Vote Like It

We had no idea when we wrote our two recent pieces about Morgan Stanley global strategist, Ruchir Sharma, he would don the cover of our Saturday morning copy of Barron's.

But here's a guy who apparently keeps tossing out a lazy jab that just cries out to be countered. In his Barron's interview, "Global Thinker," he notes, discussing Brexit, Trump and the global populist uprising: Particularly in emerging market countries, populists leaders, once in power, often turn into demagogues who end up pursuing income-retributive policies that can burn down entire economies. Right-wing populists who now control Poland and Hungry, rarely deliver long-term economic growth because, without the checks and balances of a democracy, strongman rule eventually devolves into cronyism and poor decision-making,

After reading that a couple of times ask yourself these questions:

1. What has occupied the White House these past eight years other than a strongman deliberately trying to expand executive power?

2. Income-redistributive policies sound a lot like the Fed's monetary madness of pumping up asset prices the wealthy not the rabble mostly profit from?

3. Artificially tamped and stomped down interest rates that practically wiped out a whole class of people around the globe living on pensions and fixed incomes?  That sounds like redistribution.

4. Where is and has been the long term economic growth of the status quo, things like wages, benefits and income equality?

5. Cronyism: has it not been alive, well and blossoming under the status quo? What was Graham-Dodd all about, supposedly cronyism.

6. What democratic checks and balances? Does he mean, the ones the elites want to instill now to counteract any so-called foolish voting mistakes the rabble might make by voting for policies or candidates the status quo disdain?

It's no coincidence he mentions Poland and Hungry. At least one of those leaders has made the MSM's major misstep of being complimentary to Trump. Sharma then lists his 4Ds--depopulation, deglobalization, deleveraging and de-democratization. Two of his four, deleveraging and de-democratization are shams. Global debt levels, as he point out, are astronomical and in need of a huge economic global enema. It ain't going to happen without a cataclysmic event. War is one. See Italian banking and Matteo Renzi. Who wants to be the first to bite the economic bullet? The European Union has been arrogantly discriminatory in its policies against its smaller members.

Mr.Sharma conveniently skips over one of the real causes of de-democratization--PC. The policy makers, regulators and power elite create more de-democratization a year that a whole gaggle so-called populists could in decade.  It's cute stuff, he proffers. The trade agreements have benefited the few and, as is often the case with the status quo, harmed the many. The left-wing controlled U.S Senate has threatened China to strengthen its currency for years. See Chuck Schumer. Sounds like a beggar-thy-neighbor tactic to us.

The Federal Reserve is an incompetent, out of control bully and has been, allowing the U.S. to put its political proboscis where it doesn't belong. That's spells industrial-military complex. Sharma does have the decency to admit he's been wrong in the past. We say decency because it might just be the plain  absence of arrogance, a trait that usually never arrives until one has been publicly skinned to the bone without benefit of clergy.

Sharma then notes an interesting category he breaks down into good and bad billionaires. The good ones, of course, are in America and the bad ones places like Russia and Mexico. Let's take the bad first. He classifies them as, Barron's notes, making their fortunes "largely the result of  chicanery, family connections and payoff." Apparently, for all his worldliness he hasn't paid much attention to American politics.

The good ones he cites, pretty much all first or second generation American immigrants, are "self-made who created their wealth by developing unique products and services that boosted jobs and economic growth."  Obviously, to Sharma, payoffs and such are not a part this group. He studies those who inherit their wealth as if what many in this country seek to make a crime and associates it with "wealth achieved through other than honest means."

There are many in this country we would classify in the bad category, the whole gaggle of billionaire climate change nuts who are using their funds to force feed others who question them; the billionaires right and left who attempt to buy election outcomes. He states most of the bad guys loiter in the rent-seeking categories like real estate, energy and mining. In his his rent-seeking category he omits governments themselves. How many Americans became billionaires off their government connections, he fails to mention.

Sharma is an elitist talking down to you. Globalization is your banker's friend not yours. If this or any other government were serious about closing  the income gap they would pass term limit legislation immediately with no possibility of return. That would level the playing field a bit. Bring back a sound, sovereign currency would also help. One nearly billionaire off government connections is running for president.

Meanwhile, hold not your breath or imbibe the Street's favorite pablum.You're on your own. Walk like it, talk like it and vote like it.