The first dealt with the amount of savings that would be made (in the order of billions of Dollars) if our government decides to replace the use of Dollar bills with Dollar coins.  The savings are based on the replacements costs of the One Dollar bills.  As far as consumers is concerned, there is little, if any, impact on carrying one Dollar bills or one-dollar coins.  I am not a young pup so my habits may differ from the younger generations; nevertheless, I typically use a credit card for most (with few exceptions like the occasional lottery ticket which must be purchased using cash) of my purchases.  My wife and I try to keep the card with a zero balance so we pay it in full each month.  A nice feature of using a card for purchases is that at the end of the month you get an itemized list of purchases.  If I use such approach, I would assume that most Naïve Americans would be fine with using coins instead of bills.

So why the switch is not a reality?  The issue as usual is special interests.  One has to consider the companies involved in providing the materials (i.e., ink, paper, plates, print press, etc) for the One Dollar bills.  We also have to consider vending machines.  Most are configured to accept bills.  Few are ready to accept one Dollar coins.  As usual, special interests pay off politicians and who cares about then Naïve Americans that got them elected in the first place.

The second story relates to wealth distribution in our country.  Statistics show that the top 1% of the population has grown richer by a factor of three while the remaining 99% has become poorer.  Something is not working at all in the USA.  Naïve Americans claim that we are free and live in the land of opportunity.  That may be correct for a very reduced minority.  The majority of Naïve Americans are experiencing tough economic times.  On one side one we have Republicans, which do not want to raise taxes because they will reduce jobs.  Not sure who came up with that twisted logic but it appears that millions of Naïve Americans believe it.  On the opposite corner we have Democrats who wish to raise taxes to pay off unions so they can be elected to office.  What about the majority of Naïve Americans?  Most of us do not benefit with Republican or Democratic governments.  We need to elect a president that is not Democratic, nor Republican but American.  Of course such candidate does not exist.

At some point in time in the very near future, the top 1% of the population, which are the ones that control politicians, need to realize that some changes are needed if we wish to preserve our way of life.  When I say our way of life, I refer to the economic climate of the early 1950’s.

Hopefully a few Naïve Americans in the top 1% will come to realize the gravity of not inducing a change and will put some money and effort in helping our country.

The Naïve American

This article should make us Naïve Americans stop and think about what is going on with the economy in the USA and what can we expect for it to ever recover.

GE is not the only American company that manufactures (primarily in China) and sells goods and services outside the US and keeps part of their income as not taxable due to the fact that it is generated outside of the US.  As a matter of fact it appears that most (if not all) Fortune 500 to Fortune 1,000 companies follow suit.

A few months ago the founder of Facebook was asked how is it possible that billions in Dollars in revenues are not taxable.  The answer was that Facebook does not make tax laws it just follows them.

So first lets see if we can figure out what is going on in the USA.  The wealthiest American companies are avoiding paying billions of dollars in taxes, which could solve most if not all the deficits currently faced by most states.  Those same companies have eliminated millions of jobs for Naïve Americans that are in need of help.  The key is that all the companies follow the American tax laws.  So why do we have tax laws that allow for this to happen?  The answer is quite simple.  The American Royalty (top executives in those same companies) pay lobbyist and politicians to write tax laws that allow them to avoid paying taxes.  Lobbyists are legal in the USA.  In other parts of the world they would be considered unlawful to have special interests lead government elected politicians.  We Naïve Americans call it corruption when we refer to foreign countries (i.e., Libya, Iran, Mexico, etc, etc, etc).  We Naïve Americans call it politics when it happens in the USA.  Talk about double standards!!!

One may say that in the USA it is illegal to pay politicians.  Yes it is.  But when politicians are hired to do nothing with huge salaries and bonuses AFTER they leave office in compensation for services rendered to corporations and the American Royalty, then all is well.  We call it the American Way of Life!!!

