By Andrew Snyder, TodaysFinancialNews.com

Baltimore — (TFN): I spent most of my weekend in the attic of my century-old house. I wasn’t hiding from a hormonal, pregnant wife. She’s been fairly tame lately. And it wasn’t to escape a surprise in-law attack.

If you must know, I was installing an exhaust fan above the master shower. You’d think sometime over the course of the last 110 years, somebody would have done the job for me, but it turns out the task was all mine.

Now I know why.

While I was up there in a sea of pink insulation, I had one chore I was not looking forward to. With a ladder that reached just 25 feet, there was no way I was going to be able to caulk around the exhaust outlet some 35 feet in the air the easy way.

I was going to have to lean out the attic window and use every last bit of cell elasticity to reach my target.

As I was hanging there, with a pregnant wife hanging on to my right ankle, I couldn’t help but think about Obama’s “Cash for Caulkers” plan. It’s what happens when you hang upside down for too long.

I couldn’t help but wonder would it have been smarter to wait a few months and get reimbursed half my expense? Or, better yet, call up one of Biden’s 700,000 newly employed “green workers” to handle my caulk gun?

Nah, I’ll save them for when it’s time to scrape the old shingles off the roof this summer. If Obama thinks insulation is “sexy,” he’s going to love asphalt shingles in July.

*** In case you missed it this morning, the nation’s great orator organized another national pep rally. This time it was at a Home Depot store in Virginia.

Of course, Obama was not shopping for a new hammer or a couple of boards to build Bo a new doghouse, he was there touting the potential of his latest jobs initiative and economic booster, the so-called “Cash for Caulkers” program.

Even though I’m positive it was an in-and-out kind of speech, I wish the president had spent some time walking the aisles and shopping the store’s shelves. He may have learned a thing or two about the nation’s economy.

Most importantly, he would realize much of his plans are going to improve the lives of everybody but Americans. After all, the average home-improvement store is not filled to the brim with “Made in America” tags.

Home many windows, doors, rolls of insulation, tubes of caulk, washing machines, driers, ovens and dishwashers are made domestically these days? The only thing in Obama’s plan that is made in America is the ten-bucks-an-hour jobs of installing all those foreign-made goods. But that’s a one-and-done job.

Installing a couple of stimulus-bought windows and squeezing a tube of caulk won’t do much good this time next year when it’s time to fund little Johnie’s 529 plan.

That’s why I’m not buying this long-term recovery mumbo jumbo. I don’t trust a global economy supported by a wave of government spending. And neither should you.

If the default risk growing in Greece, Spain, Dubai and Austria is any indicator, the next few years are going to be doozies. It’s one thing when Bank of America can’t make its payroll. It’s a whole different story when it’s the folks charged with maintaining your safety and freedom.

You had better insulate your houses and caulk the windows shut now. You’re going to need the protection from the storm that’s brewing.

*** Did you hear the news from the timber industry today? It’s revolutionary stuff. It proves just why we are so bullish on the cyclical commodity.

Again, thanks to government intervention (or ineptitude), investors have some thinking to do. The question now is if Weyerhaeuser’s (NYSE:WY) long-debated plan of turning itself into a REIT makes the massive timber company a good buy.

As of this morning, corporate executives have decided to make the plunge and start paying the majority of its net income to shareholders. They are starting the payout with a special dividend that, while still undisclosed, is estimated to be worth about $29 per share in cash and stock.

It’s not a bad payout for a company with a $43 share price.

As hinted at above, any major move like this one is not a random act. Government’s over-arching hand has got to have something to do with it. In the case of Weyerhaeuser, the company is “going REIT” in an effort to avoid massive taxation.

By paying its profits to shareholders, the Washington-based company avoids the debilitating tax liability of owning millions of acres of valuable timberland.

Now Uncle Sam’s got to deal with the politically sensitive subject of trimming the top off all of those lucrative dividend payments.

It’s a good thing the IRS is hiring.