Shorting Obama

In yesterday's Times, London hedge fund manager Hugh Hendry was quoted as follows: “If there was a way to short Obama, I would."

That got me to thinking — what if there were a way to short sell Obama? The first thing that comes to mind, of course, is a synthetic CDO of sorts. Since you don't actually have own what you're betting on, I'm sure the bright young people at Goldman could come up with something.

An easier way, of course, would be to short any enterprise that might profit from Obama initiatives — wind power facilities come to mind, for example — or just go long on big oil and big banking, since any kind of meaningful energy bill (read carbon tax) is impossible, and the banks will have figured their way around the new financial regulations well before the regulators even are in place.

Hendry, by the way, also predicts that China is "headed for a fall," which presumably would mean the Chinese would pull way back on buying our debt and transfer resources to calming the inevitable social unrest. As regular readers know, I'm not making predictions anymore — except, when I can't help myself, in the most general sense.

Right now, my gut feeling, for both Obama and the United States, is that hard times will be sticking around for quite a while.