spend less time on the WWW writing long posts).

JR

 

[Brian jojade]

Re: Is anyone's business affected by politics?

As a general rule, consumer spending is higher during election years. Looking back through history, you can see a pretty consistent trend for that. Doesn't matter which party is in power, or who is about to be elected. The reason is, those in power pull out all of the stops in the election year to try and make things look like they are on an upward swing. Some years are much higher than others, but the trend is almost always there. As you lead up nearer the election, you will see more wild fluctuations, but looking at the period of the full year it's consistent.

Business spending tends to take the opposite track of consumer spending. Because of the uncertainty of elections, businesses tend to hold off until they know who's going to be in charge, and the direction that they need to go. The closer the expected results, the more pronounced this ends up being.

Another issue to deal with during elections is advertising. Trying to compete with ads during an election period is like pissing into the wind. While consumer spending may be up, if you didn't plan for it and have your message out before the campaigns took over, it's too late. You won't be able to capitalize on the increased spending.

 

[Justice C. Bigler]

Re: Is anyone's business affected by politics?

I work for a publicly owned, managed, and staffed facility. So yes we are directly affected by politics.

We have had to take pay cuts and furloughs under one mayor. And then massive layoffs once the new mayor came into office (these were only about 6 months apart btw. So the new mayor come into office, and has to show everyone who's the new sheriff in town is and lays off 10 percent of the city work force. We had just hired a new stage electrician not 5 week prior. He got the ax instead of me. Had we not hired him, it would have been my head on the chopping block. That next two years we were in a hiring freeze. We had a brief respite and managed to hire a couple of positions that we been sorely lacking.

Now we are in another hiring freeze because the election is this fall, even though we have a massive budget surplus now. Also the current budget which just started July 1st did not include any sort of cost of living increases (meanwhile the city council voted themselves a pay raise). So we won't get a COL increase until January 2015 at the earliest (and probably not then either). Our last COL increase was January of 2011.

But we have all kinds of money to spend on "energy efficient" stuff, LED and CFL lights, etc...

 

[John Roberts]

Re: Is anyone's business affected by politics?

I work for a publicly owned, managed, and staffed facility. So yes we are directly affected by politics.

We have had to take pay cuts and furloughs under one mayor. And then massive layoffs once the new mayor came into office (these were only about 6 months apart btw. So the new mayor come into office, and has to show everyone who's the new sheriff in town is and lays off 10 percent of the city work force. We had just hired a new stage electrician not 5 week prior. He got the ax instead of me. Had we not hired him, it would have been my head on the chopping block. That next two years we were in a hiring freeze. We had a brief respite and managed to hire a couple of positions that we been sorely lacking.

Now we are in another hiring freeze because the election is this fall, even though we have a massive budget surplus now. Also the current budget which just started July 1st did not include any sort of cost of living increases (meanwhile the city council voted themselves a pay raise). So we won't get a COL increase until January 2015 at the earliest (and probably not then either). Our last COL increase was January of 2011.

But we have all kinds of money to spend on "energy efficient" stuff, LED and CFL lights, etc...

While this is not much consolation you are not suffering from political whimsy but from the larger macro-economic housing bubble and collapse followed by a weak recovery. While some might argue those both have roots in political policies.

State and local governments enjoyed the same faux prosperity as everybody else did while the easy credit fueled housing boom rippled through the entire economy increasing sales and local income tax receipts. A rising tide did lift all boats, but when the tide went out again we could see who wasn't wearing trunks. State governments did not have the luxury of borrowing money to maintain the spending they had become accustomed to before the tax receipts fell off (the Federal govt has borrowed an extra trillion dollars per year the last several years.). So the local governments had to be fiscally responsible and cut spending. This is a little like Greece and some of the other southern european countries when they couldn't borrow any more money a while back, but the state governments here are practical and mostly did what was necessary to keep solvent. Some regions are still really hurting (like Detroit) because of the double whammy of auto industry retracement on top of housing collapse. The low single digit economic growth now means the future will continue getting less painful (I have a hard time calling this getting better) but growth rate will not dramatically improve if we stay this path.

