We don't know what we don't know…

Clearly every media pundit is highly qualified to serve as vice president or president, just ask them and they will tell you. A recent op-ed piece I read pointed out that the Bush presidency has been anti-establishment and that those anti-establishment folks don’t know how to govern.

Apparently, because of the Iraq war, our collective memory has forgotten that the terrorist attacks on September 11 ever occurred. We also seem to have missed that there has not been another terrorist attack on the homeland in seven years. It is clear that the media observers and for that matter, most politicians, don’t know what they don’t know. I believe that the President and the government are constantly dealing with terrorist threats that never make the evening news.

You might wonder, why doesn’t President Bush make these potential calamities public and justify his actions. I think the answer to that question is simple. If we knew the things that threaten us, the US economy and our way of life would grind to a halt.

If you had told me last week as I was planning to take a Metrolink train to LA the following information: 1) A Metrolink accident will claim 25 lives this week; 2) Engineers on Metrolink trains engage in cell phone calls and text messaging while they are driving trains; and 3) the accident could happen anywhere on the system, I guarantee you I would have passed on taking the train.

I remember griping about the fact that I couldn’t take my shaving cream in my carry-on bag for a plane flight last year. You don’t suppose that the government passed those rules about the amount of liquid carry-ons just because they want to torture air travelers?

John McCain made a statement yesterday that was quite presidential, Bush made a similar statement. The essense of their words, "the fundamentals of our economy are strong." While Mr. Obama’s campaign was labeling this current financial crisis as the most serious since the Great Depression, McCain was lending his support to stabilizing the system. You see, the Federal Reserve, an agency not controlled by the executive branch has played a significant role in our latest roller coaster. (see this Washington Post article from 2005) While Bernake asserted prior to his nomination that there was no real estate "bubble." Fed actions since his appointment as Fed chief have had a significant impact on real estate prices.

Here is the dirty little secret, there is not much room for error with the economy and most of what is going to happen is completely out of the control of the federal government, or for that matter the Federal Reserve. If the stock market loses 2000 more points in the Dow Jones Industrial average, then the fireworks we are experiencing now will seem like a 4th of July sparkler. This is what Treasury secretary Poulsen and Fed chief Bernake are trying to prevent. You may notice that all of these folks are saying that the "fundamentals are strong." What else can they say, the "bottom is going to fall out?"

It is a good thing that we don’t know what we don’t know and that we continue our daily lives with this lack of information. Otherwise, things would be getting a whole lot worse a whole lot faster.