So who cares about what is going on?  The American Royalty gets away with huge salaries and multi billion dollar bonuses when their companies move jobs overseas and their companies do not pay taxes.  Stockholders get higher dividends when the companies skip on taxes and reduce costs by eliminating American jobs.  I believe that is called globalization.  So stockholders are happy with their companies not paying taxes and eliminating American jobs.  Politicians are happy because they get their bribes (I am sorry, I should not refer to their compensation for passing laws that allow it as bribes but as … Not sure what other words should I use ) and legal because the American Royalty made sure that is the case.

In conclusion, a small percentage of Naïve Americans (less than 1%) benefit from the widespread corruption (sorry again, laws, business and political climate) in our society.  So what happens to small to medium size businesses and to the rest of Naïve Americans?  Good question.  I am not going to take a stab at answering.  I refer to all Naïve Americans to read some basic history and see how so many great civilizations have risen and ALL collapsed.  You can be sure they did not plan on collapsing.  They just ignored the signs and did not care to make the necessary changes to prevent it.

If you are in a position that can induce change please consider what is going to happen to our country is we do not react and implement the necessary measures.  We are falling behind in so many fronts that our country might soon we listed with the countries that today are under developed and plagued with corruption.

The Naïve American

One may look up statistics on the Internet and come up with the correct answer OR one might reason out that since most accidents in buses and airplanes are due to human error, then the best possibly trained and therefore better-compensated professionals should be the ones providing the SAFEST and most reliable method of transportation.

Well, apparently in the Twin Cities this is not the case.  The union of bus drivers is currently negotiating a contract for the next year or two.  They want raises in their wages and do not want to be bothered paying an 11% increase in healthcare insurance.  On a side note, as all Naïve Americans should have figured by now, the HEALTHCARE REFORM by president Obama is a total failure.  It has only put more Naïve Americans without healthcare insurance and has dramatically increased premiums.  Think about these facts when you are at the polling booth next November and are debating to vote Democrat, Republican or Independent.

Another item that the bus drivers union wishes to keep are overtime hours for their members.  Such are paid at 1.5 the current hourly rate.  Apparently all drivers are getting overtime.

I believe most (not to say all because Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes and a few weirdoes) Naïve Americans wish that people providing services are properly compensated to motivate them to excel in their jobs.  Riding a bus involved in an accident due to improper bus operation in the Twin Cities definitely represents an inconvenience.  I believe that in the 20+ years I have spent in this city I have never taken a bus.  I have on several occasions taken the light rail between Bloomington, MN and the International Airport MSP.

I consider myself lucky enough to have had the chance to start (have not completed due to work issues) studying and training to get a private (not a commercial) pilot license.  With a few dozen hours of practice and learning most of what is in a few manuals I have to some extent some appreciation of what commercial pilots have to go through to become professionals.  They typically start on the right seat (the pilot seats on the left) and after hundreds of hours flying regional routes at odd hours during the day and night they are eventually promoted to captain.  By the way, becoming an airplane pilot typically requires a four-year college education.

I fully understand that most (if not all) professional pilots belong to a union.  In Minnesota their offices were located in the same building in Bloomington as our offices.

Now to the point of this blog.  Yesterday in the news on Fox TV they showed the total compensation for all the bus drivers that are thinking going on strike unless their demands are met.  The average wages with the mandatory / negotiated overtime averaged $77,000 US dollars per year.  Yes, a 15 and a half year old not having finished high school has similar skills to the members of the union of professional bus drivers that average $77,000 in compensation a year.  I guess our city is wealthier than what I thought (ha, ha, ha).

On the other hand, professional airline pilots in the first few years are averaging about $30,000 a year.  Such Naïve Americans take groups of people up in the sky at 30,000 feet and at speeds around 500 miles per hour.

Obviously there is a serious problem when college graduates are making a fraction of what people with hardly any skills and hopefully a high school diploma take home.  How did we get here?  The answer is in career politicians who have allowed this to happen and will probably continue to occur.  By accepting union demands politicians get votes.

