It seems like the mandatory forecasts for next year keep getting earlier and earlier, but in light of our commentary from years ago and the fact that almost everything from finance to politics to you name it can be categorized in the ” you can’t make this up” category, we have come up with our un-forecast. The un-forecast consists of things which we feel you should actively ignore in the coming year ahead.
- THE FED The credibility of this organization died a long time ago, but in a fitting tribute to our nations only Central Banker who recently passed away (Paul Volcker), you can quit obsessing over the minutiae of Fedspeak and the parsing of words for the purposes of obfuscating what is clearly an asymmetrical policy designed solely to keep capital markets elevated.
- Political Parties and The Economy Ignore the rhetoric around politics and the economy and what one candidate will do or won’t do. The political system in this country is irreparably broken so don’t look to either party as either a panacea for what is broken or a source of practical solutions.
- Arbitrary Environmental Deadlines While we do feel the U.S. decision to pull away from the Paris Climate Accord was more about undoing anything Obama, agreements, accords and pacts like those of the Paris accord, or those involving countries vowing to eliminate combustion engines by the year 2050, etc.. are not about practicality or feasibility but rather about the optics of doing the “right thing”
- Additional QE Ignore the additional QE talk. Its already happening and the Fed is calling it bookkeeping maintenance, whatever they call it, it is funding the budget deficit e.g. Fed’s balance sheet has expanded since this “plumbing problem” surfaced by $297Bln at the same time the deficit has expanded by $260Bln, some coincidence.
The Informed Contrarian 