As in, don't let liberal-conservative-right wing-left wing-democrat-republican mess with investment management reality. Off the Bloomberg website by a financial manager I hadn't heard of before.
A hedge-fund manager was lecturing me about the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003, better known as the Bush tax cuts. I had been suggesting that this fund close its short positions on technology stocks, and move to a more constructive equity posture. I was getting nowhere.
The fund manager, active in New York Democratic politics, couldn't see past the policy issues involved. As long as George W. Bush was the U.S. president, this manager’s bias was against long positions. But as an astute market observer noted at the time, “Give me a trillion dollars, and I'll throw you one hell of a party."
How did missing that party work out for him? From the pre-Iraq war lows, U.S. markets rallied 96 percent during the next four years. Chalk up another bad investment decision to political bias, emotional involvement and lack of objectivity.
Before Republicans chuckle too hard, the exact same conversations played out six years later. In March 2009, I kept hearing how the newly elected, Kenyan-born, Marxist President Barack Obama was going to be bad for investors. Some 10,000 Dow points ago — literally, the very day of the lows — Michael Boskin, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors under President George H. W. Bush, penned a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled, "Obama’s Radicalism Is Killing the Dow."
That was 160 percent ago.
More good stuff if you hit the link. And I suppose I ahve to plead womewhat guilty to being an "inflationista" (see the article).
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