While things like LED and CFL lighting may seem like extravagant spending, budget items like the electricity costs for streetlights are not insignificant so the investment in higher efficiently lamps will pay for themselves in years not decades, unlike some of the federal govt green job spending projects that are a little more feel good than do good.

Of course i could be wrong.

JR

 

[Justice C. Bigler]

Re: Is anyone's business affected by politics?

While this is not much consolation you are not suffering from political whimsy but from the larger macro-economic housing bubble and collapse followed by a weak recovery. While some might argue those both have roots in political policies.

Meh...I think our cuts in had more to do with political whimsy than actual economics. Tulsa, Oklahoma weathered the down turn as well as if not better than pretty much anywhere else in the country.

 

[Jordan Lahr]

Check out the Sioux falls Sioux city area. Housing did diminish but we have lots of jobs and one of the lowest unemployed rates in the country. I've personally expanded my business and know several others who have done the same in my area... Both private and public

 

[John Roberts]

Re: Is anyone's business affected by politics?

Check out the Sioux falls Sioux city area. Housing did diminish but we have lots of jobs and one of the lowest unemployed rates in the country. I've personally expanded my business and know several others who have done the same in my area... Both private and public

Many jobs are courtesy of the Bakken shale formation. But even without new energy development some states are doing better than others.

@Justice... Sorry I can't know your personal situation. Across the country most states have lower tax revenues than they did a few years ago, so reduced state level spending is a broad trend.

JR

 

[Tim McCulloch]

Re: Is anyone's business affected by politics?

@Justice... Sorry I can't know your personal situation. Across the country most states have lower tax revenues than they did a few years ago, so reduced state level spending is a broad trend.

JR

There are town and cities in Oklahoma that haven't fared nearly as well as Tulsa or OKC. The smaller or more rural they are, the worse off they were. Energy exploration and extraction has improved the lot of parts of rural Oklahoma, much like in the Bakken.

The situation Justice is pointing out is driven by political thinking and emotional responses to perceived (but not necessarily real) problems.

In the sense that Jack is talking about... there are 2 types of business owners: those that use accounting and statistics and those that rely more on emotion. Typically the former do better than the latter, but even big stock market moves can be traced to emotional responses to arbitrary changes in the daily news. We've "evolved" to the point where we react to any unknown by devaluing some things and then over-value others. Some are justifiably based in history and others purely on speculation.

In general, operating in a 'fear the unknown' mode results in necessities costing more and discretionary things costing less.

Interestingly, our business is up and depends mostly upon the discretionary spending of the public.

 

[Jack Arnott]

Re: Is anyone's business affected by politics?

I guess I should have been more specific, late night posting and all. But yeah, meant in very short term. And more about political events, rather than policy.
Generally speaking political policy will drive everything.

Just for clarity are you asking is anybody's business affected by the practice of politics (competing for office), or what politicians do after elected into office (governance)?
......
Any businessman with half a clue, is wise to be cautious about hiring and spending in this environment.

JR

I hate the terms, "this economic climate", and "in these uncertain times".
But if you take the last three words off that sentence, it well sums up my business model. Long term, not now.

Thanks Brian Jojade, most compelling answer so far. Didn't know that about spending.
In my instance, I sell to both consumers and business' so that makes it even weirder.
Also, a bit of a push me pull you. If consumers are trying to spend, and business' are trying to wait and see.......

But this brings up another instance that I read about in 2009. Many ammo manufacturers laid off workers after the 2008 election.
Worried that their business would implode under the new guy. Of course we all know the opposite was true, but it took a while for these manufacturers to get back up to speed. What with no work force.

As to the advertising, last years presidential election certainly felt like one big "look a squirrel" moment. Seems it would have been hard to capture their attention with anything else.
And then people got back to their lives and work.

Meh...I think our cuts in had more to do with political whimsy than actual economics.

