Posted on 06/21/2010 11:25:42 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Governor Sarah Palin is going to bring the economic crisis to an end. That’s Rob Bennett’s prediction. The twist is that Bennett claims Palin may be able to accomplish the task “before she becomes President.” Is Bennett going out on a limb–or climbing onto the limb and sawing it off?
Palinomics
Governor Sarah Palin is going to bring the economic crisis to an end.
That’s my prediction.
I think she may do it before she becomes President. It would make a good talking point in the debates to be able to say that you solved the nation’s most pressing problem before even taking office, wouldn’t it?
I was reminded of my favorite moment from the Palin/Biden debate by Jay Nordlinger’s entry at the National Review blog last week. Here’s what Jay had to say:
”In the general election of 2008, the candidates talked a lot about the home-mortgage crisis, as well they should have. And they said how evil Wall Street was — how evil the lenders were. They had hoodwinked the people and all.
“But Sarah Palin did something quite unusual — she certainly did this in the vice-presidential debate. She said that the borrowers had a role to play too: something to answer for. Didn’t our parents tell us to live within our means? she said. “We need to make sure that, as individuals, we’re taking personal responsibility through all of this.”
“You hear about “speaking truth to power.” Everyone loves to do that: “speak truth to power.” There is such a thing as speaking truth to the people, too. Politicians, understandably, are reluctant to do this. Palin isn’t.”
Palin’s gutsiness on this point resonated with lots of ordinary folks. Both Republicans and Democrats participating in a Frank Luntz focus group responded with enthusiasm to Palin’s assertion re the economic crisis that “we have an opportunity to learn a heck of a lot of good lessons from this and say ‘never again will we be take advantage of.’”
Precisely so.
Our economic and political systems are under threat today. The Get Rich Quick investing strategies promoted relentlessly for the past three decades have set back our retirements by many years. The financial misery caused by the Crony Capitalists backing the Buy-and-Hold “strategy” has caused many to lose confidence in our free market economy and the next stock crash will undoubtedly cause many more to do so.
But all is not lost! As Palin observes, with crisis often comes opportunity. The reason why the defense of Buy-and-Hold has been so savage is that the Crony Capitalists promoting it know well that the average person loves the idea of being able to invest more effectively and hates the Get Rich Quick aspects of today’s conventional investing wisdom. The phrase that haunts the Crony Capitalists when they are trying to drift off to sleep at night is: What if they find out?
There’s an old saying that argues that “you cannot con an honest man.” That’s what Palin is getting at when she says that we need to focus more on the personal responsibility aspects of today’s crisis. We were not responsible for the con. But we permitted it. It is by wising up to what was done to us that we empower ourselves to make up for the losses we have suffered and to get about the business of learning of the investing strategies that insure that “never again will we be taken advantage of.”
I’ve been writing about the flaws of Buy-and-Hold and of the need to make the transition to Valuation-Informed Indexing for eight years now. There have been hundreds of people who have offered kind words of encouragement and gratitude. But there has been something important lacking in our discussions going back to the first day. “Where is the anger about what has been done to millions of middle-class people?” I keep asking myself. “Why do people not stand up for themselves?”
We need to get mad! That’s when good things will begin to happen. That’s when we will see the Buy-and-Hold house of cards tumble to the ground.
One of the women interviewed by Luntz pointed to an encouraging sign when she observed that “we all feel angry.” None too soon, I might add! And one of the men interviewed by Luntz added that “I felt it [Palin’s comment re the need for us to own up to our personal responsibility for the economic crisis] was a 911 moment, it was a patriotic thing.”
Yes. The amount of overvaluation in the stock market in January 2000 was $12 trillion. A free market economy cannot take a $12 trillion hit without it doing serious damage to all of our plans for the future and even to our confidence in our system of government,. The Crony Capitalists who push Buy-and-Hold are not terribly concerned about the human misery they have caused. They have their own problems.We are on our own re this one.
We can do this! We don’t need the “experts” to tell us how to invest. Common sense is what works. Common sense tells us that we should not have stayed with heavy stock allocations when stocks were priced to provide a long-term negative return. There aren’t too many politicians today who have what it takes to dare to say that out loud. Governor Palin is friends with real live people who are suffering real live pain as a result of this crisis. That makes a difference.
Common sense may not be spoken today because it has come to represent a threat to people who are making huge amounts of money persuading people to ignore its call. But all signs are that things are going to start unraveling fast after the next crash. Governor Palin is the only political leader I can think of who is today positioned to be able to retain people’s confidence when the work of our betters leads to its inevitable bad end.
Palinomics is going to be comprised of one part common sense and one part personal responsibility and one part optimism and one part courage. In today’s United States, that’s a winning combination that no other politician appears to be willing or able to advance. It gets us back to a free market system that works.
There are many factors that caused the economic crisis. POTUS usually has little to do with it, though they can certainly exacerbate the problem, as we are seeing now.
One person can’t singlehandedly fix the economy either.
Sarah might not be the only one who can help straighten out this mess but she is the best and only one so far.
Buy and hold is the only way you should INVEST. Otherwise you’re not investing, but gambling. You invest for long term and the stock you buy should be ones that pay dividend, not ones where its reliant on stock appreciation
I don’t even know where to begin. What’s valuation based indexing? What’s this guy talking about? Buy and hold didn’t/doesn’t necessarily fail if your buying dividends and/or bonds. Bonds have way outperformed stocks since 1998.
