The Will To Power December 16, 2016December 16, 2016 My thanks to Summer Sights, my Web mistress, for getting this site back up and on a firmer footing. Please watch former CIA operations officer Evan McMullin on how the Vladimir Putin manipulated our election. (Seven minutes.) Are we really going to let Putin and the KGB win? Renee: “At this point, according to a couple of Hamilton electors I know, what’s needed aren’t more letters to the electors. They recommend instead: (1) Contact your representatives and governors to ask that they demand that the electors be briefed with CIA information on Russian interference prior to Dec. 19, even if it means delaying the Electoral College vote. (2) Contact the U.S. Attorney General to ask that the Electoral College vote be postponed until a full investigation of Russian interference and the Trump campaign’s potential coordination with Russia is complete. You can reach the Attorney General’s office at 202-514-2000 (comment line…press 4). Please cut and paste to share this, and let’s flood the office with calls. You can call non business hours and leave voice message.” One of my sharpest Democratic friends writes, under the subject line “Will-to-Power”: Anyone who still harbors a scintilla of doubt that there are “good” people on the other side, that they maintain an iota of respect or belief in the underlying tenets of democracy, should read this: “North Carolina Republicans Lost An Election, So Now They’re Trying To Undermine The Results.” They lose governor of NC, and decide, before leaving, to strip the office of its powers and money. Republicans want power. Period. Once in power, they move to make it impossible to dislodge them. If, by a fluke, they are dislodged, they emasculate the office. With Obama, it was birtherism and total obstruction. In the absence of a big scandal dragging down Republicans, or a charismatic candidate lifting all Democratic boats, Democrats always lose because they lack the will-to-power. Look how hard the mainstream media tries to “prove” it is unbiased, versus how hard FOX tries. The latter just proclaims it, and spews right-wing diatribe. The former are constantly defending themselves against bias charges and desperately point out the right-wing characters they hire (CNN hired Corey Lewandowski, who was shilling for Trump, and continued him even as Trump attacked CNN—pathetic!). I, for one, am not in this arena anymore until we show that we have the will-to-power. ☞ We show we have the will-to-power in part by having our smartest and most passionate — like my friend — stay in the fight. We need people to stay engaged and, if anything, redouble their commitment going forward. Otherwise, Putin and the KGB and those Republicans who are thugs and bullies (not all, by any means!) win even bigger.
Bye-Bye, Verio — Hello, Electors December 15, 2016 OK. Finally free of Verio, which was simply not up to the task of hosting websites reliably. (Wikipedia: “In early 2000 Verio was sold to NTT at . . . a total cost slightly exceeding $5 billion. . . . In late May 2015, Verio . . . was sold to The Endurance International Group, Inc., a low-confidence provider of web solutions who generally tanks new acquisitions, for around $13 million.”) Now when there’s no column, the explanation is likely to be nothing more than my own sloth; or, should I someday acquire a dog, that he ate my homework. From the Washington Post: As Alexander Hamilton explained, the electoral college provides a backstop in the event voters select a dangerously unfit candidate. “The process of election,” Hamilton wrote, “affords a moral certainty that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.” Electors would use their judgment to prevent the “tumult and disorder” that would result from “this mischief” of presidential candidates exploiting “talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity.” It is important not to take a step like this lightly. The ideas of the late 1700s are not the same as the norms that have developed since — we all should respect the role of the Electoral College to be a “rubber stamp” in all but the most extraordinary of circumstances. But arguably, when our major geopolitical adversary of the last 80 years has conducted a major military cyber operation to subvert our election, designed to install a president friendly to that adversary’s policies (the only thing the Trump team changed in the GOP platform this summer was its position on Ukraine) . . . . . . and when that candidate has been called “a national disgrace” by Colin Powell, a “pathological liar” by Ted Cruz, a “dangerous con man” by Marco Rubio, a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot, empowering radical Islam [and] undercutting everything we stand for” by Lindsay Graham (and more) . . . . . . and when not a single newspaper editorial board other than the National Enquirer and the Ku Klux Klan’s Crusader endorsed him . . . . . . and when he got millions fewer votes than his opponent even before allowing for the yet many millions more she would have received if people hadn’t been assured by every media outlet in the country it was safe to cast protest votes because he had absolutely “no path to 270” . . . . . . arguably, when all this is true, it IS the most extraordinary circumstances, of just the sort the Founders, in their wisdom, imagined might arise. If that’s how YOU feel, here‘s how to write — or FedEx for Saturday delivery — a deeply respectful note to Trump-state electors. My own note would ask them to consider casting their vote for Mitt Romney, who got a higher percentage of the vote when he ran in 2012 than Donald Trump got in 2016; who sees Russia as an adversary; and who might represent a sensible compromise in this most unusual circumstance.
