Washington Is Giving Up on Everything
A can’t-do spirit is settling over Congress and President Obama, writes a leading political handicapper.
I, for one, applaud the do-nothing congress for not doing too much. Let Wall St. self-regulate. The private sector, with the help of the fed, has created more wealth in the past five years than anything Obama has done. The proliferation of defense spending that began at the turn of the last decade also creates value, but that was under Bush. Healthcare an hospital stocks going nuts due to the aging baby boomer population. Don’t expect Obamacare to make costs go down or, in the long run, to put a dent in the number of uninsured. We’re in an era of inflation that technically isn’t called inflation such as healthcare, education, beef, gasoline, rent, travel, and so on. Yet, in agreement with my earlier predictions, those 30-year yields just refuse to budge even as the services millions of people rely on keep going up with no end in sight.
Facebook reports blowout earnings and the stock closes at $75 – another historic high and 150% higher than when I recommended it back in 2012. Zillow and Trulia surge 20% each on a proposed merger. Zillow is 300% higher than it’s IPO. So much for that ‘obvious’ web 2.0 bubble that the libs insisted would burst, going back as far as 2007 or so. They the left can keep calling stocks, treasuries, real estate or tech valuations a bubble until they are blue in the face, like the sore losers that they are. Oh, and let’s not forget that the valuations of Snapchat, Pinterest, AirBNB, Uber and other fast growing web 2.0 apps also gained paper value today, thanks to the huge Facebook earnings. Bay Area home prices keep going to the moon. Lots of potholes on the roads and ppl in low paying jobs or unemployed juxtaposed with Silicon Valley prosperity that would make kings jealous.
Not much going on in this slow news cycle. The left, starved for crisis, is looking for any indicators, however small, for the next economic and stock market meltdown. It was supposed to be Putin, but that came up empty-handed. Or the negative GDP reading a few weeks ago, which to the disappointment of the left, was a dud. The anti-establishment left wants the college bubble to burst, but that refuses to happen, too. Just like biology is immutable, so are these trends and this is why they refuse to terminate, even when every liberal pundit says they should.
The good news is as a nation, we’re becoming smarter and more informed than ever, unlike as recently as a decade ago when laypeople didn’t care about economics. We’re still in a STEM economic recovery, with individuals as to quote Aaron Clarey with ‘bullshit degrees’ finding themselves unemployed and deep in debt. The bad news, but not really a surprise, is that we’re becoming a nation of whiners and crybabies looking for handouts, seeking crisis, and for someone to blame – be it the fed, Washington, the rich, tech companies, and so on. Sometimes, we need to learn to come to terms with job loss and the inability to find work as being an inconvenient, but necessary part of the evolution of the economy. Many college educated millennial, being more educated in economics and than any previous generation, agree with the Supreme Court decision to make Hobby Lobby exempt from Obamacare. Most men, especially of the neckbeard generation agree that women should pay for their own birth control, instead of corporations.