Kevin Duffy on being a skeptic

I'm so skeptical I'm skeptical of my own skepticism.

~ Kevin Duffy

The Economist on the crisis of value investing

So-called value stocks, typically asset-heavy firms in stodgy industries, have had a decade from hell, lagging behind America’s stockmarket by over 90 percentage points. This has led to a crisis of confidence among some fund managers, who wonder if their framework for assessing firms works in the digital age (see article). They are right to worry: it needs upgrading to reflect an economy in which intangibles and externalities count for more.

~ "Does value investing still work?," The Economist, November 14, 2020

Paul Tudor Jones: "I think we are in the first inning of bitcoin"

I think we are in the first inning of bitcoin and it’s got a long way to go...  The reason I recommended bitcoin is because it was one of the menu of inflation trades, like gold, like TIPS breakevens, like copper, like being long yield curve and I came to the conclusion that bitcoin was going to be the best inflation trade...  Bitcoin has this enormous contingence of really, really smart and sophisticated people who believe in it.  It’s like investing with Steve Jobs and Apple or investing in Google early.

~ Paul Tudor Jones, "Paul Tudor Jones says he likes bitcoin even more now, rally still in the ‘first inning’," CNBC.com, October 22, 2020

L. Q. Cincinnatus on how Ludwig von Mises used deduction and economic calculation to critique socialism

I would argue that Ludwig von Mises’ 1920 analysis of economic calculation is one of the great, unsung thought experiments in modern science, but because it was conducted as an exercise in deductive, as opposed to inductive, reasoning that it is either wholly ignored or, more likely, not understood. 

Through a series of strict deductive inferences anchored in the primary “given” of socialism—the absence of private property—Mises demonstrated that a functioning price system would never emerge, and, as a result, no method of rationally calculating the relative scarcity or necessity for higher order goods of any kind could be used to sustain an economy. Mises stated flatly that a socialist economy was was not merely a contradiction in terms, but impossible (unmöglich). 

His analysis was immediately seized upon by socialist theoreticians and planners and the history of its reception, both in the free world and in the countries behind the former Iron Curtain, makes for fascinating reading. In the final analysis, of course, Mises was proven right. Resoundingly so. Because in 1920, before Lenin had even consolidated power, Mises had already foretold the fate of the Soviet Union. And it would take another seventy years and scores of millions of human corpses for him to finally be vindicated.

~ L. Q. Cincinnatus, "How is an American Left Still Possible? Four Theses," LewRockwell.com, November 28, 2020

Jenin Younes on the politicization of mask wearing

I do not have the credentials to determine whether or not – or to what extent — masks work.  But it is obvious that the issue has become so politicized that mainstream media outlets, politicians, and even scientists seize upon the slightest bit of favorable evidence, dismiss out of hand anything that conflicts with their theory, and most egregiously of all misrepresent the data, to support the conclusion that masks worn by asymptomatic people prevent coronavirus transmission.

~ Jenin Younes, "The Strangely Unscientific Masking of America," AIER.org, November 27, 2020

Kevin Duffy on how to identify a progressive

1. The state is the solution to all problems.  All that is needed is the right people and the will. 

2. The ends justify the means. 

3. The upward slope of human progress is relentless as long as the state is at the center.  The state is always changing and adapting.  Constitutions should be flexible and not constrain this adaptability.

4. History is irrelevant unless it can be changed to fit your narrative and advance your agenda.  (See #2.)

5. Simple narratives are irresistible; attention spans are short. 

6. People are automotons, putty in the hands of the master sculptor.  Free will can be problematic.

7. Divide and conquer.  Don't be afraid to dehumanize people, e.g. calling them racist, sexist, right-wing extremists, etc.  (See #2.)