Please do not think that unions are the only problem in the USA.  On the other side we have CEOs and top executives that make millions of dollars a year and do not have the slightest idea of what their companies do.  America is being held hostage from both ends.  On one side we have Wall Street and on the other unions.  This situation has been going on for several decades.  The problem is that the USA is getting to a point that it can no longer afford this.  Hopefully (but not likely) there will be a peaceful change / adjustment.  What is that is not the case?  What will happen with millions of Naïve Americans?  What will happen to our country?

So next time you board an airplane keep in mind that the pilot and first officer might earn less wages than bus drivers in the Twin Cities.  So which method of transportation is safer?

The Naïve American

Yesterday afternoon I drove my wife to Mayo Clinic in Rochester Minnesota for a routine and schedules test.  All appeared OK.  My wife will hear from the specialist sometime next week.

While at Mayo we noted that the parking ramp was quite empty.  In general patients like to start their visits early on Monday and be done sometime early on Friday.  We have seen this trend during the past twenty years or so.  That said; it appeared there were very fewer patients than usual.

The reduced number of patients appears to be due to the fact that fewer Naïve Americans are able to afford healthcare insurance.  In part this is due to the 10% unemployment in the USA.  Most unemployed Naïve Americans do not have insurance.  Another issue is that the cost of insurance has high rocketed in the past year or so.  It appears that the quality of service (not at Mayo Clinic but at other facilities) has also dropped.  I guess that the healthcare reform by president Obama has been a flop.  This should not surprise most thinking Naïve Americans since the changes were in the wrong areas.  Who cares, Democrat politicians believe they won a battle but the matter of fact is that the USA just got another nail in our coffin.

Changing the subject, yesterday my wife, one of my sons and I stopped for a haircut.  For the past 15 years or so we have been going to the same place.  It was convenient due to the fact that our offices were located in the same building as the hair stylist.  We could get a haircut in about the same time one stops for a coffee break.  We have always been very efficient at work.

The owner of the shop is married.  Her husband was by trade and electrician.  He belongs to a union.  With time he changed positions and became a business project manager for new construction.  He was clearing over $100,000 a year.  Amazing how much could an individual with such education and qualifications make when compared with people that have higher education and whose jobs contribute so much to the welfare of the USA and in some cases to humanity.  The point at hand is that the husband has been out of a job for about year and a half.  His benefits are coming to an end soon.  The union told him that hopefully things will get better in the future but he has to realize that when he finally gets a job his salary will be at least half of what he was used to make.

Naïve Americans have to realize that different forces have skewed salaries in our country.  On one end unions have been getting higher wages for members with less and less qualifications and less performance / results.  The unions would typically negotiate contracts in which the number of units produced by assembly lines would be a fraction of what should be a reasonable output.  Blue collar workers were and probably still are taking advantage of companies.

On the other had, we have CEOs and upper management that makes millions of dollars per year in salaries and bonuses.  No one, and I repeat no one can hold a job whose compensation should be above $250,000 a year.  On TV there is a show in which high-end executives (typically the CEO) show up for work at their companies incognito.  I have never watched a full show.  It does not appeal to me.  I have watched commercials and a few minutes of random shows while changing channels.  It appears that in most cases the CEOs who get paid millions of dollars a year cannot do; far lees appreciate what their employees are doing for the company.  Those same CEOs will and have fired dozens, hundreds and in some occasions thousands of Naïve Americans in order to get their multimillion dollar compensations at the cost of Naïve Americans that actually do a job for those same companies.

An interesting question to ask is “Where are the career politicians while all of this has been happening for decades?”  The answer is quite simple.  They have been paid by those same unions and CEOs in order not to upset the basket.  On the surface and for a few decades the USA has been able to absorb this inappropriate behavior.  In the past couple years we are starting to feel the effects.  America is coming to an end and unless something dramatically is done, the USA will be history just like Russia, the Greeks, Romans, etc, etc, etc.

Finally allow me to get to the subject at hand.  Mr. Obama and his political staff have come up with what appears to be a good idea.  His administration is going to provide about $30 billion to be allocated to small business in the USA.  At this point it is hard to tell how such funds are going to be managed and provided to existing and most important to new businesses.

