Movements have ideas. Ideas have consequences. A simple accusation can now destroy a mans career. What will be the consequences of the #METOO movement?
1- Employers will be less likely to hire women.
2- No one will meet with women alone in the business world. A chaperone will need to be present for each meeting.
Category: Politics
The Memo
Snowden has the best take on the memo.
We were told it was top secret and shouldn’t be released to the public because of the danger it poses. Read it yourself and see if you agree with that assessment.
Than and Now
Trump once said the stock market was a giant bubble.
Now.
Putting aside the hypocrisy, politically, this is a huge mistake. This bull market is mature and drawing to a conclusion. Trump is on record taking credit for it. While I don’t believe a recession is coming anytime soon the fed is about to slam on the brakes. A lot will be revealed when (if?) the fed starts to unravel their balance sheet. The voting public will not blame the fed.
Davos Madness
Every year a bunch of fools get together to talk about things they have no idea about. They spend north of 100K to be part of this madness. From previous Davos meeting we have the highlights. I honestly don’t know what some of these comments are even supposed to mean.
A Trump Misstep
Trump apparently wants to sit down with Muller. Pat Buchanan has an excellent analysis on this:
As for Trump, he should not sit for any extended interview by FBI agents whose questions will be crafted by prosecutors to steer our disputatious president into challenging or contradicting the sworn testimony of other witnesses.
This a perjury trap.
Trump is a political novice. He surrounded himself by two types of people:
People who are also political novice.
People who probably voted for Hilary Clinton.
The people around him are probably telling him, “You have done nothing wrong. Do not worry. Just tell the truth.” Prisons are filled with people who have done nothing wrong. Besides, this is not about finding a criminal. This is about politics and power. As Lavrentiy Beria once said, “Show me the man, I’ll show you the crime.”
Trumps best bet is to just ignore it. Muller’s investigation is slowly loosing credibility in the mind of the public. No one even pays attention to it any more. Each week Trump should post the dollar cost of this investigation. Itemize every move they make. Post it on his twitter feed for the world to see.
The Infrastructure Plan and Broken Windows
A six page draft has been released of the white houses new infrastructure plan. Every administration has the same idea. I am inclined to believe David Stockman. It is all a lie. Put aside the fact that all of these activities should be privatized. Government spending on infrastructure is the broken window fallacy in different garb. Frederic Bastiat wrote about it in the mid 1800’s. Henry Hazlitt used this one idea for his book, “Economics in One Lesson”. Among the economic illiterate, this one idea is a plague. It won’t go away. The video below has just under 200K viewers. I hope one day it will have 200 million.
D.C. Chaos
The government has “shutdown”. Those in the media and DC inner circle think it is Armageddon. After all they need to justify there existence. CNN thinks a government shutdown could end all life on planet earth. Than, miraculously, the day after the government shuts down we all wake up and go to work. Nothing has changed. Of course, the government furloughs non-essential personnel. Why does the government hire non-essential personnel in the first place? If they are non-essential why not furlough them indefinitely? These questions are never asked. There is chaos in Washington D.C., but not in rest of the country. My only hope is the government shuts down for real and stays that way for the next 100 plus years.
Presidents and Stock Markets
Partisan hacks are now claiming Donald Trump is responsible for a terrific economy. Novice investors are investing based on this idea. They believe the following:
A successful businessman is now running the country.
He will run the country like a profitable company.
Therefore, I should buy stocks.
Let us start with some facts. The economy has been booming since 2010. I present a few charts to convince you I am correct about this view.
Way before Donald Trump took office the economy was already taking off. We heard from partisan hacks on the right that there was no recovery when Obama was in office. In other words, seeing is not believing.
We heard from partisan hacks on the left that if Donald Trump was elected president, there would be a stock market crash. An entire year has passed. There has been no stock market crash.
Let me dissect each one of these claims.
A successful businessman is now running the country.
A successful businessman is the President of the US (POTUS), but he is not running the country. Presidents are powerless. What did Barack Obama accomplish that anyone remembers? Obamacare. It is falling apart as I write. Health care prices go up, up and away since the promise of the affordable health care act. Congress and the president can not get any thing done. This is a good thing. Governments can not do anything without hurting some one first. Governments have no resources. They only have what they take from others. Governments can not help group A unless they first take from group B. The only thing good the POTUS can do is undo things. This is not happening. The CFR grows by leaps and bounds each year.
He will run the country like a profitable company.
Countries can not be ran like a business. In the business world there is something called profit and loss. A business man starts a company. If he operates at a profit he is making the consumer happy. The market tells him he is allocating resources correctly. If he incurs a loss he is not allocating resources effectively. The market tells him he must change his ways. If not, he will be faced with financial ruin. Governments do not operate on profit and loss. They have no idea if they are allocating resources effectively. If governments could allocate resources effectively, the Soviet Union would have been a wonderful place to live.
Therefore, I should buy stocks.
After making two false statements they now come to a conclusion. Not surprisingly, when your conclusion is based on two false statements you risk coming to a false conclusion. Lets assume Trump is going to win the next election for the sake of argument. Do you believe a recession is not going to happen between now and seven years? If your only indicator is “Donald Trump is president”, plan to suffer a loss in your investments.
Conclusion
Buying stocks based on who is president is not wise. As demonstrated above, the president does not have much power when it comes to the economy. The Federal Reserve has always been the driving force of booms and bust.
Me, Worried?
Mr Stockman has an excellent article posted. It should be read from top to bottom. It has a lot of numbers and pretty graphs. To summarize in one sentence: The US government will have red ink from now until a default.
I agree with his assessment. Here is the difference:
He sees disaster. I see opportunity.
The US government will not be able to fund itself. This is a good thing. It will have to sell off assets to pay for grandpa’s prostate exam. Once it gets very bad, they will pull the plug on poor old grandpa. In other words, they will default on the sacred cows: Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.
Here is our opportunity. The opportunity to capture the hearts and minds of the public. The opportunity to say “We were right. You were wrong”.
The right people will have to be in the right places to articulate the right ideas. Will we succeed? Probably not. The masses will blame the political party in charge. They will blame the president. They will blame everyone except themselves. They will not look in the mirror and write down what they see. A person who tried to vote themselves prosperity at the expense of others. I call this theft by the majority. The masses call it democracy.
I am very optimistic about our small chance to capture the future. Our only weapons are to keep reading, keep writing, keep talking.