Unfortunately I think this has been quite prevalent. Both politically and business model wise. (See ammo example.)
I also suspect that in this case a lot of the fear is racially driven, not just political. Some business' here have closed just out of spite.
And like you, we are not particularly hard hit. Housing bubble, yes (Now subsiding, getting harder to find contractors.) (Just ask me). Job loss, no. Other than fore mentioned business' that closed not due to business.

If anyone has tales of losing sales or gigs due to this "Greeen Eggs & Ham" moment, let me know.
Here it seems to be business as usual. But in such a short term, it's hard to tell.
That 30 days was telling. This 7 days is.... hard to say.

Regards, Jack

 

[Scott Helmke]

Re: Is anyone's business affected by politics?

We're getting pretty far afield in political theory here.

My own guess about the original question was that all those sound companies were too busy on political events to keep up with their maintenance. After the election, when half the customer base suddenly disappeared, they had time to start fixing stuff.

 

[John Roberts]

Re: Is anyone's business affected by politics?

The situation Justice is pointing out is driven by political thinking and emotional responses to perceived (but not necessarily real) problems.

Not sure I follow but that is OK.

In the sense that Jack is talking about... there are 2 types of business owners: those that use accounting and statistics and those that rely more on emotion.

Small business owners often shift into an accounting mode when they have to cover payroll. While checkbook accounting is cash flow not profit and loss. Over time even cash flow positive businesses must deal with lack of profits.

Typically the former do better than the latter, but even big stock market moves can be traced to emotional responses to arbitrary changes in the daily news.

Indeed short term stock market moves are news driven... One recent news driven market move is testing the speed of light (electricity). Trades in Chicago in response to news released in Washington DC, occurred before the news could have traveled that distance, at the speed of light. The stock market is generally discounting prices based on future earnings or in some cases momentum driven future stock price expectations. In the macro stock prices are very sensitive to fed moves these days, because of the "Bernanke Bid" a strategy of the fed to prevent deflation (like japan suffered in the '90s) by creating a positive bias lifting all hard asset prices. The fed's effort is seen in the stock market and home prices that have been lifted by this positive bias supporting them. The uncertainty now, is how quickly will the fed remove this asset price support. Just talking about fed tapering caused interest rates to spike up and markets to sag, based on expectations of how the future would be without the artificial support.

We've "evolved" to the point where we react to any unknown by devaluing some things and then over-value others. Some are justifiably based in history and others purely on speculation.

Any decisions about the future are always speculation. Looking back at the last several years does not paint a very clear picture (for me) of how the next few will go. While major changes are just now going into effect (healthcare).

In general, operating in a 'fear the unknown' mode results in necessities costing more and discretionary things costing less.

It is good practice to understand and respect what you don't know. Being overly conservative in business planning often trades off potential growth, in exchange for being better able to survive future challenges. If we look back at the big three car companies just before the auto industry collapse, Ford had just finished a huge round of re-capitalization, beefing up their balance sheet, while GM and Chrysler were running pretty extended. In hindsight Ford looks like geniuses, while i suspect it was mostly luck and timing. Had the auto industry contraction not happened, the situation could have turned out differently. (It looks like Chrysler may float another IPO. Anyone willing to bet that they can't go bankrupt a third time? Apparently yes. ).

Interestingly, our business is up and depends mostly upon the discretionary spending of the public.

We tend to exaggerate the state of the economy. Even with 10% unemployment, that means 9 out of 10 have jobs. Of course it could always be better, especially for those who actually want to work and can't find gainful employment. As the old joke goes a recession is if you neighbor is out of work, a depressions is when you are out of work. (I do not mean to make light of unemployment.)

JR

 

[Jack Arnott]

Re: Is anyone's business affected by politics?

The situation Justice is pointing out is driven by political thinking and emotional responses to perceived (but not necessarily real) problems.

This would have made a much better title to the thread,
"Is your business affected by political emotion, sort term, not political policy?"

We're getting pretty far afield in political theory here.

My own guess about the original question was that all those sound companies were too busy on political events to keep up with their maintenance. After the election, when half the customer base suddenly disappeared, they had time to start fixing stuff.

