Hedge Funds Support Hillary

It all depends on what Janet Yellen does. Anyone notice the last few weeks companies have been coming out with financials that miss expectations but their stock price has gone up?

There are few places for the avg investor and money manager to put all the money the Fed is printing at almost zero interest rates. Obama and the Dems love it as it has masked the lack of recovery. Older Americans and many financial institutions don't like it because they aren't getting any return on their deposits.

With the Fed debt the way it is, both the nonSocial and Social, the Feds have reached to point where any but the smallest increase could be catastrophic. The major obstacle to collapse is that the US Dollar is the "currency of the world." In other words, all the other majors are doing worse.

Donald won't upset the Fed's applecart anymore than Hillary. It would be a difficult to recover from tailspin. Next meeting is Sept 20-21. An interest rate raise puts Trump in the White House. Do you think a raise will happen then? Neither do I. But the Fed is running out of bullets.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-doll...ule-1469748023

It all depends on what Janet Yellen does. Anyone notice the last few weeks companies have been coming out with financials that miss expectations but their stock price has gone up?

There are few places for the avg investor and money manager to put all the money the Fed is printing at almost zero interest rates. Obama and the Dems love it as it has masked the lack of recovery. Older Americans and many financial institutions don't like it because they aren't getting any return on their deposits.

With the Fed debt the way it is, both the nonSocial and Social, the Feds have reached to point where any but the smallest increase could be catastrophic. The major obstacle to collapse is that the US Dollar is the "currency of the world." In other words, all the other majors are doing worse.

Donald won't upset the Fed's applecart anymore than Hillary. It would be a difficult to recover from tailspin. Next meeting is Sept 20-21. An interest rate raise puts Trump in the White House. Do you think a raise will happen then? Neither do I. But the Fed is running out of bullets.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-doll...ule-1469748023 Originally Posted by gnadfly

It is all accomplished by managing expectations. When companies report poor results that are better than expected, since the bad news is priced into the stock, it goes up in price because it appears to be worth more.

Hence the reason insider trading is illegal. If you know a better than expected report is about to be announced, you buy first, and enjoy the uptick once everyone else finds out.

While getting caught up with stuff after returning from a trip, I noticed a thread with "hedge funds" in the title. Since any discussion of hedge funds tends to contain an interesting point or two, I decided to click on the link and take a quick look!

The first thing I would note is that the very largest players in the financial world (billionaires and near-billionaires) tend to think of themselves as pragmatic rather than partisan. To that end, they generally play both sides of the aisle. Some may ask why very wealthy individuals often support Democrats, since one might expect them to prefer the party identified with keeping tax rates on high incomes and capital gains from rising.

But there's much more to it than that.

First, big-money players see little likelihood at this time that Trump will be elected, particularly since he seems to have a penchant for shooting himself in the foot at every turn. They have little interest in throwing good money after bad. These are people who try to get their money's worth!

Next, consider Federal Reserve policy. Note that the Fed is stuffed with Obama appointees, including all five governors (two seats are currently vacant). The political leanings of Yellen and her associates are clear enough to everyone. The implication of this is that Fed policymakers would attempt to support a Hillary administration to the maximum extent possible, including the long-term continuation of interest rate repression of the entirety of the yield curve, come what may.

In fact, a Hillary economic agenda would almost certainly double down on that of the last seven years. In other words, continuing (and possibly expanding) an obese, stifling, anti-growth regulatory regime, failing to do anything meaningful about our disastrous corporate tax code, increasing capital gains tax rates, blocking anything in the way of financial and health care reform, etc. Such an agenda would virtually guarantee that the best our economy would see is a continuation of the slow-growth slog we've experienced for quite a few years now. In turn, that would place continuing political pressure on the Fed to "do more." (The "more" implied here hasn't done much of anything to boost the "Main Street" economy yet, but never mind.)

But all of this creates a nice, smooth, reasonably predictable playing field for the big-money crowd. For those of you familiar with the financial world, I'm speaking largely of algo traders, carry traders, quants, HFT platform operators, etc., as well as global macro strategy players.

Another point is that the Yellen Fed seems hell-bent on communicating to the financial world by offering tacit promises that it will signal its intent in such fashion that people will have plenty of notice so they can hit that all-important "exit button" in time. In other words, they'll know "when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em."

While monetary activism by not just the Fed, but all the worlds major central banks, has fattened asset prices far, far beyond what anyone might have imagined six or seven years ago, the Main Street economy -- and much of America's middle class -- still struggles. If you're a saver of modest means, you can't earn more than a tiny pittance on savings accounts or CDs. No dessert for you!

