An Unexpected Parade of Events

The first event this week for me that was unex­pected was Mitt Romney’s defeat, the sec­ond was Ques­tion #2’s defeat

And then once Barack Obama was safely re-​elected a lot of unex­pected things sud­denly started happening:

At Nex­tel:

NII Hold­ings, which oper­ates mobile ser­vices under the Nex­tel brand in Latin Amer­ica, announced that it is tak­ing actions to realign cer­tain resources and roles between its head­quar­ters and mar­ket units in order to cre­ate a stronger and more agile orga­ni­za­tion, and to facil­i­tate future growth. As part of this strat­egy, the com­pany is reas­sign­ing select posi­tions located at its head­quar­ters to its oper­a­tions in Latin Amer­ica and elim­i­nat­ing cer­tain posi­tions at its cor­po­rate head­quar­ters in Vir­ginia (US). In total, the com­pany will reduce its work­force at its head­quar­ters by 20 percent.

At the State Depart­ment:

An eco­nomic ana­lyst invited by the State Depart­ment to brief a group of for­eign jour­nal­ists on the U.S. econ­omy on Elec­tion Day responded to a ques­tion from a reporter from the Egypt­ian news­pa­per Al Wafd by pre­dict­ing that U.S. Trea­sury secu­ri­ties — the means by which the U.S. gov­ern­ment finances its debt – will be down­graded again.

Car­bon Taxes? On the Table

Barack Obama may con­sider intro­duc­ing a tax on car­bon emis­sions to help cut the U.S. bud­get deficit after win­ning a sec­ond term as pres­i­dent, accord­ing to HSBC Hold­ings Plc.

A tax start­ing at $20 a met­ric ton of car­bon diox­ide equiv­a­lent and ris­ing at about 6 per­cent a year could raise $154 bil­lion by 2021, Nick Robins, an ana­lyst at the bank in Lon­don, said today in an e-​mailed research note, cit­ing Con­gres­sional Research Ser­vice esti­mates. “Applied to the Con­gres­sional Bud­get Office’s 2012 base­line, this would halve the fis­cal deficit by 2022,” Robins said…

Small Arms Treaty? , Why Soitenly!

The U.S. Mis­sion to the United Nations helped move a con­tro­ver­sial arms trade treaty on Wednes­day, less than 24 hours after Pres­i­dent Obama won reelection.

The Obama admin­is­tra­tion was widely blamed by treaty advo­cates for derail­ing the effort back in July when it asked for more time amid grow­ing oppo­si­tion from Repub­li­cans and pro-​gun-​rights Democ­rats who are wor­ried the treaty would affect the sale of civil­ian weapons in the United States. Fifty sen­a­tors — includ­ing eight Democ­rats — signed on to a let­ter at the time sig­nal­ing their oppo­si­tion to the treaty.

The U.S. Mis­sion said the tim­ing of the vote had noth­ing to do with the elec­tion. They said it was ini­tially sched­uled for last week but was delayed because of Hur­ri­cane Sandy.

Sud­denly Boe­ing has Lay­offs

Boe­ing announced a major restruc­tur­ing of its defense divi­sion on Wednes­day that will cut 30 per­cent of man­age­ment jobs from 2010 lev­els, close facil­i­ties in Cal­i­for­nia and con­sol­i­date sev­eral busi­ness units to cut costs.

And Vesta in Col­orado?

The Dan­ish wind tur­bine man­u­fac­turer Ves­tas says it plans to cut its global work­force by another 3,000 by the end of next year.

and the Fema offices in Staten Island,

Looks as if FEMA is just a fair– weather friend.

Yesterday’s nor’easter proved too much for the Fed­eral Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency’s aid loca­tion in Tot­tenville, SI — which hung a sign read­ing “Closed due to weather” as the win­tery storm blew into town.

Ten FEMA cen­ters in the area report­edly sus­pended oper­a­tions because of the storm, although the loca­tion with the sign at the Mount Loretto Com­mu­nity Cen­ter did open at noon.

Hey the Pres­i­dent has been re-​elected, Mis­sion accom­plished so all that stuff peo­ple have held back on, in the media, in the gov­ern­ment, and every­where else.

And BTW a reminder that you will be hear­ing from me a lot

Unex­pect­edly.

Update: More Unex­pected news:

As the finan­cial world puts Tuesday’s pres­i­den­tial elec­tion behind it, the light in the tun­nel could be an eco­nomic freight train.

and lay­offs

A Las Vegas busi­ness owner with 114 employ­ees fired 22 work­ers today, appar­ently as a direct result of Pres­i­dent Obama’s re-​election.

“David” (he asked to remain anony­mous for obvi­ous rea­sons) told Host Kevin Wall on 100.5 KXNT that “elec­tions have con­se­quences” and that “at the end of the day, I need to survive.”

And not Unex­pect­edly they’re not alone.

Update 2: Insta­lanche, thanks Glenn, and the unex­pected parade con­tin­ues:

The world’s biggest ham­burger chain said Thurs­day that a key sales fig­ure fell for the first time in nearly a decade in Octo­ber, as it faced the dou­ble whammy of a chal­leng­ing econ­omy abroad and inten­si­fy­ing com­pe­ti­tion at home.

and in the stock mar­ket:

The two-​day slump came in the wake of Obama’s re-​election to a sec­ond term as investors turned their focus back to Europe’s prob­lems and the so-​called fis­cal cliff, a pack­age of tax increases and gov­ern­ment spend­ing cuts in the U.S. that will occur unless Con­gress acts by Jan. 1. Investors see it as a seri­ous threat to the eco­nomic recovery.

“The think­ing before the elec­tion was that it would remove some of the uncer­tainty, but it seems to have done the oppo­site,” said Tyler Ver­non, chief invest­ment offi­cer at Bilt­more Cap­i­tal Advi­sors in Prince­ton, N.J.

Oh I think with four more years of Obama there is a ton of cer­tainty in my mind as to were we are going.

Update 3: My friend Cyn­thia Yockey is going to be on BBC’s Have Your Say TV show, 10 AM EST face­book page here.