I had a couple M.D. aunts who, just on general principles, refused to address anyone who couldn't set a kid's broken arm as "Doktor". They did make exceptions if they liked you..
I am not such a stickler. I use the German spelling because the honorific means more in some places than others, Paul Krugman once typed the sentence fragment "As someone who actually is Herr Professor Doktor Doktor..."*
Anyhoo, From Dr. Ed's Blog, January 10:
The Blue Wave made a big splash as Tuesday’s Georgia election results, reported late Wednesday afternoon, showed that both of the state’s seats for the US Senate were won by the two Democratic candidates. A tsunami of socialist policies implemented by progressives in the Democratic party is now likely. A Blue Wave led by the incoming Biden administration, unimpeded by gridlock, certainly represents a radical regime change from the Trump administration. It is likely to be much more radical than the regime change led by the Obama administration. That’s because the Democrats in Congress are much more radical in their left-leaning political views than ever before.
The Democrats’ win in Georgia could be bad news for entrepreneurial capitalism. It could also be bearish for the stock market if the radical regime change causes a recession. That’s unlikely to be the case in 2021. Granted, the 10-year US Treasury bond yield pushed above 1.00% at the start of the week on preliminary news that the Republicans lost one of the two contested elections. I previously argued, even before last year’s elections, that the yield would be closer to 2.00% than 1.00% but for the Fed’s intervention in the bond market.
My analysis was based on the strong post-lockdown rebound in economic activity and the swelling post-CARES Act federal budget deficit rather than on a prediction of a regime change in Washington, DC. Now that the Blue Wave has prevailed, government spending will continue to boost economic activity, and federal deficits will continue to mount. And, most importantly, the Fed is likely to continue to buy notes and bonds in an effort to keep bond yields from rising too rapidly.
In other words, the Fed is likely to enable our deficit-financed government to get bigger under the Blue Wave regime. The Clinton administration was famously checked and balanced by the Bond Vigilantes. The Fed is implicitly assuring the incoming Biden administration that monetary policy will keep them buried as much as possible.
Now consider the following related observations about the stock market:
(1) Socialism isn’t necessarily bearish. Significant declines in stock prices are caused by recessions, not by socialist regime changes, unless they are so radical that they cause a recession. Socialism may be bad for entrepreneurial capitalism, but it provides fertile ground for crony capitalism. That’s as long as it doesn’t lead to communism. Under socialism, private property remains mostly private. Under communism, there is no private property; everything is owned by the state. In either system, the government gets bigger. Under socialism, the ruling regime enacts more laws and regulations that force businesses to manage their affairs increasingly to satisfy their socialist overseers rather than their capitalist shareholders.
(2) Betting on crony capitalists. In other words, making deals with the government matters as much as or more than competing in the market. That’s the fundamental nature of crony capitalism. Businesses become bigger and more politicized as the government gets bigger and more radicalized.
That’s not necessarily bearish for the stock market. However, it does mean that assessing the impact of government policymaking on business becomes as important or more important than traditional analysis of company fundamentals. Spreadsheets for individual corporations need to include columns for the number of lobbyists employed, percentage of business done with the government, cost of regulation, and so on....
....MUCH MORE
*That post had been preceded, a year earlier, by "Paul Krugman Wants You to Die; Germans Consider him Unbalanced, wish he'd change name."
