The opening segment of NFTRH 212 did what an unbiased financial
writer probably should not do and discussed politics. Then 24 pages of
straight analysis followed.
Financial writers far and wide are weighing in on the US Presidential
election result and its implications. So jumping into the ring, here
are mine.
For the third cycle in a row I cast a protest vote. After voting for George Bush in 2000 (actually it was more a vote against
Al Gore) I wrote in Ron Paul in 2004 and 2008. This year I voted for
Gary Johnson, although I do not consider myself a Libertarian. I
consider myself an independent who has long since been alienated from a
two party system that looks a lot like dangerously competitive cartoons
from opposite ends of a narrowly constructed ideological spectrum.
When you write a newsletter, you learn about being a newsletter
writer; just like when you become a plumber, you learn a lot about
plumbing. I once made an unfavorable public blog post about what I
considered to be a cartoon that went by the name of Sarah Palin and was
summarily served with an indignant email and subscription cancelation
from an otherwise satisfied NFTRH subscriber. Lesson learned: There is
little place for political commentary in financial analysis. Besides,
political ideologues make really biased financial commentators; and in
the markets bias just kills you.
Disregarding this for a moment, my view is that the 16 years under
Bill Clinton and George Bush resulted in a rigged system that did indeed
help the rich get richer, the poor get poorer and the middle class get
positioned right over a trap door.
If you depersonalize it, you may see that Barack Obama was simply the
agent of redistribution that was always fated to come to power in the
wake of a stacked game that just kept right on giving to certain
well-placed interests that used, abused and benefited from the fruits of
the system of ‘Inflation onDemand’. My public writing has been very consistent since 2004 with regard to this dynamic.
A system took hold that depended on outsourcing real and productive
industries (and thus, jobs) in favor of the much easier path of
leveraging the world’s reserve currency and the Treasury bond market to
in essence print our way to perceived prosperity. Privileged entities
in the financial world got to use the money – compliments of bogus
interest rate policies of the Greenspan and later, Bernanke Federal
Reserves – before it was sliced, diced, marked up and sold to the
public.
A personal frustration throughout the 2003 to 2007 timeframe was that
I felt nearly alone (along with a relative few other crazies) in my
negative view of what the inflationary regime would bring to this
society. My commentaries were filled with references to ‘McMansions’
and ‘60” Plasmas’ bought on credit. My harshest commentary was reserved
for a hubris-addled society that refused to wake up to its oncoming
plight, not for the stooges they elected to political office. You get
the government you deserve.
Now we are here. People are waking up and getting pissed, but where
was their indignation when they were blissfully living on a precipice in
the pre-2008 crash inflationary bull market that seemed to lift all
boats? Fat, dumb and happy is where many people were.
We are down the Rabbit Hole and
the world has not ended my friends. It is changing. A rotten system
is morphing, but is likely to use the same inflationary mechanics as its
previous version. The would-be beneficiaries have changed to be sure.
But it is the same system and frankly and speaking personally, I
decided to play this system for all it is worth a long time ago. If you
can’t beat ‘em…
There is no place for belly aching and ideology in financial market
management. This newsletter is all about coldly managing what is, not
what we want it to be. So with that said, we happily move on to our
usual programming with the political environment only to be mentioned
when it is relevant to the analysis from here on.
