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For the past 16 years, the stock market has been essentially flat and has moved primarily sideways. This is markedly a different looking graph over a 16 year period than other similar stretches of time since the stock market came into existence (other than the Great Depression).
Interest rates are near zero, which has virtually never been the case over our country's economic history: when use of other people's assets costs nothing. And now the federal reserve chairman Janet Yellen is not ruling out NEGATIVE interest rates: charging people to use their money. How is that even possible?
In the big picture, it's not possible. The artificially low rates right now are a political creation cobbled together by collaboration between governments and banks. How long this will hold, nobody is certain, but most reasonable folk tend to think that interest rates simply have to go up at some point.
Enter Donald J. Trump. The general election is less than a year away, and so is the inauguration of the next president. Recall that when Barry was inaugurated, both in 2009 and 2013, the stock market fell hundreds of points each time. Stock markets do not like socialists, for obvious reasons.
And the stock markets started to tank once it became clear that Barry was likely to win the White House: stock markets are forward-looking, and the Big Money didn't like what it was seeing in a young man taking control of our nation who had not a lick of business experience, nor any inclination whatsoever towards solid fiscal discipline. The Big Money saw a tax and spend liberal from a mile away, and the stock market has been in the tank pretty much ever since.
The moment it becomes clear that The Donald is favored to occupy the Oval Office, just watch what the stock market does at that point: it will be a month or so prior to the election, as polls tend to get things right regarding winners and losers (but not always), and the Big Money will make its move at that point, perhaps late summer, 2016.
If you are so inclined to catch the coat tails of Big Money, simply buy equity index ETF's (exchange traded funds) that mirror the S&P 500 and Nasdaq - ticker symbols SPY and QQQ. After the first 9 months in office, 'The Donald Effect' on Wall Street should take the Dow Jones 30 Industrial average from its current 16,500 level to perhaps 22,500 - a swing of a positive 36%.
Accordingly an investment of $10,000 in either or both of these equities should yield a profit (also called a capital gain, something liberals consider evil) of $3,600 in a year. Of course, when the Donald takes office, he will propose cutting capital gains tax to zero, and that money becomes free and clear.
Try getting that kind of return out of a CD, there, grampa. Of course, that eye-popping return is predicated upon the election of Donald J. Trump to the presidency of the United States of America.
Take that to the bank.
As you are so fond of reminding us Republicans, Barry, you won and we lost: elections have consequences.
We understand that concept all too well. Having the executive branch fall into the hands of Democrat liberal lunacy is never going to sit well with conservatives. We should have tried harder to win that office, but we came up short. Twice. Elections matter.
But you don't seem to understand it all that well when things don't go your way legislatively, huh Barry? Now that you have an opportunity to nominate an uber liberal lefty pinko to the Supreme Court to fill the vacancy left by Antonin Scalia's passing, you don't get it that the Republican controlled senate is in no way compelled to confirm your radical, Constitution-hating, commie pinko candidate.
In fact, the senate is in no way obligated to even conduct a hearing on anyone you trot out, Barry. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) has clearly stated as much, much to his great credit (finally). The reason Sen. McConnell felt the need to state this obvious course of action is that the entire nation has seen how radical President Obama has been over the last 7 years of his administration. He has not once sat down with conservative legislators and hammered out a compromise. Not once on any issue. Ever. He has clung to his radical socialist leftist ideology at every turn. To think that he will forward a candidate that is even remotely palatable to the Republican controlled senate is laughable.
So why bother, Barry? Just keep your commie judicial buddies inside your binder, and let the next Republican president fill the vacancy. Because remember: elections have consequences, Barry. You were elected, and we don't like it. That's too bad for us. But so were all the senators in the majority of states that gave the GOP the gavel in the senate: they won, too.
Elections have consequences, Barry. Jam that in your pipe and smoke it, Barry. There's nothing you can do to jam a commie pinko SCOTUS nominee down all our throats.
Not this time.
Now that the dust has settled a bit over the wild and woolly GOP nomination process, it appears that the 'establishment Republicans' are on their way out: the new kids on the block are getting all the attention from the base.
We all know who the 'old guard' consists of: Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Reinz Preibus, and all of those other apparatchiks who make deals with Democrats in smoky rooms behind closed doors. You know, the folks who everybody of center right to hard right hates. Look at our last GOP vice presidential candidate, Paul Ryan: once he was elected Speaker of the House, the first thing he did was cram a 2 Trillion dollar budget down our throats, which was full of pork, corruption and funding for all things liberal (such as Planned Parenthood's malfeasance, Obamacare and other odious garbage that the base loathes). Some leadership. With this kind of GOP leadership, who needs an opposition party?
And now the Old Guard's best bet, Jeb Bush, just dropped out. The closest thing the establishment GOP has in the race now with any shot at the GOP nod is Marco Rubio. Recall, however, that only 5 short years ago, Marco Rubio won his senate seat DESPITE the establishment poobahs such as Karl Rove and his superpac backing the RINO Charlie Crist, Rubio's primary opponent, over someone they considered of distasteful Tea Party ilk such as Rubio.
Odds are now on the decidedly non-establishment types Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. Both of these guys are hated, despised and loathed by the establishment, and if elected, they will usher in a new era of Republican leadership. No longer will the litmus tests be applied which are palatable to the establishment: requirements such as having absolutely no baggage whatsoever, be politically correct and respectful to all points of view. Even if those points of view are despicable and dangerous to the well being of Americans, views that are held by most on the left.