8. There are no objective truths.  Pursuit of the truth is of little use. 

9. Economic laws do not apply.  Scarcity has been conquered.  Redistribution of wealth is the logical next step. 

10. Any failures of the state are the fault of the implementers, never the system.  (See #1 and #4.)

~ Kevin Duffy

Dan Ferris on central banking

People actually believe that a few numbskulls with advanced degrees and finance pedigrees can control and manipulate a hopelessly complex 20 trillion dollar economy from the top down with these simple levers of moving interest rates around, printing money, buying securities.  It's ridiculous.

~ Dan Ferris, "When to Buy and When to Sell," Stansberry Investor Hour, 10:30 mark, November 25, 2020

Andrew Napolitano on the left-right political spectrum

What if the frequent public displays of adversity between Republicans and Democrats are just a facade? What if both major political parties agree on the transcendental issues of our day?

~ Andrew Napolitano, "Thanksgiving 2020," LewRockwell.com, November 26, 2020

Edmund Morgan on the nature of government

Government requires make-believe.  Make believe that the king is divine, make believe that he can do no wrong or make believe that the voice of the people is the voice of God.  Make believe that the people have a voice or make believe that the representatives of the people are the people.  Make believe that governors are the servants of the people.  Make believe that all men are equal or make believe that they are not. 

~ Edmund S. Morgan, American historian (1916-2013)

Kevin Duffy on what Joe Biden's "build back better" slogan stands for

Destroy all institutions of Western civilization: the free market, family, religion, laying the groundwork for the inevitable upward march of human progress into a socialist utopia for people of color. Slavery for people of non-color. 

The irony of course is that rich white people are leading this movement.

~ Kevin Duffy, Facebook post, November 25, 2020

Ludwig von Mises on the importance of private ownership to the market economy

Private ownership of the means of production is the fundamental institution of the market economy.  It is the institution the presence of which characterizes the market economy as such.  Where it is absent, there is no question of a market economy.  Ownership means full control of the services that can be derived from a good.

~ Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Douglas Murray on California Governor Newsom's unmasked Napa Valley dinner

As photos of the gathering emerged, it has further transpired that the Governor was joined by two high-level members of the California Medical Association. The $400 per person menu included a starter of “Oysters and Pearls” followed by “Sole aux Crevettes” and Braised Veal. All of which must have left a delightful taste in the mouth of the Californian leader, various medical authorities and assorted lobbyists, but leaves a rather less pleasant aftertaste with pretty much every other resident of California.

~ Douglas Murray, "The great lockdown hypocrites," UnHerd, November 20, 2020

Butler Shaffer on a free society

We may look to the day when the human spirit walks away from its self-imposed bondage.  In that day, men and women may discover that death in service to the state is not heroic; that obedience to power does not confer meaning upon one's life; and that a lengthened leg-chain is not to be confused with liberty.

~ Butler Shaffer, The Wizards of Ozymandias: Reflections on the Decline & Fall

Thomas Sowell on cancel culture

Historians of the future will have a hard time figuring out how so many organized groups of strident jackasses succeeded in leading us around by the nose and morally intimidating the majority into silence.

~ Thomas Sowell, tweet, November 19, 2020

Dietrich Bonhoeffer on resisting evil

Silence in the face of evil, is itself evil.

~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Bretigne Shaffer on official narratives

Some very powerful and very deep narratives have been crafted and fed to us over generations.  What are those narratives?  Primarily, that freedom is dangerous and that the state is a benign entity that acts for the good of “the people”, and that we, “the people,” control it. 

This narrative is deadly.

~ Bretigne Shaffer, "Letter to My Grandchildren from Inside a Cult," LewRockwell.com, November 18, 2020

Bretigne Shaffer on the cult of mainstream America

Somehow, the culture that I live in has come to be characterized by an outright disdain for independent thought.  Public debate has been largely reduced to the pitting of competing authority figures against each other, and the capacity of most people to engage in reasoned argument begins and ends with an appeal to those authorities.  Only a very few seem able to engage directly with information themselves, and those few are largely ignored. 

