I Thought We Won
As we approach the 21st anniversary of the triumph of freedom and capitalism over oppression and central planning, I keep wondering if we squandered the victory. Political rhetoric aside, you cannot go back in the record book and put an asterisk on it. Free markets are the engine that drives history in “our” direction. The decline in American hegemony corresponds with the rise in computerized manipulation and government involvement in markets. This is the economic equivalent of a generational
snatching of defeat from the jaws of victory.
The real disgrace is the nations on the wrong side of history have learned from the beat down and changed. Russia is the “wild west” of capitalism with the fastest growing number of billionaires (they skipped over the m’s and went straight to the b’s). China has created a strange hybrid of capitalist effort in benefit of the Central Planners. Leaders sleep lightly, however as the masses will not stay down forever.
I expect as we return from Labor day weekend the CEO’s and CFO’s of America’s best companies will lean back against the degradation of capital markets. One decent bond issue by JNJ or P&G could remove half of their shares from the public marketplace. If you worked at P&G and saw your 401k reduced to pennies by the electronic carpet bombing of HFT, would you not support an effort to become less public? With bond rates lower than ever, shouldn’t the concept of taking the upside “private” be tabled at Boards everywhere? I do not “think” we won – I know it. The shocking thing is how we have forgotten what we were fighting for.
-Kevin Ferry
Chief Market Strategist
Cronus Futures
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September 2nd, 2010 at 12:22 pm
what f-ing drivel.
September 2nd, 2010 at 3:05 pm
Yeah… sorry your carried interest will be taxed at your marginal rate of the Clinton era instead of 15%. Oh the suffering, your time in the American Gulag looks to be Solzhenitsyn-like.
Let me explain something to you Mr. Ferry, the men fighting in Afghanistan are fighting. …You? You are a salesman and day trader. Chief Market Strategist? LOL! Chief clown.
September 3rd, 2010 at 7:54 am
The monied elite will always win Mr. Ferry. Those B’s in Russia all stem from powerful roots of the old USSR. The name of the game is to throw a bone to each of the other classes – proletariat; so that they will keep on laboring away, and the untouchables so they won’t riot!
September 3rd, 2010 at 12:56 pm
… “With bond rates lower than ever, shouldn’t the concept of taking the upside “private” be tabled at Boards everywhere?”
I had to smile. “Table” in the US and “table” in the UK mean the opposite. Mr Ferry might be a Brit working in Chicago? Or, perhaps the context is all that is needed for those in a position to “table” something.
September 3rd, 2010 at 4:02 pm
This poor man is simply delusional——for the past thirty years, the only government “involvement” has been for the benefit of the powerful (rich) overlords who have reaped astonishingly enormous financial rewards for doing nothing to improve this nation’s economy—–and praising Russia’s lawless “crony capitalism” as a good thing? How bizarre!
September 3rd, 2010 at 9:22 pm
“The shocking thing is how we have forgotten what we were fighting for.”
“We??” Kevin, you should see what its like in the real economy.
September 4th, 2010 at 5:41 pm
That triumphalist bullshit is a huge part of the problem.