I will come back in a few months with some experience in the subject and implementation.  Perhaps it will help our ailing economy.  So at this point in time, Mr. Obama deserves a round of applause!!!

The Naïve American.

Hope this blog finds you and your family doing well.

Most Naïve Americans and in general the United States of America as a country continues to collapse.

Yesterday evening my wife and I watched Dateline on NBC.  The first (hour) segment dealt with the absurd war your predecessor, president Bush thanks to the vice president at the time, Mr. Cheney (a.k.a. defense contractor), promoted an impossible to win war in Afghanistan.  I believe you have been in office for about year and a half and have not lived up to any of your presidential campaign promises.  Naïve Americans should understand that the promises came from a politician and should not expect them to be fulfilled.  Most Naïve Americans do not appear to be too smart when it comes to politics.  Perhaps they are and voted for the democratic candidate based on promises made behind the scenes by the Democratic Party to special interests groups (i.e., unions).  As usual the common Naïve American was left out in the rain.  So far you have not delivered a single CHANGE but the USA needs to put up with another two and a half years of your administration.

The report on Dateline showed how the Taliban killed and injured dozens of Naïve American soldiers deployed in Afghanistan.  I happen to have military background and when I saw the location of the camp, immediately the idea crossed my mind that the soldiers would not be able to make it in such location.  It took a few days and dozens of dead and injured young Naïve Americans for the Army to close the new camp.  If I am not mistaken, during your presidential campaign, you promised that the arm forces deployed overseas fighting absurd wars would be brought back home.  If I am not mistaken you even had the audacity to provide some rough schedule to bring back home our troops.  Nothing like that is happening.  The USA will never under no circumstances will destroy the perceived enemy in Afghanistan.  The Soviet Union failed and we will too.  Perhaps you need to change your military advisors with people with common sense and no special interests.  A personal question Mr. Obama, do you happen to have stock in companies that manufacture weapons?

A few minutes ago I read on the web an article titled “China pushing the envelope on science, and sometimes ethics” by the Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/27/AR2010062703639.html).  The article contains a picture of Zhao Bowen (not John Wayne) a 17-year-old Chinese scientist.  This Chinese (not Naïve American) teenager was part of a scientific team that last year cracked the genetic code of the cucumber.

If you have a chance to read the article, the change in science and education has been quite radical and fast.  A few years ago most people, excluding this Naïve American, believed that uneducated China would always be there as a source of cheap labor.  Today China has not only surpassed the USA as an economic and military power but is already stating to show super powers in the scientific arena.  So what is left for the USA?  I can tell you, we have a plethora of lawyers, politicians, business, sales people and CEOs, which are not able to provide a single good or service desirable outside the USA.  Not sure if you Mr. Obama or your elite team of advisors needs the example that my son and I used to describe global economy to my ten-year-old granddaughter.  She does not understand economic theory (if such a thing exists), but she can tell you that our economy the way it is going will not be able to make it.  On the other had, she fully understands how China is growing and will continue to grow.  I know she is on summer vacations.  If you need an economic advisor I believe we could arrange her to meet with you.

I fully understand how incapable your administration could be if something unexpectedly was thrown at you.  I am referring to the 60+ day fiasco with BP in the Gulf.  It does not take much to figure out that if you are slow to react to an unexpected problem, the problem will destroy you.  The issue is that after two months there is no clear and absolute resolution to the oil spill.  Given that you and your administration lack of engineering and scientific background, you are handling the issue like a politician.  Millions of wild life specimens are and will die before the problem is resolved.  Millions of Naïve Americans will loose their jobs and hundreds of thousands of small businesses with go under.  I guess your green initiative should provide those Naïve Americans with new well paying jobs funded by the few taxes paid by the few Naïve Americans that are able to hold a job.