Back On-Line (For Now) December 12, 2016December 12, 2016 So Verio, my host provider, decided to move everyone over to a new system. Unfortunately, both the old system (this one) and the new one failed at the same time. It took five days to get the old one back up, and here I am — though I expect at least one more outage of a day or so duration before it’s all sorted out. More on all that once it’s truly resolved. In the meantime, check out last week’s briefly accessible President Romney post (wherein Clinton asks her electors all to vote for him and 37 Trump electors follow suit) or the Facts Don’t Matter post, in case you missed them. (They’re short!) So much else I would have inflicted on you these last few days, but here’s at least a smattering. THE OOZE If you own any Borealis or follow WheelTug, you might enjoy this presentation CEO Isaiah Cox recently made to a conference called MarketForce. We inch along. (I hope.) ALEXA FINALLY TOLD ME A GOOD JOKE: “There are two kinds of people in the world. People who can extrapolate from an incomplete set of facts and …” OK, you had to be there. But up until now, all her jokes have been puns. She’s gaining depth. (And her parent, Amazon, has topped $760 a share. How far we’ve come from those first books I ordered when that’s all Amazon sold.) And speaking of jokes (thanks, Mel!) . . . “My therapist said that my narcissism causes me to misread social situations. I’m pretty sure she was hitting on me.” OBAMA’S WAR ON CHRISTMAS Did you see Chris Hayes debunk it? Here, in two minutes. Priceless. HOW THE MINORITY PARTY TOOK CONTROL It was carefully thought out in 2010, and boy did it ever work. If you’re not familiar with operation REDMAP, you’ll find this New Yorker piece someplace between revelatory and depressing. That is, if you’re a Trump/Cruz gal, you will revel in it. If you’re me, you’ll want to be sure our side is rising to challenges like these. Lots more on tap, but want to get this out before Verio crashes again. Hope to see you soon.
President Romney? December 7, 2016December 6, 2016 There are so many reasons Trump should not be president, including that he is — per Laurence Tribe on MSNBC, via Salon — “a walking, talking violation of the Constitution.” It’s called the emoluments clause, and it basically says no officer of the United States can be on the receiving end of any kind of benefit, economic benefit, payment, gift, profit, whatever, from a foreign government or its corporations or agents. . . . In this case Donald Jr. or Ivanka or Eric — then there would be a close relationship that could never be disentangled by the American public. He’s a constant emolument magnet. He thinks of himself as a babe magnet, but he’s an emoluments magnet. And all around the world everybody wants to go to his hotels and not the competitors, and wants to give him a variance or a special land use permit and there’s simply no way short of absolutely liquidating all of his [assets and placing the proceeds] into a blind trust and not handed over to his kids. No way short of that prevents him from being a walking, talking violation of the Constitution from the moment he takes the oath. With that in mind, have you seen this idea? That Hillary urge her electors all to vote for Romney December 19, so Putin doesn’t win, after all. Just three dozen or so Republican electors would have to switch. I doubt it will happen or would work. And it would make Trump voters very mad, understandably. But both Clinton and Romney got a higher percentage of the popular vote than Trump did, and either poses far less risk to the world; so it’s a thought. Especially if the forthcoming New York Times revelations on the extent of Russia’s interference in our election prove as sensational as they are rumored to be — and come forth in time.
Facts Don’t Matter December 6, 2016 Have you seen this New Yorker cartoon? About the quiz show “Facts Don’t Matter” where a wrong answer trumps the right one if it’s shouted louder? Paul Abrams shares an all too relevant quote: Since the liar is free to fashion his ‘facts’ to fit the profit and pleasure, or even the mere expectations, of his audience, the chances are that he will be more persuasive than the truth teller. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism “Figuring out how not only to survive this, but to conquer it,” Paul writes, “is the central challenge of our time.” Fareed Zakaria — the indispensable international commentator I tune to on CNN every Sunday morning — analyzes the kinship some, like Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, feel toward Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. Four minutes. Chilling.
