In Search of the Perfect Investment

I’m tempted to say, “Sell everything and crawl into a hole for the next four years.”

The crazy Trump “policies” may not kill you but their unpredictability — and their total lack of thought and study — just might.

Today it started big-time. The instant ban on visitors and refugees from muslim countries which The Trump Organization doesn’t do business with has messed up airlines, hotels and car renters, costing them money and goodwill.

The saddest comment on this came from Josh Brown,  financial advisor at Ritholtz Wealth Management.

To my Jewish, Irish, Asian and Italian friends, let’s remember:

Your ancestors were lower than dirt when they arrived here.

Italians were referred to — openly — as a subhuman race of rats and criminals.

Irishmen were apes and monkeys.

Laws were passed to keep Chinese women out of the country, so that the Chinese males who were brought over for menial labor couldn’t produce offspring.

Jews were spat upon in the streets and routinely excluded from polite society.

Unhire-able. Undesirable. Laws were passed to allow for the mass discrimination and segregation of your great grandparents, not much more than a century ago.

It’s nice that you now view yourselves as “Real Americans.” Just yesterday, your kind were anything but. And I don’t mean in the deep south or in obscure corners of the country. Your forebears were considered human garbage on the streets of New York, Philadelphia and Boston. It wasn’t all that long ago when mainstream politicians were actively seeking ways to get rid of you too.

Josh has a bunch of old cartoons showing what we thought of the human garbage and what we should do with them. Here’s what we thought of Italians:

You can see the rest of his historical collection here.

By far the most disturbing article I read this weekend was from The Week magazine — my bolding:

President Trump is about to tank the economy by Jeff Spross

Predictions are a treacherous business, especially when they concern Donald J. Trump. Nevertheless, I’m going to stick my neck out: Within four years, President Trump will tank the economy.

First off, a few things that I don’t think will matter, since a lot of other commentators obsess over them: Trump’s erratic behavior isn’t going to panic the stock market, and his changes to global trade arrangements will be modest, perhaps even positive.

Worries to the contrary all make a similar mistake: They assume the wealthy and their willingness to invest is the central driver of economic action. Instead what matters is the activity of ordinary people: their trades, their purchases, their daily work, their small risks, their ongoing efforts to make life for their families a bit better. Without all that, there are no financial assets for investors to park their money in.

This brings us to Trump and the Congressional GOP.

It’s unlikely their policies will create a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis. They could if they dismantled Dodd-Frank’s financial regulations, but the Republicans’ majority in the Senate isn’t anywhere near big enough to break a filibuster. To paraphrase Tolstoy, all happy economies are the same; all unhappy ones are unhappy in their own way.

Instead, Trump and the Republicans will gut the U.S. budget, and thus the economy, via reconciliation, a Senate procedural move that allows lawmakers to pass bills with simple majorities if they’re solely concerned with budgetary questions. They’ll use this tool to suck hundreds of billions of dollars out of ordinary economic activity every year, depriving Americans of spending money, shrinking business revenue, lowering investment, and cutting tens of thousands of government jobs. This will lead to even less macro-economic spending, thus sending the economy into a tailspin.

House Speaker Paul Ryan has his budget ready to go, which would take an axe to Medicaid, food stamps, housing assistance, and the rest of the safety net. Then there’s another budget-slashing proposal from the arch-conservative Heritage Foundation, which is apparently serving as a basis for Trump’s plans as well. As The Hill just reported, these cuts would extend far beyond the safety net, and decimate most of the government’s investments in civil society.

A quick sampling: Programs at the Department of Justice that deal with civil rights and violence against women will be reduced or eliminated; energy programs to promote nuclear physics, green energy, efficiency, and more will be cut; the Corporation for Public Broadcasting would be privatized; the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities would be wiped out entirely. Tens of billions will be cut from energy subsidies, transit, water conservation, and more.

Every safety net program is extra money in people’s pockets to spend in their communities, sustaining business and the jobs they create. Every government project invested in, every staff position created, is one more person with a paycheck, who can then go out and spend, producing ripples through the private sector, and leading to more investment and more hiring. Trumps’ cuts will bleed hundreds of billions of dollars out of those virtuous cycles every year.

To get a sense of the sheer scale of the change, the total reductions in the Heritage blueprint come to $10.5 trillion over the next decade. That’s roughly one quarter of all federal spending. That’s truly gargantuan.

Now, some of the cuts in Heritage’s budget are to Medicare and Social Security, which Trump is staying away from so far. Ultimately, the GOP may even balk at repealing ObamaCare’s subsidies. All of which would bring that $10.5 trillion down to $7.5 trillion or $6.5 trillion. Which is still a gargantuan sum.

On top of that, Trump’s appointments to the Federal Reserve will probably slow the economy further. During his campaign, the president was all over the place on monetary policy. But he eventually settled on the standard GOP line: Tight money and higher interest rates. This would be like tying weights to the economy’s back after Trump’s budgets have already bled it by a thousand cuts.

One could argue that Trump’s tax cuts will offset all this. They could add up to $6 trillion themselves to the debt over 10 years, though right now no one really knows what Trump is planning. But the vast bulk of those cuts would not put money back in the pockets of ordinary workers and consumers. They would put money back in the pockets of wealthy investors. Even Trump’s much-ballyhooed infrastructure plan is reportedly going to be graft for big business via corporate tax cuts. All in all, spending reductions will probably far outweigh tax cuts, at least in terms of the economic activity that drives most economic growth.

The original of the article written by Jeff Spross is here.

Earn something — anything — on your cash money.

If you’re “lucky”, your bank is paying you 0.01% on the cash money in your bank account.

That means that for every  $10,000 you have there, you’re “earning” the grand sum of $10, which, of course, is taxable.

You can one hundred times as much. I checked BankRate.com. Here are highest rates no checking accounts with $100,000 in them:

The rates are not exciting, but they’re better than a slap in the belly with a cold fish (tasteless Australian “humor.”)

The Dangers of Golf

While golfing, I accidentally overturned my golf cart. A very attractive golfer, who lived in a villa on the golf course, heard the noise and called out, “Are you okay?”

“I’m okay thanks,” I replied as I pulled myself out of the twisted cart.

She said, “Come up to my villa, rest a while, and I’ll help you get the cart up later.”

I noticed her silky bathrobe was partially open, revealing what appeared to be a very nice figure.

“That’s mighty nice of you,” I answered, “but I don’t think my wife would like it.”

“Oh, come on now ” she insisted.

She was so pretty, and very, very persuasive.

I was weak.. “Well okay,” I finally agreed.

After a couple of Scotch and waters, I thanked her and said, “I feel a lot better now. But I know my wife is going to be really upset. So I’d better go now.”

“Don’t be silly!” she said with a smile, letting her robe fall slightly more open. “Stay for a while. She won’t know anything. By the way, where is she?”

I replied, “I’m guessing, still under the golf cart.”

Harry Newton, who spent much of the weekend watching the Nadal/Federer tennis final from Australia. I’m sure they’ll repeat it — again and again. Watch it. It’s the best tennis you’ll ever see.

Please add your comments below. Please try to be polite. Other readers get very upset at your foul language. Remember three things: First, I don’t get paid for writing this column — except for the tiny bit I earn if you click on the Google ads. I write this blog because it helps me think about my own investments and my own life-style. Second, my stock recommendations have done well in recent months.  If you’d have paid attention, you could have made some money, even with today’s downturn. Third, you don’t have to read this blog. There’s plenty of other stuff on the Internet. I often wonder why readers who hate me still read me and then waste even more of their time writing insulting comments. It’s a strange world. I suspect that Donald Trump has affected our civility. Which is very sad.