Friday, March 31, 2017

QUARTER END

With a bit of a whimper to be honest.  I keep marveling at the attempts of those in the know to explain what is going on.  Today there were competing stories in the same newspaper, one explaining how the the Trump rally/economic push hasn't materialized whilst the other was marveling at the 13% growth in equities since the election and inflation finally reaching the Fed's target of 2%...yep, 2%.  We made it!  Hallaluya...I think.

Trying to make sense of all of this I called He Who Knows All Things.

"What do you make of all this?"

"I donno."

This is very troubling because HWKAT is the source of last resort.  Fear, cold, grasping fear right in the middle of the gut.

" I was speaking with [expletive deleted] who of course hates Trump. There is no doubt the...ah...elites on both coasts and of both parties wants the guy out.  Then again, except for the hard left among them no one can really express why.  So I asked ED straight out whether he was sorry he didn't throw his hat in the ring when he had the chance.  Funny response.  He said he really believed he could do better.  Then why not, I asked.  He said he had asked himself that a number of times and had no answer.   The fear of losing was all he could come up with.  And I thought, 'God, have we all become so self-absorbed that the fear of public failure even for a guy this successful is too much to contemplate!'"


"Think they'll get him?"

"No, I really don't.  Tell you why.  From a lot of standpoints this quarter is going to look pretty good and every day the sun comes up the fear of the world ending becomes less and less.  Watch the earnings and particularly manufacturers.  With consumer confidence through the roof that sector has to be good.  If the bank guys didn't get too pleased with themselves and got hammered when bonds went on that roller coaster ride, they should be terrific.  But never underestimate how dumb some of these guys can be.  Even ED agreed.  Said next week could be critical, however."

"The Chinese?"

"Very good.  Big meeting.  We see how good a deal guy he is.  There are a lot of trade-offs."

"Such as?"

"Look they need us probably more than we need them, but they have one big leverage point."

"The little fat nut.?"

"Yep.  If he goes away...I mean really goes away...Lin gets a lot.  He has real problems; probably greater problems than we realize.  And neither he nor the country has that much time.  Forget about the 5000 year patience of the Chinese.  That works when the next rice paddy is a  journey to another country.  These good little socialists know what's out there and there's 600,000,000 of them who ave not experienced any of it.  Next week is a very big one for our Accidental President..  Forget about everything else."

I hung up thinking HWKAT is a pretty smart guy...who left me no better off than I was before I dropped a dime...trying to make sense of this






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