Following is some food for though.  Please take the amount of oil being spilled in the Gulf by the BP oil well and think of it coming from a flotilla of oil tankers sunk in the Gulf by Osama bin Laden.  911 was caused by a handful of airplanes hitting very few targets and it created a serious problem for the USA.  I guess Tony Hayward BP’s CEO is better dressed and more influential that Osama bin Laden so all is and will be well.

America is sinking and you and your administration have not done a single thing to solve the obvious problems.  All we have seen is additional useless bureaucracy in the economic and healthcare front that are making it harder for most Naïve Americans to get ends to meet.  Hopefully these few words will motivate you and your administration to wake up before things get past the point of no return.  I fully believe we are almost there.  When we pass such point, there will not be enough CHANGE to make a difference.

Sincerely yours;

The Naïve American

As we all know April 15, 2010 came and went.  I used Turbo Tax to generate and file electronically my return for the past year.  It appears, each time it gets more confusing; what is going on?  This is a panacea for politicians to get from Naïve Americans as much as they can to pay for their lavish life styles while helping curtail the tax burden of their political supporters.

There is so much Naïve Americans can and will take.  I am not associated with the Tea Party movement, but my tip of the hat.  Naïve Americans need to promote CHANGE in as many fronts as possible in order to slow down the fall of the United States of America.

I was reading a short article in the April 10^th edition of The Economist titled “The Joy of Tax”.  It is interesting to note that the federal code tax in 1913 was about 400 pages long.  Can you imagine fully understanding 400 pages of tax code, which are completely arbitrary in the sense they do not follow any logical or physical model?  Well, things just started to get worse from that point on.  Today the same document is about 70,000 pages long.  An average textbook contains about 500 pages.  Then in average to be proficient in tax law one needs to be proficient in about 140 books.  Most Naïve Americans have never read 140 books!  Very few have read 140 textbooks.  This fact tends to illustrate the complexity of taxes in the USA.

The main questions should be, why are taxes so complicated?  The simple and correct answer is to benefit special interest groups.  Our federal government could do with no more than 10% of the taxes we Naïve Americans pay if our government would cut waste.  Of course this will not happen because special interests pay (contribute, the proper corrupt term we now use) politicians and they have to answer to them.

The article also mentions an interesting statistic.  It takes about 3.8 million skilled workers tiling full-time, year-round to handle the paperwork and electronic forms associated with paying taxes.  Some Naïve Americans (mostly democrats) are of the opinion that this is good because it employs people.  The problem is that there is no beneficial end result to the economy of the USA.  What type of desirable goods or services does people involved in taxes have to offer to the world economy?  NONE.  It is just a waste of time and money that could be used to promote small businesses to create skilled jobs to develop / produce / manufacture desirable goods and services.

As I always say, one should NEVER generalize.  Not all (but most) politicians are a problem.  Ron Paul (R-TX) wants to eliminate the IRS.  Any Naïve American with some degree of intelligence should agree with such measure.  Take the 3.8 million skilled workers wasting their time working on taxes a year.  Lets assume that each skilled worker gets paid $60,000 a year.  If this is the case, then one needs to add about half of that salary in benefits and other associated costs (i.e., office space, telephone, etc).  We now have $90,000 per individual multiplied by 3,800,000 workers, which equates to 342,000 million dollars a year.  The estimated population of the state of Oregon in 2009 was around 3.8 million, which included seniors, adults and children.  Imagine if all that population was working year round in tax related jobs for the IRS.  What a waste of TIME and MONEY!

As the United States of America continues in the downwards spiral, hopefully more and more Naïve Americans will decide to elect those few politicians that may induce a POSITIVE CHANGE for our country.

A very loaded and interesting question.  If you ask children they will tell you that the president, Mr. Barack Obama at this point in time, runs our country.  The president is elected through somewhat twisted method, but that is how we elect our president.

For most Naive Americans the president is just a figure (puppet) that follows the suggestions of his political party.  So far so good because a Democratic president, like Barack Obama should follow the principles and ideology of the Democratic Party.  The same could have been said of the previous Bush administration.