There's a sad irony here, and you certainly will not read about it on the progressive blog sites or on The New York Times editorial page. Although Hillary Clinton bemoans income and wealth inequality quite regularly, her favored policy prescriptions would do more to exacerbate it than to relieve it.

If you want to see what "trickle-down" economics really looks like, that's where to look!
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I'd like to get a response out of Yssup, but I guess he either hasn't thought it through or doesn't have strong feelings about the Citizens United decision, one way or the other. There are too many Democrats who use it as a catch phrase to blast the opposition, without realizing that there's a freedom of speech issue and that it helped them more than it helped Republicans. Originally Posted by Tiny

LOL! Hey Tiny, I can already tell from reading your posts that you're in a different universe than assup is in terms of intellectual development and capability for rational thinking and constructive debate.

Assup doesn't know beans about Citizens United other than his marching orders are to oppose it! Notice how he deflected and turned your question back on you. You gave an excellent answer. Any normal, educated, intellectually curious and open-minded person would reflect on your points and try to respond. Assup can't and won't. You might as well be talking to a doorknob. Or a pig!

Although we had discussed the topic in this forum only a couple of months ago, I forgot to mention one of the most important issues to hedge fund and private equity managers -- carried interest.

Brief explanation: http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/brief...ld-it-be-taxed

Despite public protestations to the contrary, Hillary was -- for a number of years -- willing to run interference in the Senate for her largest donors. In fact, another zealous class warrior (fellow NY Senator Schumer) did the same. Those two certainly know how to get their bread buttered!

Of course, donors realize that their recipients have to "talk a good game," and actually convince voters that they really will increase taxes on the "rich" to as high a level as possible. But late in the day there comes a "wink and a nod," and ... poof! (No action is taken; at least, none that resembles what was promised to voters.) The simple fact is that it's so much easier to keep issues like this around as talking points to continually demagogue, rather than to actually do anything.

Here's another irony. Many observers believe that Trump might actually be more likely than Hillary to go along with efforts to end the carried interest preference. In fact, numerous reports indicate that he's been talking about it repeatedly on the stump. It's also believed that a number of Republicans would be willing to give some ground on this issue in return for rather modest considerations.

In any event, Hillary and her band of merry men seem to be viewed as honest politicians by a number of very substantial donors -- that is, when they get bought, they stay bought!
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Well, hildebeest supposedly unveiled her own tax plan today. Unfortunately I couldn't listen to her speech. Her screeching is like nails on chalkboard to me.

Well, hildebeest supposedly unveiled her own tax plan today. Unfortunately I couldn't listen to her speech. Her screeching is like nails on chalkboard to me. Originally Posted by lustylad

Know what you mean! Listening to that annoying witch ranks right up there with going to the dentist for a root canal.

I prefer to just read the text of such speeches, which takes less than one-tenth the time. Not surprisingly, she offered little more than disingenuous babbling and off-the-shelf platitudes. Among other things, she reprised her support of the so-called "Buffett Rule." Of course, it's pretty hard for a progressive politician to speak more than a few sentences on tax policy without prattling about the Buffett Rule. (Shhh! Don't reveal to any of your progressive friends or relatives that Buffett himself wouldn't see his wealth-creation potential reduced by more than a rounding error's worth of dollars by any policy proposal imagined by supporters of the Buffett Rule.) Yet another irony!

Then comes Paul Krugman, who wrote the following in a column published today:

"So it’s actually quite brave to say: “Here are the things I want to do, and here is how I’ll pay for them. Sorry, some of you will have to pay higher taxes.” Wouldn’t it be great if that kind of policy honesty became the norm?"

(End of excerpt)

Sure thing, Paul! Yeah, it takes a lot of courage for a progressive politician to push tax increases limited to those in the top one percent of the income distribution. (Believing that Hillary's tax proposals would pay for more than a very small fraction of her proposed new spending agenda also requires suffering from a severe case of innumeracy.)

Hillary Clinton: What a profile in courage!
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Then comes Paul Krugman, who wrote the following in a column published today: Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

Yeah, that asshole is always good for shits and giggles!

Which reminds me - we're having a Krugman bash over in another thread. You're invited.

http://eccie.net/showthread.php?t=1807299

A thread bashing Krugman's follies?

Hot damn! Now that's what I call a target-rich environment!

I'm at a 2-day conference in NYC and about to head out for dinner, but I'll check it out after I return home and get caught up.

In the meantime, check out this amusing classic from the video vault:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFEmlgfEGYo

(It's less than two minutes long.)

Krugman's answer to almost any economic ill always involves a combination of heavy-handed government involvement and a big spending surge, irrespective of how unadvisedly and wastefully the money is spent.

I loved the line where an incredulous Rogoff asked Krugman, "So we need Orson Welles is waht you're saying?" LOL!
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