As for Palin? I don’t see it.
This recession is entirely the fault of Nancy Pelosi, Obama, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, George Bush, the Presstitutes, and with minor role played by Newt Gingrich. Harry Reid was a stupid add-on AFTER the election who helped saddle us with Obamacare.
When that witch Pelosi got into office the presstitutes allowed her to spew about “the failed bush admministration” every day.
For 7.5 years everything was fine under Bush-then suddenly 6 months before the election there was a disaster waiting to happend and we needed to rescue the mortgage industry and have $1.4 TRILLION in ‘stimulous’.
Stupid stupid stupid Bush went along with it, as dumb as his father was for listening to democraps and ruining the Reagan revolution. (Ronny should have gone there and booted him right in the ass)
Bush 2 should have told them to stuff it until after the elections. Let the ecomoney fail AFTER they got into office, not before. (and it WAS going to fail thanks to Chris Dodd and Bawney Fag)
Gingrich helped by getting on the air and supporting the bailout and stimulus. Up until he stepped in I was certain it was all democrap horse$hit.
But after that, and his support of Scuzzyfava, I NO LONGER CARE WHAT GINGRICH SAYS
“What’s valuation based indexing?”
This is Rob Bennett, the fellow who wrote the “Palinomics” column.
Those who want to know more about Valuation-Informed Indexing might want to look at the earlier entries to the DBKP column (the Palin article was the eigth entry; new entries are published each Monday). The difference between Valuation-Informed Indexing and Buy-and-Hold is that with VII you change your stock allocation in response to dramatic price changes. You buy stocks in the same way you buy everything else — when the price is good, you go with a high stock allocation; when the price is bad, you go with a low stock allocation. The historical data (going back to 1870) shows that long-term timing (changing your stock allocation in response to big price changes with an understanding that it may take 10 years to pay off) ALWAYS works. VII ALWAYS beats Buy-and-Hold on a risk-adjusted basis in the long run.
What Palin can do that no other political leader has the guts to do (in my opinion) is to bring to the attention of the middle-class investor the efforts that The Stock-Selling Industry has gone to to keep knowledge of the realities of stock investing (as revealed in the academic research of the past 30 years) from middle-class investors. Buy-and-Hold (ignoring valuations when setting one’s stock allocation) DOES help The Stock-Selling Industry. It’s effective from a marketing standpoint because it appeals to the Get Rich Quick impulse within all of us. It also always leaves investors busted in the long run. Buy-and-Hold has caused an economic crisis on each of the four times it has become widely popular.
The reason why I see Palin as different is that in her debate comments she focused on the need to consider financial responsibility questions when trying to overcome the economic crisis. It is financially irresponsible not to consider valuations when setting your stock allocation. Not too many of our economic or political leaders have the courage to tell us that. it makes some people angry to hear that message voiced. But I have seen a good number of people respond positively to the message. Many have been skeptical of Buy-and-Hold all along. If Palin publicized this message among her followers and among people in the Tea Party, I think that the same people who oppose the financial irresponsibility of huge deficits would also oppose the financial irresponsibility of the promotion of Buy-and-Hold Investing. The idea of letting people know about more responsible approaches would catch on and we would be on our way back to having a functioning free market economy.
Rob
I appreciate your sentiment, but frankly, I don’t think any of it matters; Palin is, in my opinion, going to end up a footnote in U.S. history; she and virtually everything else will be overshadowed by the fact that the U.S. is entering the Third Great Depression. No one at Freep seems to be following the “real” economic news, but the Deflation has gone live on the MSM and heard this a.m. on Bloomberg that the double dip has become obvious with decline in housing prices and a fall in consumer confidence/sentiment. The mid-term elections will be co-opted by the administrations drive for “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” so most experts expect any substantive change in the make-up of either the House or the Senate. This is becoming more likely as the ability of the Dems to steal elections in key areas has become more apparent. This will be confirmed by the election of Bill White as Governor of Texas. The turn of the “Hispanic” vote against the Repubs inables the Dem party operatives to steal elections in all of the Texas major metro areas and in the Rio Grand Valley by the production, when and where needed, of previously unknown e-slate voting machines from the Hispanic precincts. This coupled with the same capability in the Black precincts puts them well over the line to take Texas back at the State level.
I expect we’ll see accelerated layoffs in the Oil & Gas sector by late summer/early fall further depressing housing prices. If it hasn’t by then already fallen off a cliff, the Market is doomed to crash in November as the wealthy sell stock to avoid capital gains and other tax increases before year end.
We are witnessing the end of the epoch of American prosperity.
Comments are that this is ridiculous. We have so many massive crisis coming our way, there is nothing other than a complete re-set that will change anything.
Whether its the public employee union pensions, the unfunded liabilities of the entitlement programs, the cost of the wars, etc, the demographic problems we have, etc, we are royally screwed IMHO.
That’s okay, but you’re leaving a lot of money on the table that others (often professionals) can scoop up. Some people may be better identifying growth companies and contributing funding to such companies is critical to our economy.
Obama, is that you? Get off that Blackberry and back to our country’s business!
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