My politics are decidedly liberal/libertarian/fiscally conservative/anti big government (Constitutionalist) but one thing I cannot stand about the Clinton and now the Obama administration is the idea that stock prices are efficient and that poor business decisions by management at public companies should be left alone and not dealt with on a regulatory basis. Why should a guy make $20,000,000 for losing someone else’s billions? It simply seems naive to assume that managers and CEO’s of public companies have the best interests of their shareholders at heart.

       In short, we have entered the new dystopia which seems eerily similar to the 1999 dystopia — fraud is cool again on Wall Street, and that sucks. Essentially, managers who bankrupt a public company need to face comepnsation clawbacks. They should lose the same amount on a proportional level as their shareholders. This is the only way that markets can self-regulate and we all know that the current system is not working.

       As for oil prices, the OPEC announcement should make investors wonder if OPEC can actually increase production at all… When a despotic leader is behind the spigot, they will want to pump as much oil as they can before their political influence declines.