We have arrived at a point in history where the intellectual norm is now to abandon one’s own capacity for reason and to put in its place a collection of authority figures and institutions. Or rather, authority itself.

We have arrived at a point in history where mainstream America looks very much like a cult.

~ Bretigne Shaffer, "Letter to my Grandchildren from Inside a Cult," LewRockwell.com, November 18, 2020

Bretigne Shaffer on 2020: the year of dystopian fiction

I live in a world that only a year ago I would have thought was the stuff of poorly written dystopian fiction.  If anyone had told me in November of 2019 that just a year later, people would be ordered by the governor of the state I live in to close their businesses, to only leave their homes for “essential” activities, to stop attending church services, to stand six feet apart from other people, and eventually, to wear masks on their faces when out in public, and that most people would not only go along with this willingly but would cheer it on and even shame those who did not–I would have laughed in their face.

And yet here we are.

~ Bretigne Shaffer, "Letter to my Grandchilder from Inside a Cult," LewRockwell.com, November 18, 2020

Bill Gates on mask wearing

The idea that somebody's resisting wearing a mask, that is such a weird thing to me.  What are these, like, nudists?  I mean, you know, we ask you to wear pants, and no American says, or very few Americans say, that that's, like, some terrible thing.

~ Bill Gates, "Bill Gates and Rashida Jones Ask Big Questions" podcast, November 16, 2020

George Bernard Shaw on the gold standard

You have to choose (as a voter) between trusting the natural stability of gold and the honesty and intelligence of members of government. And with due respect for these gentlemen, I advise you, as long as the capitalist system lasts, to vote for gold.

~ George Bernard Shaw, playwright and novelist, 1856-1950

Thomas Jefferson on the dangers of fiat money

That paper money has some advantages, is admitted. But that its abuses also are inevitable, and, by breaking up the measure of value, makes a lottery of all private property, cannot be denied.  Shall we ever be able to put a constitutional veto on it?

~ Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson
1879

Thomas Jefferson on the contradiction of paternalistic government

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself.  Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?

~ Thomas Jefferson

Alexis de Tocqueville on what makes America great

America is great because America is good.  When America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.

~ Alexis de Tocqueville, sociologist, 1805-1859

Edmund Burke on how people relinquish liberty

The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion. 

~ Edmund Burke, British statesman, 1729-1797

Boyd Cathey on the pressure on Fox News to conform

The pressure on Fox pundits and reporters to accept without too much grumbling a Biden administration will only grow, and like at other supposedly conservative news outlets (e.g., The Wall Street Journal), the new Millennial hires and writers, educated at Leftist hothouses called colleges, may well finally vanquish any dissent. 

The Neocons—the slightly more demure wing of Progressivism, broadcasting their message of liberal democratic globalism and post-Christian morality—dominate Fox and have paved the way for what is coming. They have successfully squelched Old Right traditionalist conservative voices, except occasionally on the Carlson program.

~ Boyd Cathey, "The Future of Fox News and the Future of America," My Corner by Boyd Cathey, November 15, 2020

Ludwig von Mises on economics

Economics deals with the real actions of real men.  Its laws refer neither to ideal nor to perfect men, neither to the phantom of a fabulous economic man (homo oeconomicus)...  Man with all his weaknesses is the subject matter of economics.

~ Ludwig von Mises

Paul Gottfried on the modern Left

After the collapse of Soviet Communism a more extreme left emerged, the consequences of which we are now enduring. Today’s left is far more radical than the one it replaced, and in its Western heartland it has become far more socially destructive than Marxism or communism. If Communists had to infiltrate Western governments during and after World War II, now the intersectional left virtually owns Western societies and governments. 

This now-triumphant left happily plays race, gender, and hate-the-West cards, depending on which is the most useful tool for it to wreak havoc or increase its own power, and these two goals often go together. The question then becomes how to stop this pervasive force from further corrupting our institutions, particularly when so little pushback is in evidence. One precondition may be to recognize the modern left’s uniqueness and to stop equating it with “socialism” or “communism.” This archaic labeling may understate the danger.

