Obama is having a prime time half hour advertisment over the major networks tommorrow night. I don't think this is a good idea. He is ahead in the polls and spending all these money and causing schedule changes on the networks may not sit well with some voters. Most people have already decided whom they are going to vote for. You are trying to reach the few percent who are undecided. These independents, I think, will not like this show of overwhelming money advantage Obama has over McCain. This is like a team with a touchdown lead and under two minutes to go. Just grind it out with the ground game and run out the clock. A long pass may result in a bigger win but risk a momentum turning interception.

Obama would be better off using his war chest on continuing to air commercials specially for the toss-up states. I think this will win more independent votes in the swing states than a national ad of half hour. I think Obama is still going to win but this may cost him couple of percents instead of putting the game out of reach.

First there was Joe Six Pack and now there is Joe the Plumber. Never mind that his first name is not really Joe and he is not a licensed plumber. The way McCain and Obama were using this Joe's name I think there may be more use of other Joes before the election.

McCain has used another Joe before: Joe Lieberman. He can rename him Joe Independent and take him along to rallies.

I know smoking is politically incorrect now a days but with the use of Joes by the Republicans, Obama may start smoking again and try to look cool and act like Joe Camel.

Bill Clinton claims that he will be out on the trail for Obama. With his history of womanizing and now living in New York, I would not be surprised if he claims to be Broadway Joe.

Obama will try to use his youth as an advantage against McCain by claiming that he is Joe Athlete.

McCain who cannot be an athlete himself at his age, will sing the Simon and Garfunkle song "Mrs. Robinson" which has the following lyric: Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio, a country turns its lonely eyes to you. This may help with old people like me.

Both candidates will seek out Joe Montana to help with a certain state bordering Cannada.

Both candidates will pretend to be Average Joe even though they are not. That may backfire as we already have an Average Joe in the White House right now.

Starbuck will be going out of business and both candidates will say it is an outrage that we cannot afford a cup of Joe.

In an effort to get the Hispanic vote one of the candidate will use the following tactics:
1. Accuse the other being so blind to reality that he called him the Jose Feliciano of politics.
2. Exclaimed "no way Jose" when informed of the opponent's economic plans.
3. Claims that his opponent is so lost that he does not know the way to San Jose.

When finally the election is over, one of the candidate will be informed by someone that he had lost. The losing candidate will say sadly: Say it ain't so, Joe.

Paul Krugman wins the Nobel Prize. So since 2000 an American has won or share the Nobel Prize for economics every year. So with all these great minds, why is our economy in such trouble? Maybe economics is not a science at all. It certainly is not an exact science like chemistry and physics. Despite the smart people at places like MIT who build all these mathematical models to predict the direction of the financial world, we are still in the Dark Ages when it comes to economics.

To begin with I think the whole financial system is a reverse Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi scheme depends on the confidence of the people at the bottom that someone else will come along and pay them eventually. Our financial system begins with the Central banks of each country printing out money, not backed by anything valuable like gold usually. The largest banks get the money and loans them out to the smaller banks who loans to other banks and businesses. This eventually trickles down to the peasants who work for a living. People are supposed to pay taxes which gets back to the Central banks. But if things breakdown along the way the Central banks have to intervene, like they are doing throughout the world right now. Of course the government will usually run a deficit under normal conditions. But in a situation we are in now the deficit is going to be much worse. It is only the confidence of the people at the middle and bottom that the government will solve problems that the whole system will work. I am not an economist but this seems like a reverse Ponzi scheme to me and eventually it will fall apart. It won't fall apart during this crisis but who knows in the future?

Another reason not to trust economics is because it is heavily influenced by politics. There are liberal and conservative economists whose views are tremendously different. Chemists and physicsts may be liberals or conservatives but when they run an experiement the results will be the same. In economics this is different. Krugman, for example, is very liberal and he attacks the Bush policy every chance he gets. But the liberals have not come out with anything that is impressive in trying to get us out of this crisis. Obama, for example, has the same idea as McCain of allowing people to take some money out of their pension or IRA without penalty. This does not seem like a good idea to me as this will weaken the stock market as more people will cash out. These people will have to sell more shares as the price of each share is much lower than before. This will hurt them in the long run. As I said before, the best the president can do is inspire more confidence. He will not have any great idesa. Whoever he is.

Congress passed a worse bailout bill one week after rejecting the original. It passed after another $100 billion of pork was added. I am not a supporter of this bailout but I can understand why it was proposed--try to inject confidence by doing something. But if you voted against it in the first place why would you vote for it when the additions made it a worse bill? Some citizens may have changed their mind when they realized the effect of the crisis on their investments. Some people may have been faked out by the change of the word bailout to rescue. But isn't it the role of the Congressman to sort out the right or wrong of a bill regardless of political pressure at home? Some may have been persuaded by the pork going to his district and some may have been persuaded by the change in pressure from his constituents. But in any case, anyone who changed from a no to a yes vote should not have been a Congressman in the first place.

I thought the vp debate was poor. Gwen Iffle didn't do a good job because she was afraid that people are going to say she is biased toward Obama. She didn't ask any follow-up questions. This made it easy for Palin to say whatever she wanted without answering the question in the first place. With 3 days to prepare and no follow-ups to trip her, it is no wonder that Palin did all right. I don't think the Joe 6 pack comment helped her as most people are tired of the current Joe 6 pack in the White House. There was no change in the dynamic of the race as a result of this debate.

I had suggested couple of blogs ago that Obama and McCain should act like FDR and reassure the American people even though they had no good ideas to solve the crisis. FDR did not endorse Hoover's desperate program toward the end of Hoover's term. He knew that the people had no confidence in Hoover's programs. So he created his own program. With Obama in the lead I can see why he would not propose anything new on his own but keep on blaming Bush, just to try to run out the clock. McCain, however, should have tried FDR's approach which is to denounce the bailout and offer something radical of his own. By voting the same as Obama McCain has not distinguished himself. Instead of bailout he should call for creating a jobs program to repair the infrastructure as FDR did. So money would go to the states to create jobs instead of to the banks. This may not pass but it would at least show that McCain is a mavrick like he claims. Now he is no different than Obama but is tied to the Bush administration.