A considerably less number of Naive Americans fully understand that career politicians that listen and receive legal bribes (political contributions) from lobbyist run the country.  In turn lobbyist work for wealth individuals and corporations that do not care about Naive Americans or the USA.  They just worship the US Dollar.

Today the US Supreme Court has eased on restrictions on corporate campaign spending.  This means one and only one thing, lobbyist will be able to provide larger bribes to politicians.  This is really bad news for the USA.  Our current economical situation is just the result of the American Royalty (wealthy individuals and corporations) making an extra Dollar and destroying the US economy and industry.  The serious problems we are facing today were primarily started during the Clinton administration.  Do you remember globalization?  Well we got it and as a result the Dollar is becoming weaker, our trade deficit is in the trillions of Dollars, a huge percentage of our goods are manufactured abroad (mostly in China), as far as energy is concerned, we depend almost completely on oil from the Middle East.  You know how the countries in the Middle East love the USA (ha ha ha).

America is getting closer to a full collapse.  We need to make changes in mostly all sectors in order to start a gradual change in direction before we become a third world country.  What fueled America in the past were innovative small businesses.  Today we have lethargic large businesses being bailed out with taxes paid by Naive Americans, managed by incompetent people (wealthy CEOs) who make huge salaries and to top it all demand even larger bonuses.

What are the chances that our president will be able to make a CHANGE?

The Naive American

If you go to the Lowes web site (www.lowes.com) next day delivery has a caveat.  It is only available for in-stock major appliances.  So what are the chances that the appliance you decide to purchase is in stock?  Do not know that answer but in the past six months my wife and I had to replace the washer and dryer (the motor in the washer burned) at home.  Purchase them at Lowes.  Lowes did not have the appliances in stock (what a surprise) so it took several (not next day) days between the purchase and delivery.  Lowes does not hook up gas appliances.  They are able to plug in a cord to a standard electrical outlet.  That appears to be the extent of free hookup.

A few months later our refrigerator was making noise.  My wife wanted to find out how much a replacement unit would cost.  We stopped by Lowes and went through a similar process with a sales representative.  Once again the delivery would be several days after the purchase.  We decided not to replace a new refrigerator at the time.

Not sure how Lowes and for that matter most other major appliance stores (i.e., Home Depot, Sears, etc) can get away deceiving potential customers as they do.  I guess that is the way to do business in America.  Naïve Americans get excited with the models at the showroom and tend to ignore the false promises that led them in the first place to stop by a store searching for a new appliance.

Home appliances used to last decades.  Today they are manufactured to last a few years.  The reason for this is that manufacturers (most of them in China) design appliances to break in a short period of time so they can sell Naïve Americans a replacement in a very short period of time.  Companies have quality assurance departments that work in conjunction with designers to test the life of different parts and estimate how long should they last.  The game is to make sure all parts last for a minimum time so the Naïve American is led to believe that a quality product has been purchased but appliances start breaking down after a few years hinting the owner that it is time to replace the unit (standard tear and wear we are told).

I guess that is the American way.  We live in a consumer society.  Products should not last too long.  They need to be constantly replaced.  I have observed this phenomenon with different coffee makers in the past five to six years.  I brew every day two cups of coffee.  Coffee machines from different companies (so far all are manufactured in China) do not last more than a couple years.  In my opinion a coffee maker, with proper care, should last at least ten years.  I as a consumer would like to decide on a newer and fancier model when I am ready to purchase it, not after a couple years (if lucky) when the unit breaks down.

This brings me to an interesting point.  Hardware designers are able to design products that break after a period of time forcing the Naïve American to purchase a new one.  What about software?  Well-designed software does not break.  It just works.  The only hope for well-designed software is that with time, the requirements of the user or the specific industry (e.g., automotive, medical, etc) change enough so a new version of the software must be considered.  This might not be as reasonable as one might imagine.  Software manufactures are constantly adding bells and whistles to their software products in order to lure new buyers, but the majority of users tend to use the same set of features version after version.  You know what I mean if you use a word processor package (e.g., Microsoft Word).  I have been using Word for about twenty years and probably use one to two percent of the current features.  With time I have purchased newer versions of Word because older versions do not work on newer versions of the Windows operating system.  Perhaps having a monopoly is the American way.