There are several things wrong with this theory.

1) The main one being that you assume because of this forum and your experience, that most of my business is with sound companies. I assumed the same as I was getting going. But as it turns out, sound companies are the smallest segment of my business.

2) No one that I know has lost or gained this much market share based on one election. More to the point, the incumbent won, so to be pedantic, you would have to assume that their market shares stayed the same. Not switched positions.

3) One of my premises was that sales were affected more than services. If there are instances of anyone losing (or gaining) gigs, especially in the two weeks after the election, on such short notice, simply bases on election results, I would sure like to hear them. That would really feed into the narrative of this story.

Regards, Jack

 

[John Roberts]

Re: Is anyone's business affected by politics?

I guess I should have been more specific, late night posting and all. But yeah, meant in very short term. And more about political events, rather than policy.
Generally speaking political policy will drive everything.



I hate the terms, "this economic climate", and "in these uncertain times".
But if you take the last three words off that sentence, it well sums up my business model. Long term, not now.

yup...

Thanks Brian Jojade, most compelling answer so far. Didn't know that about spending.
In my instance, I sell to both consumers and business' so that makes it even weirder.
Also, a bit of a push me pull you. If consumers are trying to spend, and business' are trying to wait and see.......

But this brings up another instance that I read about in 2009. Many ammo manufacturers laid off workers after the 2008 election.
Worried that their business would implode under the new guy. Of course we all know the opposite was true, but it took a while for these manufacturers to get back up to speed. What with no work force.

I hadn't heard that story... There was a big bump in gun sales when Clinton was elected, and similar when Obama won. Ammo industry in general is taking a hit from withdrawal from middle east, military modernization, and from sequester that cut defense spending some 10% (while active military stuff is exempt.) I recall some news about the AR-15 maker selling the business after the handful of high profile tragic events involving it.

As to the advertising, last years presidential election certainly felt like one big "look a squirrel" moment. Seems it would have been hard to capture their attention with anything else.
And then people got back to their lives and work.

One thing I need to get a better handle on is how much money the government spends on advertising all year long. It seems I am always seeing ads promoting sundry government programs. I don't recall the government being that big of an advertiser in the past.

Unfortunately I think this has been quite prevalent. Both politically and business model wise. (See ammo example.)
I also suspect that in this case a lot of the fear is racially driven, not just political. Some business' here have closed just out of spite.

I'll show you, I'll stop making money just to spite you...

I am concerned about how much racial animus is stirred up by media and some individuals/groups that draw energy from the conflict. It often seems more about staying in the spot light that being constructive.

And like you, we are not particularly hard hit. Housing bubble, yes (Now subsiding, getting harder to find contractors.) (Just ask me). Job loss, no. Other than fore mentioned business' that closed not due to business.

Housing recovery is uneven... After being just about shuttered for several years, now they are having trouble finding skilled workers to expand quickly. That's OK we don't need another bubble, and some wage inflation won't hurt for a change.

If anyone has tales of losing sales or gigs due to this "Greeen Eggs & Ham" moment, let me know.
Here it seems to be business as usual. But in such a short term, it's hard to tell.
That 30 days was telling. This 7 days is.... hard to say.

Regards, Jack

Right now is when mass merchants must lock in their orders for Christmas season. Market moving rumors about Walmart trimming back on Christmas orders (which Walmart denied). The Market moving Fed surprise last week was that Bernanke did "not" taper his debt buying accommodation like he had telegraphed to the market that he would. This clearly suggests that the Fed see's weakness ahead that they didn't see several weeks ago. Perhaps some of that weakness is related to congressional brinksmanship games played out over budget and debt limits. We are technically in an economic expansion but this recovery is fragile enough that the fed is being cautious.

"Dr. Suess"? I wouldn't read too much into Ted Cruz's filibuster-lite. He saw Obama streak through the senate on his way to the white house so figures why not him? Unfortunately he is wasting precious time that the house could use to respond to the senate version of the CR, before we run out of time and money. Nobody wants to shut down the government, and one politician grandstanding is bad form. I'm sure the political harpies will have him for dinner tonight.

