Game Time 2017

We updated our HOME page over the weekend and decided just to copy it to here for those of you who go directly to the BLOG.

 

Our thoughts as we move into 2017.

Nine years ago we started this website after having followed the currency, commodity, and stock markets for some 40 years.

Our goal was to provide a background to economic issues that were bubbling up in the 2005-2008 period.  In the U.S. and the world things had gone full circle from the base of the 1930’s Depression through the WWII period, 17 years, 1929-1946, into the relatively strong growth period of 1947 – 1979 as the World rebuilt.

Where this Inequality started, the 1980’s

Going into the 1980’s the political view seemed to be that the economy was solid and it would be a good time to privatize more parts of the economy and thereby move money to the top 10 % of the population.  Many factors played into this including taxation policies, globalization, and the restructuring of the goals of Corporations in order to pay employees less and send more money to the stock market.  Stock buy backs and eventually Government bailouts, and then the icing on the cake, the QE2 and QE3 programs were employed  to try and halt the unravelling but in reality increased the inequality relationships.

Reactionary Politics

Politics then became a contentious part of the public discourse and we now have a country led by wealthy reactionaries who are trying to run on the mantra set out in 1980.  They say that they are independent populists whose main goal is to increase the incomes of those in the bottom 90 % of the population and see this groups income as a percent of the pie increase.  Let’s hope that is true, but they are going to have to follow a different program than has been proclaimed so far.  Going back to the programs of the 80’s will only increase the problem.  They key is the consumer demand side of the ledger, not the manufacturing supply side.  Deflation will continue to be the long term direction of the economy if that formula is not changed to being pro-consumer demand.

Our Viewers

We would like to think that the bottom 90 percent of the population are our readers, but there is no way we can control this aspect as the top 10 percent puts a lot more time into money and political issues.  Good luck to all of us in the coming period.

 

 

         Here is the chart for the performance of one of our new tracking Funds, EXTH   

It was a rather flat week but the Fund did beat the S&P and Nasdaq.

EXTH chart 1-23-17

 

 

 

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