2017/01/05 Commentary: The Word is ‘Retroactive’
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COMMENTARY: Thursday, January 5, 2017
The Word is ‘Retroactive’
The impressive post-election Trump-o-phoria US equities rally has stalled since mid-December. Maybe that was to be expected from an S&P 500 Index that had run up $250 from the panic election night overnight electronic low. Even the strongest of markets tend to get tired after extended divergence above the longer term underlying trend momentum. And this was no different for one very good additional reason: all the inferences of more amenable economic and business policies were derived from Trump’s broad pronouncements during the election campaign. Even though they were very cursory, that is just the sort of future policy indication which tends to encourage best case anticipation for such a major policy shift. On the other hand, they eventually come under review.
As the Trump cabinet selections begin their confirmation process next week, this is also just the sort of phase where markets tend to question what is actually going to transpire. An additional fly in the upbeat economic outlook ointment is the degree to which the Trump nominees will rightfully commence with the roles relating to legal and security matters prior to moving onto the more economic and market oriented positions. And even once the economic and business factors become a major focus of the new administration after the inauguration, there is the issue of just what the Congress will approve and how much of it is consistent with the campaign pronouncements and more recent assertions of President-Elect Trump. There are some deficit hawks in Congress and other actors with still very wide-ranging opinions of how to implement the economic program.
And there is one factor which has historically been a real challenge for the economy and markets in any productive supply-side changes to the US business environment. That is the degree to which any of the inducements for investment and hiring may not apply to the current calendar year. We suppose the Republicans and Mr. Trump have gone to school on the problems that plagued the Reagan Revolution 35 years ago.
While all of those plans turned out to be very productive in the long run, that era’s deficit hawks demanded a ‘phase-in’ through 1981 and 1982. This either caused or at the very least contributed to the 1981-82 recession prior to the boom. The issue facing the Trump team and Congress now is whether they can pass enough positive measures that can reasonably be made ‘retroactive’ into the current (2017) tax and fiscal year. If they can, then there is some potential for the economic impact to be immediate. If not…
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2017/01/14 Commentary: America’s Kool-Aid Crisis
2017/01/14 Commentary: America’s Kool-Aid Crisis
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Extended Trend Assessments reserved for Gold and Platinum Subscribers
COMMENTARY: Saturday, January 14, 2017
America’s Kool-Aid Crisis
It is more of a prismatic ‘narrative’ than ‘factual’ news environment, due in large measure to the success of social media. A lack of rigorous fact checking allows for promulgation of ‘post-fact’ quasi-reporting. We will be exploring that at length below. In the meantime consider how Donald Trump made use of many ‘post-fact’ ideas to defeat powerful entrenched political machines (his nominal party as well as the opposition) while using social media to spend a small fraction on the campaign compared to his opponents.
Along the way it must be allowed that Secretary Clinton was a mediocre candidate, and her campaign was poorly run. We have previously noted one of the best post mortems on the Clinton loss, and revisit it here to illustrate it was not only the new media environment which spelled trouble for a rigid establishment candidate. That is our late November post that highlighted the cogent view from our friends at MODERN TRADER in their CLINTON DEFEATS CLINTON election analysis. Owner Jeff Joseph teamed up with his very adept Features Editor Garrett Baldwin to take a tour on the Capitol Limited.
That is the railroad line from Washington DC through the Rust Belt to Chicago. This takes riders through now rotting remains of the US industrial heartland. Had Clinton bothered to assess the situation and propose solutions for its residents she might not have fared so badly… unimaginably handing the key states of Pennsylvania and Ohio to Donald Trump.
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