After eight years of living high on the taxpayer hog at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and in 5-star hotels around the world, Michelle Obama might think there’s “no hope” left in an America on the cusp of a new presidency. But not many people who are investing their own money agree with her.
With the Dow Jones nearing a truly historic trading milestone of 20,000 and small investors looking forward to the future more optimistically than they have since before Barack Obama was elected, 2016 is ending on a high note just as a new administration is about to begin.
This might be the “hope and change” Americans were really looking for when a community organizer and do-nothing U.S. senator sold them a bill of goods.
The outgoing first lady made her cracks about having “no hope” in an interview with Oprah Winfrey that aired in its entirety on Monday. The petulant tone got its fair share of criticism from pundits — notably from Fox News’ Judge Jeanine Pirro — but the real rebuke is coming from the American people.
Simply put, they’re not buying what the first lady’s selling. They’re buying stock in the country instead.
Not only was the Dow flirting with 20,000 Tuesday afternoon, but a survey of small investors released Tuesday morning showed investor optimism at a nine-year high, according to CNBC. The Wells Fargo/Gallup Investor and Retirement Optimism Index showed investors had more confidence in the economy than at any time since the financial crisis of 2008 – and, not coincidentally, since the election of pro-regulation Barack Obama.
According to the poll, which was conducted Nov. 16-20 — or a week after Donald Trump’s victory shocked the country and the world — 54 percent of investors said they were optimistic about the stock market, up from 51 percent in the third quarter and way up from 32 percent in the first quarter of the year.
And that could well mean a rising stock market into 2017.
“Rising investor optimism and the stock market reaching all-time highs is great news to end the year on, but it isn’t necessarily driving investors to put their money into the markets,” Scott Wren, senior global equity strategist at the Wells Fargo Investment Institute, said in a news release accompanying the survey.
“Investors are more interested in the markets, but it takes time for this optimism to translate to flows into the stock market, especially when investors have been cautious for so long.”
Now, what could have made investors cautious? Maybe it was the essential lawlessness of a “progressive” administration that had repeatedly disregarded legal niceties like contract law with its GM buyout back in 2009, or its casual rewrites of federal law to save the president’s pet project, the Affordable Care Act (better known as Obamacare).
Maybe. And maybe it was also the understanding in the business world that Hillary Clinton’s Democrat Party had moved so far to the left that its focus on “income inequality” and “redistribution” had become another form of socialism rearing its ugly head.
(From the days of the Russian Revolution, socialism has been universally, without fail, bad for economic growth — and humanity in general. Anyone with questions about that can take a flight to Havana, Cuba, or maybe Caracas, Venezuela. Just bring toilet paper along.)
On the eve of the election, economist Larry Kudlow, summed it up well in a syndicated column that predicted a soaring stock market if Trump won.
Now, Trump is a highly imperfect candidate. We all know that. But — and this is a big but — warts and all, Trump is an outsider who would work hard to drain the Washington, D.C., swamp of corruption, crony capitalism and corporate welfare. And only an outsider stands a chance of fixing this mess.
What’s more, Trump is the growth candidate. His across-the-board tax rate reductions for individuals and businesses would boost the economy. His tax cuts for large and small businesses would re-incentivize startups and investment, from which productivity and real wages spring.
We have had a dismal 16 years of less than 2 percent growth, virtually no real wage hikes and stagnant family incomes — or what Ronald Reagan called take-home pay. Trump’s economic plan would do for families what Democrats and Republicans have been unable to do in the past decade and a half …
I believe that Trump has a prosperity plan. I believe that Clinton has a recession plan. And you need an outsider to shake up Washington.
Kudlow, who was named last week to be the new chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, seems to have nailed it. The outsider in the presidential race is exactly one month away from taking the presidential oath of office. And it looks like the money is moving in the right direction.
Michelle Obama might not have any hope these days, but Americans who work for a living – the ones who pay taxes and invest for their own retirement – seem to have plenty.
Hope and change might actually work this time around.