This is a transcript of a discussion on yesterday’s show:
President-elect Barack Obama calls it “the largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s.”
The New Deal – all over again.
Most of the infrastructure spending being proposed for the massive stimulus package that Obama and congressional Democrats are readying, however, is not based on anything new. The money will go to projects that have been on the wish lists of state highway departments for years.
Obama wants to “rebuild America” with an “infrastructure bank” run by a new board that would award $60 billion over a decade to projects such as high-speed rail to take the country in a more energy-efficient direction. But the current economic issue has put some pressure to start projects immediately – low hanging fruit - “use it or lose it,” according to Obama. What he means is that while America is in a spending mood, we gotta get some stuff started. Gotta get the spending started. But let’s take a look at the New New Deal – and actually the Old New Deal for that matter.
By Steve Selengut
http://www.sancoservices.com/
http://www.kiawahgolfinvestmentseminars.com
Professional Investment Management from 1979
Author of: “The Brainwashing of the American Investor: The Book that Wall Street Does Not Want YOU to Read”, and “A Millionaire’s Secret Investment Strategy”
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Every fall, especially in opportunity rich markets like this, I encourage investors to think about some year-end strategies that make the final calendar quarter a special time in all markets. Several forces are at work, all of which have links to conventional Wall Street wisdom; none of which promote good long-term investment decision-making.
This year, we have the added excitement of anticipating a new, perhaps economically too liberal, administration taking over with an already implanted, and demonstatably inept, congress. The markets are in a truly unprecedented state of “uncertainty overload”. What’s an investor to do— or not to do?
Typically, the November syndrome has features that impact in both directions. It causes weak prices to fall even further and strong prices to climb higher. This year, the strong category requires a microscope for candidate viewing, while the weak seem to have inherited the listings. Money Market funds and Treasury securities are the low yielding, lower-risk, depositories of choice.
At the individual investor level, the mad dash to lose money on equity securities has begun. The idea that this is somehow a good thing is an anomaly created by a counter productive tax code and an industry that has a vested interest in perpetuating the absurdities it (the IRC) creates.
Assuming that we are dealing with investment grade securities, lower prices should most logically be seen as an opportunity to add to positions cheaply— not as an opportunity to reduce one’s tax liability on investment earnings. There is, and never will be, a good loss or a bad —.
Naturally, both you and your CPA feel better with lower tax bills, but why sell a perfectly good security at a loss to produce pennies on the dollar in tax relief? Speculations, sure, valueless securities, why not? But when nearly all IGVSI stocks are at their lowest levels in decades, selling for losses should be the last thing on your mind.
Sphere: Related ContentOn Tap for Today:
Listen to this audio of a radio show interview with Senator Obama - and then his recent comment to Joe about redistributing wealth for “all those behind you”. What Senator Obama is bringing to the American presidency at a time when Democrtas are the majority in the house and senate is a policy that allows HIM to decide who makes too much money and who makes too little.
Here is a transcript, as well. Read for yourself.
Obama: You know, If you look at,um, the victories and failures of the civil rights movement,um, and its litigation strategy in the court. I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights,ah, in previously dispossessed peoples, so that I would now have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it I’d be o.k. Ah, But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, uh, and, sort of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society.
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