The Biggest Story of the Decade December 5, 2016 When the “Hamilton” cast made its respectful plea to Vice President-Elect Mike Pence, it was huge news. (Whatever you think of their having done so, hats off to Pence for the gracious way he brushed it off and made a point of praising the show.) When the FBI notified Congress it planned to sift through yet more emails — having found nothing in the first 45,000 — it was a “bombshell.” But when Russia was revealed to have massively meddled in our election through acts of espionage and disinformation, it was ho-hum. Yet Senate Intelligence Committee member Angus King calls it “the biggest story of the decade.” . . . I happened to be in Eastern Europe last spring with a group from the Intelligence Committee in Ukraine and Poland. The officials there took us aside, and warned us of this. They said this is what Russia does. They mess around with your elections. They put in fake information. They hack into your systems, and they’re trying to sow discord and influence elections. And we talked about it. We understood it. We didn’t think it was going to happen here. It has happened here. Per the Portland Press Herald . . . Angus King: Russian involvement in U.S. election ‘an arrow aimed at the heart of democracy’ . . . On Wednesday, King was among seven senators – all of whom receive top-secret briefings as part of the Senate Intelligence Committee – who urged President Obama to authorize the public release of additional details on the alleged Russian involvement in the recent elections. The request comes amid growing evidence compiled by independent researchers and cybersecurity experts about the extent of Russia’s alleged use of hackers, social media and fake news stories in a bid to influence the race between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton. . . . The tragedy, of course, is that these revelations will have come too late to do much good. Russia won. They helped install their preferred candidate to lead our country. Even though, through the quirks of our system, he got 2.5 million fewer votes. (And even though, according to one pollster, 25% of his votes came from people who — knowing for certain he had no path to 270 electoral votes, because that’s what the media assured them — voted for him to make a statement, but would not have if they had thought he might actually win. If that’s true, and had they voted for Hillary instead, the vote would have been something like 47 million for Trump, 80 million for Clinton. Even more if some Jill Stein and Gary Johnson voters would have voted Clinton if they’d thought Trump could win.)
Stock Updates December 2, 2016December 1, 2016 I don’t want to shock you, but I’m going to write something about money. Specifically, four stocks I’ve discussed in the past. But first, by way of thanks for your subscription, free tickets to an off-Broadway show that I’ve also discussed, “Buyer and Cellar” (“Delicious and wickedly funny!” — New York Times) . . . which I’m able to provide because it’s being broadcast and live-streamed Monday at ten, as explained here. Enjoy! Also: the Nick Confessore piece everyone is reading, in case you might one day want to hide $400 million from your spouse. It’s one more window into the ever-increasing wealth inequality Ronald Reagan set in motion and that Donald Trump — whose Cabinet picks’ net worth so far averages about $200 million and whose proposed tax cut is 14% for the top 1% but 2% for the middle class — has persuaded millions of voters he will reverse. That those voters may be disappointed is a pretty good bet. Chris Brown shares this quote from Chrystia Freeland’s 2012 book, Plutocrats, writing about how they make policy: “You don’t do this in a kind of chortling, smoking your cigar, conspiratorial thinking way. You do it by persuading yourself that whatever is in your own personal self-interest is in the interests of everybody else. So you persuade yourself that, actually, government services, things like spending on education . . . need to be cut so that the deficit will shrink, so that your tax bill doesn’t go up . . .” I expect we’ll find other passages to quote as the Trump years unfold. Okay. Four stocks: Our PRMRF closed at $13.97 yesterday, up from under $5 when last mentioned, in March. That’s mainly because people expect stronger oil prices: good for wealthy people who own shares in oil stocks; not good for those who merely buy it to heat their homes and power their cars. The other two stocks mentioned that day, GLDD and BOREF, remain under $5. They could hardly be more different. GLDD has been a boring disappointment for a long time now, but remains, I hope, a stodgy but solid “infrastructure play” — the nation’s largest dredging company. Silt accumulates. I hope someday better management will appear, perhaps because the company is acquired, and we will (finally) make our modest profit on the position. BOREF remains, in my view, an amazing lottery ticket. But who knew the drawing wouldn’t be for 20 years? In addition to owning a ridiculous amount the stock (if I were married, it could be grounds for divorce), I’ve tried to be helpful to the company more directly. If you invested with cash you can truly afford to lose, hang on. But be prepared to wait a lot longer (television was invented in 1926, no one made a dime from it, to my knowledge, until 1950 or so); and for the possibility that, as sometimes happens with lottery tickets, we’ll lose. GEC was until recently the new symbol for UPIP that I last wrote about here. “It’s complicated,” but if you own any, you were just offered a chance to buy more at $3.285. You have until December 23 to name the number of shares you want. I loaded up. The stock closed at $3.75 last night, and may trend down toward that $3.285 offer price; but (famous last words) I’m pretty confident it will then rise. So shares bought at $3.285 could represent a good value. Albeit, only with money you can truly afford to lose. Have a great weekend!
Two Ways To Go Today December 1, 2016November 30, 2016 This being my FIVE THOUSANDTH COLUMN (according to WordPress; actually, it seems not to have archived the first 100 or so, but why quibble?), I could either try to write something exceptional today — or just take the day off. What to do? What to do?
