I Agree One Hundred Percent With the Premise ...

.... does Wall Street secretly love President Obama?

Bleier doesn't intend to make a political statement. His point is that markets have blasted off under Obama at the hand of "free money" from the Federal Reserve. While the Fed and Executive Branch are supposedly independent of one another, Wall Street believes it. 

Certainly the Fed's recent decision to launch another round of Quantitative Easing, triggering a quick 2% rally did nothing to belie these suspicions. 

"Obama's a shoe-in unless the market crashes two weeks before the election," says Bleier. 

"This guy's got it locked up." Easy money, under Obama or Romney, will come back to haunt the economy eventually but not before driving asset prices higher. Investors and corporate America flourish when cash is cheap and stocks are moving up. As a result, for your near term portfolio performance and the general happiness of corporate America, an Obama re-election is a best case scenario.

I agree one hundred percent. Americans are content/satisfied; polling suggests four more years. Investors (especially Big Oil) are doing very well; savers (and home owners?) are being stomped.

American are content/satisfied.

Americans see riots in Spain and Greece over austerity measures. Americans associate austerity with rampage in the street. Romney/Ryan represent austerity --> rampage in the street. "No drama Obama" represents "steady as she goes."

Good, bad, or indifferent, it is what it is.

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Minor note: the president has that million-dollar smile; his adversary does not ignite the independents. There's a reason the military rank-and-file aren't voting this year. The military rank and file are content/satisfied; they are risk averse. They are also investors [personal investors, pension, and 401(k)] -- better for them to just kick the can down the road. And investors are doing very, very well under the president; savers, as noted above, are being stomped. (By the way, there's probably a reason Warren Buffett is buying more wind farms: think wind farms would be a good investment if Romney/Ryan/Hamm win?

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Miscellaneous links

US manufacturing grows for first time in four months

Literature

I'm reading a fascinating book by Dick Russell, Eye of the Whale: Epic Passage from Baja to Siberia, the story of the gray whale.

It is not known how, when, and where gray whales originated. The first whale ancestors lived on land about 50 million years ago....the single complete skeleton (and a few partial ones) so far discovered of the earliest modern gray whales dates back only 50,000 to 120,000 years... 

Grays make a twice-annual migration that must be regarded as one of the most spectacular achievements on the planet. The majority of a population now estimated at more than 26,0000 travels from three warm lagoodn areas around central Baja to Arctic feeding grounds near the Bering Strait and then back again.... 

We don't know why they make this unique migration, or for how long they've pursued it. Unlike all the other species of baleen whale, the gray is never known to have occupied the southern oceans. Some scientists speculate that gray whales might have resided year-round in Baja approximately 18,000 years ago, when sea levels were lower and those bottom-feeding areas were richer. 

Then, as melting glaciers receded and sea levels rose, they had to move north seeking food. Another view holds that these same sea levels, which caused the disappearance of a low-lying land bridge across the Bering Strait, provided gray whales entree to the extensive and fertile feeding grounds of the Bering and Chukchi Seas.

I find this over and over, reports of global warming cycles and how the flora, fauna, and humanity changed, and/or evolved. I do not know who re-set the global thermostat before wide-spread use of fossil fuels. It remains a mystery. I particularly enjoy the mystery of the warming trend during the Viking era. (Those of long-boat fame, not of football fame.)

The California gray whale may have evolved from the Atlantic gray whale when global warming made it possible for them to traverse an easier passage through the Arctic. Ironically, if so, it was this passage provided by global warming that saved the gray whale. The Atlantic whale is now extinct: the Atlantic whale is the first -- and so far the only -- whale species known to have been driven into extinction (Russell, p. 26), by whalers. The third and "last" of the gray whales is the Korean gray whale, now numbering less than 100, not enough to sustain the species.

Speaking of mystery:
She's a Mystery to Me, Roy Orbison
This, too, has an interesting story.