Did anyone realize it’s 2009!?! A short look back at the first decade of the 21st century.

Happy 2009!

The year is now 2009! Just ten years ago, the country was at the height of the dot com era. I was in my last year of my undergraduate years and very eager to graduate and join the exciting dot com workforce. It seemed like paradise at the time. I remember getting about ten job interviews and declining several others. I remember the offers that came in from startup companies to established corporations. I also remember gasoline in Pittsburgh being around 90 cents because it was the only semester I had a car with me. The only thing that scared people in 1999? The Y2K problem. I also remember people being relieved that the Clinton presidency was coming to an end because of the Lewinsky embarrassment. That was ten years ago…

Now it’s 2009. A lot has happened the past ten years; the first decade of the 21st century. The decade that I grew up, age wise, at least. It is a different country now. A more sober country. A battle-tested country and a depressed and pessimistic country. Although most people heaved a sigh of relief when the Y2K problem never materialized, it wasn’t long before the country would begin a string of events that has led to the current depressed state. 9/11 occurred. The dot com bubble busted. The telecom industry collapsed. The Afghanistan War began. The Patriot Act was passed. The country went into and out of a recession. The Iraq War began. The energy crisis began. Hurricane Katrina happened. The housing bubble inflated and popped. The credit bubble inflated and popped. The country went into another recession. And not to mention the Yankees haven’t won a World Series since 2000. It has been a very trying decade.

However, the country and myself are in the same situation as we were ten years ago. I will be finishing my studies and looking to enter the workforce once again. The country is full of hope again that a new presidency can bring much needed change. Although the hope and environment are different this time around, we must draw strength from what we have endured and learned in the past ten years. Personally, I am a much more patient, practical and, believe it or not, optimistic person than I was ten years ago. Although I was more energetic and sharper back in my early twenties, the experiences I have gone through in my twenties has made me a much more balanced person that cherishes even the simple things in life. I believe this country is similarly in the same state. During the dot com era, the country seemed to move about with reckless abandon, as if the paradise would last forever. Now after ten years of hardship, the country must learn from these experiences and come together as one country to come out of this recession stronger and more optimistic.We have to because we have plenty more challenges to face in the second decade of this century.

I am excited at what the last year of the first decade of the 21st century brings.  I am excited at the future of America. The 2008 elections were one of the most exciting ever and to see Americans rise up and meet the challenge was very refreshing. 2009 marks the end of an era and the beginning of another, for this country and for myself…

Happy new year!

Opinion: It’s time for Dick Cheney to just leave quietly

The VP and P

Another story from the arrogance and incompetence of the Bush administration. Today, Vice President Dick Cheney was quoted in an AP interview,

In an interview with The Associated Press, Cheney also said that Bush has no need to apologize for not foreseeing the economic crisis.

“I don’t think he needs to apologize. I think what he needed to do is take bold, aggressive action and he has,” Cheney said. “I don’t think anybody saw it coming.”

The last part is what really got me mad. A LOT, and I mean A LOT of people saw this economic crisis coming. Let’s take a quick look at some of the groups of people that saw this coming:

1. Gold bugs – Gold investors have been preparing for this economic crisis since the crash of the dot com era. Gold has steadily risen from the mid $200s/oz to a high of $1000/oz, and now at ~$850/oz today.

2. Currency investors – The euro to dollar ratio was at 0.85 at the beginning of the dot-com crash in 2001. Since then it has flipped and risen so quickly to 1.60 in early 2008. Most people familiar with the dollar index, fiat currencies and supply/demand saw this as a huge omen of future economic turmoil. It was only a matter of when.

3. Housing investors – The term housing bubble was surmised to be occurring well before the height of the housing bubble. Many people burned by the dot-com era and became fiscally responsible saw the non-stop rise in housing prices as a major deja vu.

4. Economists – There have been so many books written on this exact economic crisis in the past ten years, of which two have been reviewed on this blog (Crash Proof, The Coming Economic Collapse). Anyone who has read one of these books realized that the American economic system has been living on borrowed time and money.

5. Historians – History comes in cycles because the leaders don’t learn from history. The Iraq War and the recession afterwards first played in the first Bush administration. Instead of learning from it, the younger Bush repeated the exact same historical events.

6. Most sane people – I saw this economic crisis coming a few years ago when I started reading about the US economic system. A lot of my friends saw it coming. A lot of people knew that we only got out of the tiny recession after the dot-com crash and 9/11 because Greenspan and the Feds loosened the credit spigot and money-printing machine. What ensued was the housing bubble and more mortgaging of America’s future.

If all these people, including lots and lots of Americans saw the economic crisis coming, you are telling me the Feds and the economists that govern this country didn’t see it coming? Please… They just chose to look the other way. Why not? They are rich. There is no accountability. Leave it to the next administration or future generations to clean up the mess.

It’s really absurd that Dick Cheney deflects the Bush administration’s responsibilities by claiming that NO ONE SAW IT COMING. To put it nicely, the arrogance, narrow-mindedness and stupidity of the outgoing administration continues. The Bush administration continues to hope that in time history will judge them nicely, but I believe this second recession under their watch pretty much locks in their incompetence regardless of how well Iraq or Afghanistan turn out.