So what should software manufactures in our consumer society do to get recurrent revenue?  Adding feature just for the fun of it does not appear to be a feasible option.  Developing high quality software does not appear to be a good business.  Would like to hear your comments opinions on this issue.

Hope you and your family had a nice holiday.  Naive Americans know that you had a nice holiday on the East Coast while most of us were unemployed or in the process of loosing our jobs.  Yet your administration spent several million dollars on your vacations / holidays.

As you are aware during the month of December 2009 businesses cut 85,000 jobs and unemployment is still around 10%.  I live in the City of Apple Valley, Minnesota with a population of about 50,000.  If the entire population of Apple Valley (it includes youngsters and elderly) would have been laid off last month it would still be less than what actually happen.  I can anticipate your comments.  85,000 in a country with a population of about 304 million is just a drop in the bucket.  The answer sounds reasonable so I will like to add that the lives lost in the 9/11 attack and the ones lost in the foolish wars we have embarked in the last few years (i.e., Afghanistan) are nothing but a drop in the bucket.  Mr. Obama the economic recovery plan your administration has put together could not possibly work and so far has not.  It has just deepened the hole from which our country has to emerge.

You continue to push your renewable / green energy plans to get Americans back to work and help the economy.  I do not know who came with such a preposterous plan.  For the current and foreseeable future alternate energy technology will not be able to replace other sources of energy (i.e., coal, nuclear and oil) and if and when they do in the next few decades how many people do you estimate will be able to work on such technology?  There might be a few thousand good paying jobs for the design engineers but the way things are going all the equipment will be manufactured in China.  What would be left for Naive Americans is to install and service Chinese units.  What a way to promote the US economy!

I have been quite busy designing and developing software in the past month or so.  Have had no spare time to write blogs.

Last year one of your economic advisors Warren Buffett acquire additional railroads.  I have not had the opportunity to meet Mr. Buffett in person.  He definitely has skills to generate personal wealth.  Not sure what the implications of his business ventures have been for Naive Americans, but that set aside, have you interpreted what he is stating?

Allow me to enlighten you with an educated guess.  The logic goes as follows:  In the not too distant future (less than a few years) the dollar will have to devaluate.  Our growing (thanks to you) trade deficit will sooner or later catch up with the USA.  When that happens a gallon of diesel fuel made by American refineries with imported oil from the Middle East will sky rocket.  I would estimate it to be about $10 a gallon.  This will represent another blow to our always-declining economy not to mention what will happen to the trucking industry.  Given that little is being manufactured in the US (Did you hear about China becoming the first producer of good in the world passing Germany?) most goods being imported will arrive by ship (less expensive) on one of the coasts.  Trucks will be used to move containers from the maritime terminals to railroads (very short distances, less trucks, less truckers, less jobs).  From railroads connecting the US (they are already there, they only need to be properly maintained) they will be shipped throughout our country.  When they arrive to their destination, containers will be moved by truck to local distributors, which will ship them to stores or consumers.  The use of Internet commerce will continue to grow in an attempt to cut household spending.  So what is the message broadcasted by your most respectable economical advisor?  Not good!

We need fundamental changes in most aspects of our country, from economy, to education and politics.  On several occasions you have mentioned that you have read about the Great Depression in our country hopping to get a better understanding and ideas on how to deal with the present situation.  Knowledge is good if and only if is able to produce new effective ideas.  Otherwise it is just a waste of time.  I would like to suggest you and your advisors start reading about the French Revolution.

Going back to your presidential campaign, Naive Americans would like to see CHANGEs.  So far your administration has failed miserably in providing them.  Hopefully you will meditate on this blog entry and come up with at least a handful of good ideas.

Best regards;

The Naive American.

www.NaiveAmerican.com