~ Paul Gottfried, "The Modern Left Is Not Marxist, It's Worse," Chronicles, November 2020

Gad Saad on joining the battle of ideas

There are many crosses that we bear in speaking out and we all have to do our part.  All I'm saying is get engaged.  Sure, modulate the amount of risk that you're willing to bear, but simply don't subcontract your voice to the few courageous folks who are willing to put everything on the line.  You have a say in it.  Get engaged.  If we all speak out - the silent majority hates these idea pathogens [postmodernism/political correctness].  If we all speak out, we will get rid of this nonsense by next Tuesday.  If we don't speak out, it'll be a long train ride to hell.

~ Gad Saad, "How Bad Ideas Are Killing Common Sense and Rational Debate," The Tom Woods Show, November 10, 2020

Tom Woods on politics

I stopped following politics in 1996 because Bob Doll vs. Bill Clinton was just too much even for me to take.  And I dropped out of it and I thought it was pointless.  But I do think things have changed...  I think it's silly these days to say, "Oh, the two parties are just the same."  They're not.  That might've made sense in 1996; it does not make sense today.  They're not.

~ Tom Woods, "Maybe Libertarians Have to Be Political After All," The Tom Woods Show, November 11, 2020

Thomas Sowell on the circle of competence

It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.

~ Thomas Sowell, tweet, November 13, 2020

Lew Rockwell on American conservatism

The problem with American conservatism is that it hates the left more than the state, loves the past more than liberty, feels a greater attachment to nationalism than to the idea of self-determination, believes brute force is the answer to all social problems, and thinks it is better to impose truth rather than risk losing one’s soul to heresy.  It has never understood the idea of freedom as a self-ordering principle of society.  It has never seen the state as the enemy of what conservatives purport to favor.  It has always looked to presidential power as the saving grace of what is right and true about America.

~ Lew Rockwell, "The Great Conservative Hoax," Mises.org, May 4, 2006

Jared Miller on how Hamilton the musical glorifies fatherlessness in the black community

Another problem with Hamilton the musical is that it glorifies fatherlessness instead of pointing to the obvious detriments it has had on society and the black community. Alexander Hamilton’s father abandoned him and his family at a young age as the man was a bigamist and fled to escape prosecution.

‘Hamilton’, through the statistically unlikely success of its muse, seems to portray fatherlessness (something exceeding 77 percent in black communities) as an advantage or an inspiration that can lead to a revolution rather than a negative cultural trend that has caused significant suffering for communities it affects the greatest. 

BLM and Antifa members clearly believe in this kind of revolution as members often have ‘Hamilton’ songs and quotes plastered across their social media pages as they tear down statues of our founders and vandalize crosses in graveyards and church buildings.

~ Jared Miller, "'The Masses Are Asses': Hamilton Sucks," American Watchmen, July 7, 2020

Jared Miller on Alexander Hamilton and the First Bank of the United States

Upon George Washington becoming President of the United States, he appointed Alexander Hamilton as the first Treasury Secretary. As the Secretary of Treasury, his first order of business was to establish a central monetary system and currency. 

The underwriter of what would become the First Bank of the United States was the Bank of New York which Alexander Hamilton conveniently co-owned. The underwriters of the Bank of New York were members of the Bank of England which operated under the auspices of the Crown. Once established in this position, he also supported the creation of a national debt: “A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a national blessing.” 

His reasoning, briefly summarized, is that in order for an emerging nation to foster trade with its neighbors and European powers, a line of credit would have to be established. A line of credit would not be possible without a national debt and a consistent history towards paying off that debt (the interest be damned). 

The same elites today (Rothchilds, Rockefellers) own and operate the private Federal Reserve Bank to which our government now owes trillions in un-backed currency, courtesy of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 (an amount far beyond “excessive” as Hamilton originally claimed).

