Follow Up - Taxes, Fed Budget Deficit, Homeland Security

[adios]

I had a long post answering some previous posts. My computer crapped out in the middle of writing it. I'm too lazy to do it again so I'll post the links and you can draw the conclusion you will from them. Nothing I say will change your minds anyway.

http://secure.mediaresearch.org/fmp/medianomics/2001/mn20010111c.html

http://www.heritage.org

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/jackkemp/printjk20030401.shtml

http://www.proi.org/inst/Doing%20Business%20in%20New%20York.html#What's%20C h
anged

http://inside.gc.cuny.edu/security/Heightened%20Terrorist%20.htm


http://www.prestongates.com/images/pubs/Alert012203.pdf



http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/06/10/opinion/polls/main511729.shtml

http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=116968


http://new.crosswalk.com/news/1190654.html

[AceHigh]

I don't think we are that far apart really.

We both agree lower taxes are better than higher taxes.

What we don't agree on is whether cutting taxes will signifigantly stimulate the economy. And whether in turn that is worth increasing the deficit signifigantly.

If you want to discuss it futher, maybe you should pm me, because this isn't realy stock related - it's economics related.

[Wildbill]

That is an excellent point. Whatever the reality is doesn't matter as far as stocks go, they are doing to do what the market wants them to do. There are way too many issues that have affected the market that really weren't economic issues and my sense is that disconnect is going to continue for some time. As most analysts will tell you the profitability of publicly traded companies has been excellent in recent quarters, much of it at the expense of workers. Since workers are who the media are out to get for ratings, they are mostly going to focus on how bad things are for workers and hence we get all this talk of recession and terrible economy when in reality it hasn't been anything near a disaster. Sure if you lost your job its a disaster, but from a macro sense an economy that underperforms full potential by 1-1.5% isn't exactly the stuff of economic disasters. I think that point is quite important because this endless harping on how bad this economy supposedly is and how we need this cut and that spending to get it going has led to real world consequences. Reality and the mindset have been badly disconnected and I think the current market rally is just the public kind of getting back to their senses somewhat. We won the war, now the media just doesn't have the ammo to keep firing off how bad things are. And lets not forget how for a time people were crazily believing there could hundreds of accounting scandals and the market went down every day because of it. I sat in disbelief at that time thinking what a bunch of fools people have become, that a few frauds make ALL companies worth many billions less. To me it was clearly a panic, where stocks that were in the toilet anyways got marked down further (bankruptcy), but they took out good names and good companies with them. Once again there was little economic justification for it, yet no one seemed to care what economic reality was. After all since Enron and Worldcomm went under, those two markets have seen no appreciable changes in business as gas/energy trading was forced into reality and long distance was already a sick market not going anywhere in either direction. The rationale for a few that flamed the selling was that these were a sign of a sick economy and that as these companies went under due to faked past results we would all see it. Hogwash, the GDP and all economic indicators aren't a result of someone studying annual reports!

I have to say the budget and taxes are yesterday's news. They are what they are and things are going to get changed now. What scares me is what comes up. Bush wants a Congress full of Tom DeLays and that should scare the crap out of just about everyone. The party of small government is out to try to make everyone live like they do and think like they do, is that really what the country wants???