The Dow just closed above its all-time high of 40,000.
I don’t pretend to prophetic powers.
Long ago I put my power of infallibility on loan to the pope.
Who obviously can do more good than I can even aspire to.
Enough about me. Back to the Dow.
Newsmax readers read about it here first.
This was not and is not investment advice. For that, consult your local soothsayer.
That said, less than two months ago, I wrote right here at Newsmax:
"The Dow Jones Industrial Average is at an historic high, recently flirting with 40,000 . . . Think back to 2000. The tail end of the golden age of supply-side aka voodoo economics under Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton."
Way back then, supply-sider James K. Glassman, together with economist Kevin Hassett, wrote a book titled "Dow 36,000."
"It got enthusiastic blurbs from a few establishment figures. Yet for the most part the establishment treated the authors, as it did all supply-siders (like me), as raving lunatics. "Why the incredulity? Because the Dow then was then around 10,000 (closer to 20,000 inflation adjusted, but . . . you get the point).
"Glassman and Hassett predicted a triple increase in the value of the top stocks. Voodoo economics! Except, of course, it happened.Admittedly . . . almost 20 years after the authors' prediction. . . . Reagan and Clinton tripled the Dow. Twice. Tripling again should not have sounded preposterous. . . except to an Establishment crippled by a failure of imagination.
"Establishments bitterly cling to the status quo. . . . Both Trump and Biden rode the Dow up. The Dow was around 25,000 when Trump took the oath of office.
"Around 30,000 when Biden was sworn in. Trump's 20% jump over four bumpy years? Impressive. As of this writing, the Dow closed just shy of 40,000. Biden's 33% jump over nearly four shamrock-blessed years? Impressive."
Now the Dow has closed above 40,000. Will it hold its gains?
My Magic Eight Ball says: "Reply hazy, try again."
What are the politics? The great Otto von Bismarck told Friedrich Meyer von Waldeck: "Politics is the art of the possible."
Might even have been true back in 1871.
Since then, at least in America, politics has devolved into Mission Impossible — a jolly demolition derby:
As reported in The New York Times — Trump disparages Biden: "President Biden’s State of the Union address as an 'angry, dark, hate-filled rant' that was more divisive than unifying."
And more from the Times: Trump’s "insults are so voluminous and so often absurd that they have been cataloged by the hundreds."
And in The Guardian — Biden disparages Trump: " . . . Biden has dubbed Trump 'mentally unfit,' while this week his campaign declared that the US ‘deserves better than a feeble, confused, and tired Donald Trump'."
Pass the popcorn!
As H.L. Mencken wrote almost a century ago:
"I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing. Does it exalt dunderheads, cowards, trimmers, frauds, cads?
"Then the pain of seeing them go up is balanced and obliterated by the joy of seeing them come down. Is it inordinately wasteful, extravagant, dishonest?
"Then so is every other form of government: all alike are enemies to laborious and virtuous men. Is rascality at the very heart of it?
"Well, we have borne that rascality since 1776, and continue to survive. In the long run, it may turn out that rascality is necessary to human government, and even to civilization itself. . . ."
The political spectacle is entertaining. That said, all I, a mere voter, truly desire from my elected officials is peace, prosperity, personal and national security. And dignity.
Prosperity?
And as my previous column pointed out, since Reagan both parties have hewed to a rough version of supply-side economics: reasonably low marginal tax rates and reasonably good money (meaning a steady dollar, most preferably gold convertible).
To Biden and Trump, aspiring tariff warriors, I caution you.
"Tariff" is just a euphemism for taxes on imported goods, taxes to be ultimately paid by customers — you and me — not by the suppliers.
Like "China."
Anyone calling for a big tax hike, however they try to disguise it, is either a Democrat (case in point Joe Biden) or a bad RINO. (Good RINOs, like me, are more, not less, conservative than our Grand Old Party.)
So — Hey guys? Back off with the tariffs already!
A lot of that covfeve is just posturing.
Yet . . . trade war is not healthy for children and other living things.
There is plenty of evidence that (most of) us voters (mostly) vote based on reality (most of the time). Not on candidate rhetoric.
Are you, too, a reality-based voter? Care to know what’s really going on beneath all the sound and fury signifying nothing?
Watch the stock market – which rocketed up from 814 to 40,000 over the past 40 years – to discern what the future is likely to hold.
You read it first here.
Ralph Benko, co-author of "The Capitalist Manifesto" and chairman and co-founder of the 200,000+ follower "The Capitalist League," is the founder of The Prosperity Caucus and is an original Kemp-era member of the Supply-Side revolution that propelled the Dow from 814 to its current heights and world GDP from $11T to $104T. Read Ralph Benko's reports — More Here.
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