My instinct is not to focus on politics too much in this space, but obviously it has played a large role lately in how to think about investing. With that in mind, I think Bill Fleckenstein did a good job of capturing my own personal view on politics in his recent Real Vision interview:
“The people that are the so-called conservatives think the economic engine is the most important thing, and then you can do good works with what comes out of it. The liberals tend to say, no, we want to do good works and the hell with the economic engine. Well, if you break the engine, you can’t do much.”
I think that view is spot-on, and explains why I believe that the women’s march and other efforts to focus energies on idealized notions of the nation state is to miss the point. If everyone is better off economically, the chances are slimmer and slimmer that the worst predilections and insecurities of man will win out. I’m not claiming absolute certainty on this point, but I am pretty sure that the worst moments in human history did not occur when people were doing well – in other words, that’s not when we are most vulnerable as a civilization. And that’s why economic populism was the strategy to win this time around.
Having said that, even if Trump is more economically literate that those who came before him, he can still masterfully screw it up by choosing to implement policies that are just so against the grain morally, as to undermine his ability and support to do the other more important things that need to be done. The immigration ban is a case in point. Yes, he said he would do something to this effect, but its implementation was crude, potentially unconstitutional, and anathema even to those who might otherwise be apt to give him the benefit of the doubt. I hope he finds a graceful way to backtrack on it, even as I find the liberal outrage to reek of hypocrisy.
