Now that the elections are over, attention is turning to the economy. The stock market rose steadily from the end of August up to the elections. Since the stock market tends to be forward-looking, its recent strong and steady rise suggests that investors have been optimistic. In my opinion, two factors have generated that optimism: 1) The expectation that significant Republican gains in Congress would produce political gridlock, thereby putting the brakes on the Obama/Pelosi/Reid/progressive spending binge. 2) The Federal Reserve's promise of "QE2," a second round of "quantitative easing," the currently fashionable euphemism for creating mind-boggling sums of new...