JR

 

[Randy Gartner]

Re: Is anyone's business affected by politics?

The OP asked the question has politics affected my business? I would have to say yes. In my opinon,the economy hasn't taken off because of failed policies and increased regulations. We have less jobs than we did 5 years ago and those people with jobs are very caustious with their spending.The regulations have increased costs which makes it more expensive to build or remodel a home or business. I have been in business 26 years and the past 5 have been the worst.I do electrical work in addition to live sound and sound system installation.The sound installation sector has been hit the worst.Live sound has been pretty steady since I do alot of fairs.The electrical sector has been really up and down. The first 3 months of this year it went like this: 2 weeks busy,2 weeks almost nothing.Then I hit a period where for six weeks I was working 8 or 9 hours a week.Then the middle of May it picked up and was steady untill the beginning of August,then slowed up for about a month.Now I am steady again. It's been like that for 5 years.I have been ok because my home is paid off,my shop is paid off and I inherited a little money.I feel sorry for those who have a mortguage and lost their job,or their house is under water or can't get a mortguage because the economy is still slugish or because new regulations have made lending tighter.

 

[Randy Gartner]

Re: Is anyone's business affected by politics?

Hey JR,I find your comments on Cruz interesting.When Obama was a Senator,he voted against rasing the debt ceiling.Here's what he said about it at the time: The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.” …….. Senator Barack Obama

 

[John Roberts]

Re: Is anyone's business affected by politics?

Hey JR,I find your comments on Cruz interesting.When Obama was a Senator,he voted against rasing the debt ceiling.Here's what he said about it at the time: The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.” …….. Senator Barack Obama

Yup, old news. I've said this before with politicians it's a little like guarding a shifty player in basketball, you ignore the exaggerated head fakes and look at his feet to see which way he is really moving. So ignore the politician's words (they do). Words are like the head fakes in basketball, look at their feet or what they actually do (or don't do). One recent example is Syria, the words sounded like we were going to bomb Assad, or "pin prick" Assad, whatever that means. But looking at his feet it appears we are carrying water for Putin

I am a little disappointed that politicians are not perpetually haunted by all the speeches they make, full of contradictory claims and promises. In this age of internet and wall to wall cell phone video the data is out there, but people don't seem to care or have the attention span to grasp more than very short pre-digested sound bites. I can't watch the speeches or press conferences any more, I catch myself yelling back at the TV set...

Cruz made a political miscalculation by reading Dr. Seuss on the floor of the Senate, so that will haunt him. He probably should have read Ulysses Shrugged or something more weighty. If he had more time to kill he could have tried to read the entire health care bill from cover to cover. If he did he'd probably be the only legislator who actually read the whole thing. He had to know that his detractors would be watching and waiting hours to catch him picking his nose or doing anything that could be held up to ridicule (like drinking water during a debate). That's politics, not a kind sport, and not for wimps.

As I've said before the debt limit is kind of a faux crisis... We are never going to default on our commitments, but in hardball politics it becomes a convenient pressure point to squeeze to try to get concessions from the other side. Unfortunately the other side is equally skilled at working this game, and they have most of the media in their pocket to help paint the picture that one side is obstructionist and trying to shut down the government. This is just negotiation and for any party in this negotiation to say that they do not negotiate, ignores that our government is founded on the principle of shared or separation of powers between the three different branches. No one branch can run roughshod over the other two.

I wish the average citizen understood more about how the system works so they could see through the nonsense.

Of course I may be wrong.

JR

PS: I recall years ago watching the junior senator from illinois get a special invite to a committee hearing on Iraq when Gen Petraeus was back in DC to report to congress on the status of forces in Iraq. It was embarrassing to hear the snarky questions engineered to generate a 15 second sound bite for the 6 o'clock news, that he threw at this soldier a true hero. But for the junior senator it was just another media opportunity to mine to get his face in front of the public and build his back story. We don't need a republican Obama, but i understand the attraction to a young politician on the fast track. Kind of like instant grits.