Are We Refighting the American Revolution? - Weekly Blog # 959

 

 

 

Mike Lipper’s Monday Morning Musings

 

Are We Refighting the American Revolution?

 

Editors: Frank Harrison 1997-2018, Hylton Phillips-Page 2018

            

 

 

People Unhappy with Both Major Parties

We act like very young children who protest when denied some little thing. Children, feeling denial is a retraction of parental or family love, then act out to express their hurt and confusion. These little children have matured into us, who express our hurt and confusion by communicating our perceived problems to the identified powers that be, political parties. We are no different than the brave people who came to a new land to fulfill their needs, feeling disappointed with the powerful people in the “old world” who withheld some old benefits they perceived they had.

 

The Issues Faced by American Settlers Are the Same We Face Today

Unhappy people have existed in many countries since recorded time, trying new government approaches to solve their unhappiness. Ancient Greece, Rome, and various city-states tried different approaches, but none lasted long.

 

The American Experiment

We were remarkably lucky that some of our leaders attended European Colleges or were readers of history. They knew of past failures to create governments that had hoped to produce long-term happy people. Unlike earlier attempts, leadership in the thirteen colonies were of different religions and backgrounds. Under British rule all mail had to go to England before it was delivered next door or to other colonies. Consequently, there was not a singular American thought pattern. This is why it took American leaders over twelve years from the Declaration of Independence to develop the US Constitution, and more importantly the Bill of Rights.

 

What Made the US Different is Not Totally Accepted by All Today

While we recognize the presence of the majority, our Constitution recognizes the existence of the minority, or multiple minorities who require their rights to be protected so they cannot be eliminated. The Constitution assumes and to some degree applauds a change in leadership, which increases the probability that legislation will be both a product of the majority and minority points of view. It is up to Congress to pass legislation. The Supreme Court and lower Courts determine if legislation is authorized under existing law and the Constitution. The President is elected to preside over the government, not function as an all-powerful commanding executive.

 

What Are Signs of Unhappiness?

For the last couple of weeks more stocks were sold at declining prices than bought at higher prices. (Investors only accept lower prices when they are displeased with their holdings.) In the current week, 70% of New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) listed stocks declined vs 60% of NASDAQ stocks. In the latest weekly sample survey of the American Association of Individual Investors (AAII), 53.3% were bearish for the next six months vs just 28.8% bullish. Using the average year-to-date investment performance of mutual fund sectors, Commodity funds were +26.78%, World Equity funds +13.26%, and US Diversified Equity funds +11.00%. (Clearly showing domestic inflation has investors worried.)

 

Both US Courts and many Foreign Governments are unhappy with the current administration. We will see this coming week if attendance at the United Nations meeting in New York is lower than expected. Also, this week, Chairman Xi meets with President Trump. Will that change other countries’ attitudes toward the US?

 

What are Your Thoughts?

 

 

 

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Some Past Errors Create Future Problems - Weekly Blog # 798

 

Mike Lipper’s Monday Morning Musings

Some Past Errors Create Future Problems

 

Editors: Frank Harrison 1997-2018, Hylton Phillips-Page 2018

 

 

 

Employers can't find suitable candidates to hire due to both faulty education and attitudes toward work. This is one of the reasons the US is losing the productivity of labor battle. In at least 16 states a large percentage of students are failing third grade reading tests e.g., 60% failed in Tennessee. (In our machine era, if you can't read instructions, you can't operate various machines.) I suspect that teachers are taught to teach to the test, test scores are used for hiring, and schools are retaining teachers in union jobs.

 

Teachers should be teaching students how to use information to gain knowledge. This is not what is happening today. (A classic example is a problem I had with my late daughter. She drove me crazy with her disability, which caused her to have problems adding a simple column of numbers correctly. So, I changed focus and concentrated instead on how she kept track of spending money. She always had money in the bank and her bills were always paid. In explaining it to me, she said that was easy. She said she was conserving the money by keeping it intact at the bank, while we paid her credit card bill. Thus, she was the best money manager in the family. The key was that she figured out what none of her teachers or aids did. The teachers need to learn to teach life lessons.)

 

The biggest problem with what is being taught is the integrity of our history, which pivots on one word: Tariffs. People don't like paying taxes. Politicians throughout history have given popular reasons why people should make these payments, without focusing on the real reasons. Three examples in US history still hurt us today.

 

The “Boston Tea Party”, staged by American Colonists dressed as Indians, threw the first shipment of taxed British tea into Boston Harbor. The Colonists were protesting the payment of a tax without being represented in the British government. The truth of the matter was that Lord North, an unpopular British Prime Minister, needed to pay for a six-year war with the French to protect the American colonies during “The French-American War”. Lord North and many in England thought that America was costing too much. It was being totally financed by revenues derived from goods purchased from “The Mother Country”. The Tea Party thus became one of the initial political events leading to the American Revolution.

 

The second misappropriation embedded in our history is the Civil War. In this weekend’s Wall Street Journal there is an opinion piece by Jim Webb, a US Marine Officer who served in Vietnam and a Secretary of the Navy. He was also an independent director of a respected Mutual Fund. In the article he commented that there were very few confederates who owned slaves. He also noted that more slave owners fought for the North than the South. Yet it remains a popular belief today that the war was about slavery. In truth, the war was about tariffs. The North wanted high tariffs to protect its manufacturing, while the South wanted low tariffs to aid the British who were major buyers of their’ cotton and were suppliers of cash to the Confederacy.

 

Post Civil War through the Wilson administration, Americans were fed a political diet about slavery. For about the fifty years this was happening, the German General Staff made many trips to study American war battles, particularly battles in the Shenandoah Valley with Stonewall Jackson. The study of these battles played a critical role in both WWI and WWII, particularly in their attacks of the ”low countries”.

 

I also believe the German underground political movements in the US led to delays in the US entering both world wars, despite British efforts. (The US recognized the importance of the war and placed its War College in Pennsylvania, hoping to understand both battles and the infrastructure challenges.)

 

The third misappropriation is still taking place today, with the last two administrations selectively using tariffs for domestic political purposes. These tariffs caused inflation that was importantly paid by low-income people. The current administration is attempting to hurt Republicans by damaging corporate earnings through the restriction of sales, while at the same time trying to raise labor union wages and their contributions.

 

With All This Good News-How to Invest?

Like Ronald Regan, “I won't exploit my opponent’s youth and inexperience”.  Neither party is serving up a long-term leader or a set of policies. Most people can see through their own accounts that there is no great future for them. Around the world young people have lost confidence in the "system".

 

With most equities around the world declining in real terms, one should consider a careful plan to dollar cost average into the markets. The more China suffers, the more attractive long-term investment in China becomes. Foreign car companies will benefit compared to ‘the big 3”, as the UAW forces prices higher.

 

Recognizing my COVID Brain does any of this makes sense.

 

 

 

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Michael Lipper, CFA

 

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Contact author for limited redistribution permission.