~ Jared Miller, "'The Masses Are Asses': Hamilton Sucks," American Watchmen, July 7, 2020

Alexander Hamilton
1879

Kevin Duffy on waiting for the tide to go out to pick winners

When it comes to business success, the lines are blurred, making it all the more difficult to identify entrepreneurs as worthy stewards of our capital.  Is Elon Musk a classic market entrepreneur or shameless political capitalist?  Is Warren Buffett’s everyone’s-favorite-grandfather image beyond reproach?

One suggestion is to wait for the tide to go out and see who’s been swimming naked.  Surviving a hostile environment is one of the most reliable predictors of future success.  At the end of 1999, Jeff Bezos was the leader in a crowded race for e-commerce gold.  After the dot-com bust, his stock price was 95% lower, but he had the field all to himself.

~ Kevin Duffy, "The Trouble With Conformity," The Coffee Can Portfolio, p. 4, November 2, 2020

December 27, 1999

Kevin Duffy on the value of failure

Culling the herd is the purpose of bear markets, recessions, inflations, pandemics, shutdowns, shakeouts, technological disruption, changing consumer tastes, etc.

~ Kevin Duffy, "The Trouble With Conformity," The Coffee Can Portfolio, p. 4, November 2, 2020

Chris Mayer on the importance of qualitative factors to investing

As I get older and I hope wiser as an investor, I find myself giving much greater weight to fuzzier concepts such as culture and governance and competitive positioning.  The numbers ultimately have to make sense, but these qualitative factors underpin my investment decisions in a way they didn't when I was younger.  Experience - that is being burned when these factors were absent - have taught me to pay attention.

~ Chris Mayer, quote of the week from Dan Ferris on the Stansberry Investor Hour, 12:00 mark, November 12, 2020

Evercore ISI analysts on the Nov 9 shift from growth stocks to value stocks after Pfizer announced a Covid vaccine

In a sign of the potential of a post-COVID rotation, [Monday] was the biggest single day spread between Momentum and Value factor performance in the 28 year history of our data.

~ Evercore ISI analysts (Nov 10 report), "Short sellers lost $5.5 billion so far in November. Here are the trades that hurt the most," MarketWatch.com, November 11, 2020

Rolf Dobelli on how news media distorts risk assessement

As a result of news, we walk around with the completely wrong risk map in our heads.

• Terrorism is overrated.  Chronic stress is underrated.
• The collapse of Lehman Brothers is overrated.  Fiscal irresponsibility is underrated.
• Astronauts are overrated.  Nurses are underrated.
• Britney Spears is overrated.  IPCC reports are underrated.
• Airplane crashes are overrated.  Resistance to antibiotics is underrated.

We are not rational enough to be exposed to the news-mongering press.  It is a very dangerous thing, because the probabilistic mapping we get from consuming news is entirely different from the actual risks that we face.  Watching an airplane crash on television is going to change your attitude toward that risk regardless of its real probability, no matter your intellectual sophistication.  If you think you can compensate for this bias with the strength of your own inner contemplation, you are wrong.

~ Rolf Dobelli, "Avoid News," p. 2, 2010

Rolf Dobelli on how the news media focuses on the highly visible

News reports do not represent the real world. 

Our brains are wired to pay attention to visible, large, scandalous, sensational, shocking, peoplerelated, story-formatted, fast changing, loud, graphic onslaughts of stimuli. Our brains have limited attention to spend on more subtle pieces of intelligence that are small, abstract, ambivalent, complex, slow to develop and quiet, much less silent. News organizations systematically exploit this bias. 

News media outlets, by and large, focus on the highly visible. They display whatever information they can convey with gripping stories and lurid pictures, and they systematically ignore the subtle and insidious, even if that material is more important. News grabs our attention; that’s how its business model works. Even if the advertising model didn’t exist, we would still soak up news pieces because they are easy to digest and superficially quite tasty. 

The highly visible misleads us.

