And now a word from our bouncer . . .

ThomWatch

The call from Wall Street came


TIBURON, Calif. -- I am still incubating. We all are.

In April, I got lucky. I got to ask a campaigning Sen. Barack Obama a question. The query came at a price. I had to pay to get into the fundraiser, which was just up the California freeway from our home. Our son, all of 12, got in for free and ate most of the early season strawberries dipped in dark chocolate.


No worries. The sweets were good and the day was bright after a brief drizzle. The home was a Kentfield mansion. The crowd was pumped, about 350 of them, maybe more. The two of us did not get bounced, and the boy got to sit on the lawn, snapping shots of the Senator with a throwaway instant camera. One of those photos is here. Others are elsewhere.

I do not mind paying the price when I have tough choices to make. I no longer carry a press badge, you see, so unlike the several times I got to ask then-retired President Gerald Ford a question, or a campaigning Rev. Jesse Jackson, or a stumping Walter Mondale, or Arizona's Bruce Babbitt, I had to pay for admission.

Fair enough.

Sen. Obama addressed the crowd for about 40 minutes, maybe a bit more. Everyone there probably wanted to ask a question. This was when he was going head-to-head with Sen. Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primaries. Sen. Obama could only take four or five questions at most.


On the way in, the boy, Skylar, had asked me whether I was going to try to ask a question or shake hands with the candidate. At the time, I said I did not think so. Those days of thrusting a hand in the air, hopping on toes to get the attention of the guy or gal on stage, on deadline, dreadline more like it, those days were over.


But something came over me toward the end. This was when the press, if you recall way back to the primaries, the press were making a big deal about the candidate, as potential commmander-in-chief, taking an early morning call from an admiral or a general.


Stupid, but the press has to run with something I suppose.

Anyways, time for one last question. I hit the bid, shot hand in air, jumped, waved and got The Call. By the way, this was not to impress our boy, whose front-wn seat was on the grass a foot or two from the podium. I am not even sure Skylar, the boy, even could see me through the crowd. Let alone hear my question.

"Senator, Senator, what kind of answer are you going to give when the call from Wall Street comes?" was what I got out, in the nick of time. "Given the mortgages unraveling all over the place and the fact very few businesses can get a loan?"

Something like that. Want to see how I put it the next day? Go here.

Sen. Obama spent 10 or more minutes answering the question, and in the process took the audience to Asia, to Connecticut, to Washington, London, Korea and back to Kentfield, Calif.

He was reflective. He did not jump the gun and say -- remember, this was April 2008, way back when the Federal Reserve and the USA Treasury and Capitol Hill all said they would propose reforms of the banking system in about 100 days -- Sen. Obama did not say he would sack Ben Bernanke or our Treasury Secretary, Mr. Paulson.

He did not rail about the flood of overseas money that ignited cheap mortgages in the USA and Canada. Mexico even in The Day (five years ago, three years ago, 18 months ago).


Nope. Instead, he referenced the New Haven and Bishopsgate quants who triple-dip and quad-dip their money sticks into weird and funkaholic debt pools.

He did not pretend to understand it all. Them boots would be too deep to fill for even the know-it-all quants that worked their pox on paper. And Sen. Obama did not, to his (extending the pun) credit, reference the discussion he had begun a month previously, March 2008 I think it was, about the USA economy and the gargantuan IOUs we were racking up as a government and as a people. Sen. Obama understands just how devastating current account deficits and working government deficits and living off the (VISA) card can be to a nation where productivity is slowing markedly, even as we work more and more hours than ever, and jobless stats are lining up around the block.


So he reflected on that sunny April day. We could see it in his face, for real. He showed us, with his sense of being as perplexed as the next fellow, Sen. Barack Obama showed us why his law students in Chicago gave him decent to high grades. At the blackboard, he is willing to study the angles, first off the mountain of debt the USA has piled up toward the sky as the nation attempts to keep The Dream alive. Maybe late into the night this guy is at the boards. After the girls are in bed. Maybe that is why he looks so gaunt all the time ... not enough sleep, not enough chicken soup, too many docs to review on-screen in the middle of those suburban Chicago nights.


Maybe he's a Mets fan. (Oh yeh, Cubbies.)

At the close of the Senator's chat with his audience, Skylar and I more or less toasted the remaining fried won tons sitting across the loan, I mean lawn, on the buffet table. Maybe not worth the price of admission, but then, what is these days? No oversized prawns pinned to an ice sculpture.

Yet I had gotten, if not a definitive answer to the Wall Street-plea question, at least a sense that this economy, this Wall Street I had reported on for so many years, is a sore spot that requires a jug of Ibuproferen.


USA President George W. Bush, I believe, and his cabinet, are giving the economy (and the war and Social Security and health insurance and terrrorism and ...), the White House is giving all this as much of their predawn hours as they can. Of that I am sure. The current White House has devoted days of discussion, months maybe all told during 8 years of office, to the nation's headaches. But its time is up, and the number of folks out of work or facing a deflation of their assets, well, let me put it like so: I think any great candidate, and Sens. Obama and McCain are both worthy, any great candidate will give the matters before them more thought than you and I and our boy can imagine.


I rarely write about elections and politics, mostly because as you see here, I have little, so so little, to add to any of the public policy gestalt that wangles its way across our desks during big election years. I tend to stick to my corduroys, which include outstanding food, fair value in money markets and my backstroke at the Strawberry Pool. Eternal life is up there, too, which is why I swim.

Still, Sen. Obama clearly has demonstrated he is willing to study the complexity of debt markets, and derivatives ... and sovereign funds ... and Big Oil. Maybe, just maybe, he is the president who will unplug the currency exchange system that is almost bound to unravel if America's dollar, and other nations' currencies, command far less buying power than one can imagine in coming years.


Maybe that means a return to a gold standard. Gold as money. I don't know.

I do know the fried won tons were good, the chocolate strawberries were good, and I look forward to hearing more back-and-forth about the global economy in coming debates.


I am still incubating, and so are we all, I guess. And hey, the White Sox are still in the mix. (No longer; next year, Junior!)

-- Thom in Tiburon

For more ThomWatch, please go to Thom's library: click it.