It’s funny to me that we spend so much time in the private sector making regulations about independence and rules around avoiding conflicts of interest. Heck, if I can go on a rant here, we also have really thorough rules about how to present financial statements so that there are no undisclosed, off balance sheet liabilities.

And yet these same types of rules never apply to the government. Conflicts of interest proliferate throughout all levels of government (most notably in recent years with the Fed/US Treasury and Wall Street). Our government financial reporting is a sham, with 10s of trillions in off-balance sheet liabilities unaccounted for in our national debt figures.

And Obama wonders why there is a basic distrust of government???

I thought George Will hit it best a few weeks back about the State of the Union address. Obama spent a good chunk of it, blaming the polarized nature of Washington, trashing back-door dealing, condemning a culture where every day is election day. Then he went on to advocate his agenda that would centralize even more power in Washington.

Do these people even listen to themselves?

Sort of gives me the creeps – Tom Clancy had a novel about an actual shooting war with Japan that developed over a malfunctioning automotive component built in Japan that was the contributing factor in a high-profile automobile accident. A tone-deaf U.S. administration was in power at the time.

Can’t help but wonder if you would see GMC issuing such a massive recall?

Ford did not participate in the rush for bailout money, yet here they are with great sales. Might be a lesson there.

I’d like to go on record as saying “I wrote mine first.”

Yes, Ford succeeding is quite interesting. For the longest time Ford had the “Fix Or Repair Daily” acronym. And now here it is being the superior American car…

It is still a telling story that Ford is the one capturing the most market share despite the fact that GM/Chrysler have a golden opportunity.