The Obama Business Plan

On Saturday morning the 10th of January 2008 the Obama Transition Team issued a 13 page plan for the economy totaling $775 billion. There were several observations that are worth mentioning.

First, we analyzed the plan in some detail and posted it in the Telmarc White Papers on www.telmarc.com site. I leave it to the reader to draw their own conclusions.

Second, in a certain way this approach to opening the White House, even a little, and indeed this was a great deal more than a little, is a paradigm shift in Washington. It really can change things. The document was embargoed until 6 AM on a Saturday. Then it was posted on the web site of the Transition Team. This gave it all day Saturday for any of the web wackos to kick the ball around and to do whatever they need to on the various fire hydrants. The Obama Team could then look at the critiques, good, bad, and ugly, and then position themselves for Sunday. Brilliant! Twenty years ago, which is longer than the lifetime of some bloggers commenting, one would have some legislative assistant go to the appropriate office, cajole a copy from some confidant, copy it secretly, then fax it to the powers that be. The diffusion time to the audience at large was three to five weeks. Now we see it in seconds. The responses were instantaneous.

Third, some commentors, such as Professor Mankiw at Harvard were instantly vilified by bloggers for his questioning the Romer assumptions regarding tax cuts and their multiplies effect on GDP. I leave it to the reader to follow that war but some of the bloggers were spot on regarding certain points and Mankiw seems to have tough enough skin to survive and fight another day.

Fourth, this was a multimedia attack for Christiana Romer also put her pitch on YouTube! It was as if some nice old aunt was sitting there telling you why you should eat all of your spinach, but I assume the young kids just ate it up. Here was a controlled spin in the space of uncontrolled insanities. For after the Rome video the folks at YouTube made some bizarre suggestions. Perhaps they were targeted just at me.

Thus this new approach as I remarked in my White Paper, try and find out any detail regarding the TARP, Paulson won't divulge anything about how he is spending our money, the Obama folks are "socializing" this to the extreme and it looks as if it is to their benefit. Get the pitch out there and then get all the flack and re-pitch it to slam down anything that could affect it.

This is a sea state change of significance.