~ Rolf Dobelli, "Avoid News," p. 2

Gad Saad on joining the battle of ideas

That's a concern that I often receive from people. They write to me, "Hey, professor. I really want to get engaged. But... I'm not some fancy professor. I don't have a large audience." And I tell them, "Look. It's trench warfare. Right? It's house-to-house. It's trench-to-trench. Some of us have big platforms. Great, we use that. But you don't have to have a big platform to contribute to the battle of ideas. Your professor says something that is insane, challenge them politely. Someone says something on Facebook that you disagree with, engage them politely. You hear something happening at the pub that you think you might weigh in on? Don't refrain from doing so.  And usually there's a couple of reasons why people refrain from doing so.

"Well, if I weigh in, I might lose their friendship." Well, guess what? If their friendship is not sufficiently anti-fragile - to use my friend's Nassim Taleb's point... if our friendship is not sufficiently anti-fragile that it could withstand the stressors of us disagreeing about some important point, then you know what? Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.  I don't need friends like that.  I prefer to have two really good friends that I can have deep meaningly conversations with than a bunch of cowardly castrated morons who are going to be completely triggered because I say something that is contrary to them.

~ Gad Saad, "How Infectious Ideas are Killing Common Sense," 41:15 mark, Stansberry Investor Hour, October 8, 2020

Gad Saad on the anomaly of the West

What made the West the anomalous, wonderful experiment that it was - and I am almost speaking in the past tense - is that it had a set of values, a set of approaches to adjudicating the truth to glorifying individual dignity, to rejecting identity politics, to supporting freedom of speech. It had a set of values that served as a protective belt that rendered the West to be the truly anomalous and unique human... and the reason I say anomalous is because throughout human history, the freedoms that are enshrined in the West - the enlightenment that is enshrined in the West - is not something that is a common feature in human history. It's truly an anomalous reality. 

And as someone who comes from the Middle East, as someone who has escaped identity politics when taken to the extreme, who has escaped superstition, who has escaped vile hatred of the other - in this case, I was the other - it breaks my heart to see that we are regressing. Ideas that we defeated through the scientific revolution and through the enlightenment are now the ideas that one of the two parties in the US - and certainly in Canada - is the central feature of their platforms...

Most people are intellectually lazy...  So take your time.  Get to know the positions.  Arm yourself with knowledge and then hopefully make the right decisions to hopefully protect the West for your children and theirs.

~ Gad Saad, "How Infectious Ideas are Killing Common Sense," 52:30 mark, Stansberry Investor Hour, October 8, 2020

Kevin Duffy compares investors to politicians

Investors, by necessity, are truth seekers.  With their own capital at risk, they are subject to relatively short feedback loops.  Deviation from reality can be costly... 

Politicians, by contrast, are truth deniers: they have little skin in the game and feedback loops tend to be much longer.  They traffic in lies, their constituents in self-deceit.  They excel at kicking the can down the road.  Still, they are not immune to the laws of economics which, when they finally exert themselves, often do so with a vengeance.

~ Kevin Duffy, "The Trouble With Conformity," The Coffee Can Portfolio, p. 3, November 2, 2020

William Ryan on evil

To persuade a good and moral man to do evil...it is not necessary first to persuade him to become evil.  It is only necessary to teach him that he is doing good.

~ William Ryan, Blaming the Victim (1971)

Kevin Duffy rates modern day presidents and Hoover

Hoover - Inherited the Roaring '20s bubble, made it 10x worse when the bubble burst with all kinds of big government solutions. He also added fuel to a global trade war... not good. 

Reagan - Talk about luck. Debt levels had fallen from 100% of GDP after WWII to 25%. Fed chairman Paul Volcker had already started to rein in inflation with has high interest rate policy. Carter had begun the deregulation wave. The Soviet Union was falling apart. If anything, Reagan squandered much of this bounty and set the nation on a course of debt (he was the first president to see the national debt go over $1 trillion). Overrated. 

