Not So Deftly Over Regulated

It's not as if investors couldn't see this coming.

The U.S. dollar's been on the rise for a while now, recently hitting a 14-year high after the recent not-my-president's selection crybaby losers including apparently those members of New York's dancing Rockettes. Maybe the unemployment rate there will jump?

Supposedly, higher interest rates and the arrival of that elusive critter, inflation, that the Janet Yellen's data-driven Fed searched so long and so fervently for lend to a stronger currency. Supposedly too both are fillips for better times. In trite, shopworn Keynesian vernacular that translated into one of the longest, phoniest economic memes, consumers will do their part and create more debt by pushing up retail sales and the economy will magically re-right itself. Those damn intractable consumers. Most of them probably reside in flyover territory.

If cheaper prices are reportedly good for loony shoppers why are they not good at least in part for domestic manufacturers who use imported stuff to make their products? Are they loony, too? So the caterwauling over a rising buck has cranked up, much of it directed at the president elect's expected programs. The man hasn't even take his oath of office yet and you have one of the worst occupants of the White House in this nation's relatively young existence hopefully riding into historical oblivion in a fortnight or so and the hand wringing is already over the top.

Trump and his outlook has been called delusional, among some other well-plotted epithets. But the current resident White House golfer thinks he would have scored a third term if election laws were different. Some elected officials apparently continue to do drugs while in office. Some election laws need to be changed, but the College of Electoral votes isn't one of them. Banning any and all prospective presidential candidates from playing golf while in office, however, is one sorely needed.

The number one deterrent to homegrown manufacturing jobs is over regulation not a strong dollar. Now for those economic geniuses from Ivy League Land who love to recite their favorite con--"It's oversimplified, too small or simple to be significant."--we will repeat that point. The real bogeyman is over regulation not a strong currency. These are people who mostly in their careers never wrote a simple, straight forward declarative sentence like: "Billy hit a home run. He deftly touched all the bases on his way home." The next time an econometric-model trained economist does anything deftly will be the first time.

Color consumer confidence among the signs that things are looking up. As the Wall Street Journal  today reports: "Americans grew more optimistic about the economy in December, a sign that the postelection bump in confidence continues. The Conference Board said Tuesday its index of consumer confidence rose to 113.7 in December up from a revised 109.4 in November. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal expected the index to rise to 109.8 in December. The December reading was the highest since August 2001."

So as the New Year and a new president looms things are getting muddier and muddier. Make that your investment theme for 2017 and you should do just fine.