November 30, 2016 Garrison Keillor’s take on Trump. A Goldman Sachs partner’s take on Steve Mnuchin, Trump’s pick for Treasury: “Not a bad guy at all. But I don’t know anyone at Goldman who would tell you he has the gravitas to be Secretary of Treasury.” Being the change candidate, Trump has apparently chosen a Goldman partner without gravitas for the spot. Gravitas may not have a place in the administration of a man who will say of his ex-wife — on the radio, with millions listening — “nice tits, no brains.” And what are we to make of a president who everyone more or less assumes by now routinely lies? (“I wouldn’t believe Donald Trump if his tongue were notarized,” a Deputy New York City Mayor once famously said of a much younger Trump.) He saw thousands of Muslims cheering the fall of the Twin Towers. (Didn’t.) Won the popular vote if you don’t count the millions of illegal Hillary voters. (Nope.) Can’t release his tax returns because they’re under audit. (Can; and they’re not.*) He’s been clocked at 71 Lies Per Hour. Not good. *At least not the most recent ones, or the many for which the audit must have been completed.
Sell? November 29, 2016November 28, 2016 On the remote chance you didn’t find things to give thanks for last Thursday, take four minutes to watch this man’s life and be thankful you weren’t born in Sierra Leone — and inspired by his mission. Things will surely be a thousand times better here in America than they are in Sierra Leone; but maybe not as “great again” as we’d like. In case you missed Paul Krugman in the indispensable New York Times (subscribe!): A lot of people in politics and the media are scrambling to normalize what just happened to us, saying that it will all be OK and we can work with Trump. No, it won’t, and no, we can’t. The next occupant of the White House will be a pathological liar with a loose grip on reality; he is already surrounding himself with racists, anti-Semites, and conspiracy theorists; his administration will be the most corrupt in America history. How did this happen? There were multiple causes, but you just can’t ignore the reality that key institutions and their leaders utterly failed. Every news organization that decided, for the sake of ratings, to ignore policy and barely cover Trump scandals while obsessing over Clinton emails, every reporter who, for whatever reason — often sheer pettiness — played up Wikileaks nonsense and talked about how various Clinton stuff “raised questions” and “cast shadows” is complicit in this disaster. And then there’s the FBI: it’s quite reasonable to argue that James Comey, whether it was careerism, cowardice, or something worse, tipped the scales and may have doomed the world. No, I’m not giving up hope. Maybe, just maybe, the sheer awfulness of what’s happening will sink in. Maybe the backlash will be big enough to constrain Trump from destroying democracy in the next few months, and/or sweep his gang from power in the next few years. But if that’s going to happen, enough people will have to be true patriots, which means taking a stand. And anyone who doesn’t — who plays along and plays it safe — is betraying America, and mankind. Arguably, it wasn’t Comey or Putin or the press that sealed the deal — it was a single statement, quickly walked back but immediately distorted and amplified — inadvisedly uttered when the candidate had pneumonia, as we would learn later — that, more than anything else, changed the course of history. As argued in this lovely, thoughtful — albeit heartbreaking — piece. And here is why my smart friend John Hook is bearish. (Written in a shorthand aimed at institutional investors, but you’ll get the gist.) The Reagan-election rally in November, 1980, [quickly turned into] a huge sell for 22 months. Stocks crashed 26%. New party presidents usually do the tough stuff first so that stocks correct and then rally into the next election. Trump has called stocks a “huge bubble.” Twelve Bearish Probabilities: 1) Emerging-market currencies are devaluing very rapidly — and have correlated or coincided with stock corrections; 2) Start of Fed rate increases; 3) Low productivity and monthly inflation equal to or exceeding income growth; 4) Record high combined stock and bond valuations and near record high leverage; 5) 7.5 years into an expansion, what can go wrong usually (always) has gone wrong; 6) Inflation spike is likely during winter, probably over the inflection level of 3.0%, led by medical, shelter, oil, and average hourly earnings by spring; 7) Oil probably up 50-80%+ Y/Y ($60-65 WTI) by February because of OPEC & non-OPEC 1-1.5 mb/d production cuts; 8) Core CPI trending higher for more than a year, as now, and the fed has not increased rates, but then does—probably fed behind the curve; 9) Two years of weak capital investment and Fed Labor Market Indicator trending weaker for more than a year; 10) Flat (+/-.2% points) unemployment rate for 11 months or more —often late or end of cycle; 11) Risk of CPI inflation exceeding increase in real disposable personal income starting in 2-4 months and lasting a year as costs increase more than structurally low productivity; and . . . 12) Very rapid increases in 10 YR TR yield, like now, have preceded corrections and large crashes. That said, bear markets, if we have one, are more or less routine — and have always been followed by bull markets. Have a great day.