Clinton - Another lucky president. He inherited the peace dividend as Soviet socialism unraveled. That was largely squandered. The Greenspan Fed would later blow a dot-com bubble on his watch. This fattened the government's coffers with capital gains tax receipts, leading to a surplus. The economic numbers were an illusion, not nearly as good as they appear. 

Bush II - Inherited a bursting tech bubble. Made things worse with his aggressive military response to 9/11. Then he allowed the Greenspan/Bernanke Fed to blow another bubble, this time in housing and credit. Bush II was a typical big government RINO who admired the big government FDR. He wanted to be a war president: mission accomplished. 

Obama - Good timing, coming in AFTER the Bush II housing bubble burst. He reacted with big government "stimulus" and an aggressive Fed, blowing the current everything bubble. 

Trump - Inherited the everything bubble, allowed the Yellen/Powell Fed to blow it even bigger. The Bush II/Obama bailouts/stimulus paled next the those in 2020 to fight state government lockdowns in the face of a bad case of the flu. Trump was a big spender, but pretty good on regulations. 

Biden - Inherits the mother of all messes. Debt/GDP is over 100%. Boomers are now tapping into entitlements. For 40 years, politicians kicked the can down the road on debt, deficits and social security. Now the bills are coming due and they're landing right in Biden's lap. Of course he was in DC nearly all of those 40 years. All he can do is prove, again, the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Biden could very well go down as Hoover II. 

~ Kevin Duffy, Facebook post, November 8, 2020

Alex Trebek on intellectual curiosity

I'm curious about everything - even things that don't interest me.

~ Alex Trebek

Alex Trebek
1941-2020

Kevin Duffy on the unofficial choice of Biden as president and Trump's appeal

The problem is the political swamp and we just put a 47 year veteran of the swamp in charge.  I was critical of Trump, especially on economic policy (grading him a D), but his appeal was that he was not a career politician.  His other appeal was that all the right people hated him: Hollywood, academia, and especially the mainstream media.

~ Kevin Duffy, Facebook post, November 8, 2020

Kevin Duffy on political realignment in the U.S.

Political coalitions are never etched in stone. In fact, the U.S. appears to be at an inflection point where they are splitting apart. The GOP is no longer the party of the rich. It is becoming the party of small business, the middle class and working class. The Democrats are becoming the party of the corporate elites, welfare dependents and cultural Marxists. Politically, the country seems to be realigning into two sides: the productive host vs. political parasite. Only time will tell. 

This must happen soon, before the parasite destroys the host.

~ Kevin Duffy, "2020 Election: Trump the Disruptor," The Coffee Can Portfolio, November 2, 2020

Napoleon on voting

I care not who casts the votes of a nation, provided I can count them.

~ Napoleon, New York Times editorial, May 26, 1880

David Stockman on the effect of trillion dollar deficits on interest costs

[H]ere’s the thing.  Under any circumstance, these now guaranteed double-digit annual deficits (i.e. $2 trillion plus at current GDP levels) aren’t sustainable because compounding interest expense eventually sends the ship-of-state into the fiscal drink.

~ David Stockman, "Gridlock is Good - Except in the Jaws of Massive Public Debts," LewRockwell.com, November 6, 2020

Mitch McConnell on the need for CARES Act, round 2

The Senate goes back in session next Monday.  Hopefully the partisan passions that prevented us from doing another rescue package will subside with the election.  I think we need to do it and we need to do it before the end of the year.

~ Mitch McConnell, Republican Senate Majority Leader, "Fiscal stimulus chances may be rising despite dashed Democrat hopes for U.S. Senate control," MarketWatch.com, November 4, 2020

(McConnell expressed some openness about including aid for struggling state and local governments in a new package, calling it “a possibility.” Senate Republicans had previously balked at more aid on top of $150 billion in March’s CARES Act, while House Democrats wanted more than $400 billion in new money.)