It appears if Trump is the guy, political correctness may be a passing fad, thank God. If you ask me (and nobody ever does), this new management is certainly not your father's GOP. I think I like it.
1,400 unionized workers at a Carrier air conditioner plant in Indianapolis were given pink slips last week. They were told that the A/C units manufactured in Indiana were now going to be made in Mexico.
That kind of headline surely makes the average American seethe with anger, right? Those nasty, heartless suits at Carrier have no loyalty to U.S. workers, and without hesitation will throw 1,400 Americans into the unemployment line. How callous. How dastardly, how low.
Not so fast, there, Che Guevara. There is one major factor that went into this decision that is not getting any ink in any of the mainstream media: the United Steel Workers union bosses were given a choice before this decision was made. They either had to agree to reduce their union benefits packages, and thereby save these 1,400 jobs, or the management had no choice but to shutter the plant and move to Mexico. The A/C biz is highly competitive, and they just couldn't compete when they had to pay these United Steel Workers union members $48/hour to sit at a production station and screw in some sheet metal screws into a compressor unit. That kind of skill is just not worth $48/hour. It just isn't, as you could easily train a chimpanzee to the same skill level. And something had to change.
The union didn't even blink: they dared the management to make this move. They gave nothing back, nada, zilch, bumpkus. The management didn't blink, either: they did their fiduciary duty to the shareholders of United Technology (Carrier's parent company) and adjusted their assets to maximize the shareholder's equity positions.
The bad guys here are clearly not management at Carrier and United Technologies. The villains in this episode are primarily the United Steel Workers union bosses.
Everybody loves something for free. Things that are truly free, or in other words cost the consumer of that thing nothing, are in reality non-existent.
Nothing is free. Not clean water, not clean air, not dirt, nothing. Somebody always pays for the stuff that others consider free. But that never stops Bernie Sanders from offering free stuff for everybody when he's on the stump with a bull horn.
That always seems to work in politics: when candidates offer free this and free that, they tend to get a lot of votes. And in the short term, the winning politician that promises all of this free stuff can indeed provide a lot of free stuff. But that is in the short term only. Once the free stuff runs out (and it always does, since free stuff creates immediate and endless demand), then the politician is either out of office by that time, or he/she diverts attention from the end of the goodies to other considerations.
Bernie is offering free college for everybody. But is college free? It is, if the recipient of the degree doesn't have to cough up any dough to get it. Yes, it's free to that guy. But what did it cost the rest of us? Do professors provide their services to the universities for free? Not on your life. Do the janitors who swab out the hallways of these institutions work for nothing? Not a chance. How about the couple of million administrators who push pencils at these institutions, do they work for free? Nope. Somebody pays for all of this free education.
And who would that be? That would be the American tax payer, that's who pays for these things. And if they don't cough up all of the money for free college, then the policians will borrow the rest to make up the difference, thus adding to our 19 Trillion dollar debt.
At some point, sooner or later, the flow of all of this free stuff (that's far from free) comes to an end. What will life look like in the U.S. when that day comes? It won't be pretty. Everybody who has been promised all of this free stuff will get mighty irked.
And if there are enough irked citizens whose free stuff no longer shows up at their doorstep are motivated to do something about it, that's when things will get pretty ugly.
The only result of these irked citizens who grab their pitchforks and torches and try and force the resumption of the flow of free stuff is conflict and destruction. Just take a look at Greece, and the mobs in the streets demanding that their free stuff continue. Things are getting nasty in Athens, and will only get nastier. The free stuff over there is gone, never to return. That realization is starting to hit the mobs, and they don't like it, not one bit.
Life in Bernie Sanders' 'free stuff for everybody' America will not exactly become a paradise on earth. It will more closely resemble hell on earth, truth be known.
Former Senator Robert Dole (R-Ks) is at it again: raging against conservatism in favor of compromise with liberals.
He has been quoted lately as suggesting that 'Sen. Ted Cruz can't get along with anyone in his own party, how can we expect him to cross the aisle and get along with the opposition?' I paraphrase here, but that's Bob Dole's opinion on how conservatives should operate: compromise with the other guys who want to destroy our country as it was founded.
WE DON'T WANT OUR GUY TO GET ALONG WITH THE OPPOSITION, BOB!!!
We want to defeat them, Bob. We want to beat them like a rented mule, we demand that we beat them like a red-headed step-child. We want to drop Democrats like a bag of dirt, drop them like a bad transmission, or drop them like 3rd period French. We want to assign their horrible ideas to the dustbin of history. We don't want someone in the White House who will make it a point to compromise with communists. Like you did during your entire, wretched compromising career, Bob.
During his entire career, Bob Dole was famous for finding middle ground with Democrats who, as the majority party during Bob's entire career, crammed a big government socialist agenda down America's throats. His main claim to fame was that he was part of all of this socialism, and that he mitigated what the Democrats wanted.
That is akin to an arsonist who wants to burn down the entire building, and Bob Dole steps in and agrees to let them burn down just half the building. Or perhaps the bad guys want to pour a million gallons of arsenic into our water supply, and bold brave Bob Dole steps in and insists that only 500,000 gallons of arsenic be introduced into our water supply. That's how you successfully govern, according to Bob Dole.
Screw you, Bob Dole. You and your Rockefeller Wing of the Republican Party did this country great harm with your compromising with liberals. We are in the shape we are now, primarily thanks to you and your pathetic philosophy of compromising with evil.
Sen. Ted Cruz will stand against the onslaught of liberalism to the best of his ability, and not compromise with it.
Why don't you just shut up, Bob?
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