Is This the New Trump ?

I will give him a little time to prove himself.  He followed the tele-prompter well last night and was quite nervous and out of breath, not much of his basic bluster was allowed.  That is good to see in a pompous person who has some basic instincts that are not pretty and tend to the immoral side. No doubt this is an attempt to contain some congressional talk on both sides of the aisle that ponders his mental health, especially around the recent meltdown at Trump Tower.

We have always known that over the past  he has cruised through membership in the Democratic and Republican Party and really is something different. Maybe as the evangelicals say, he has come home to Jesus.  So we will wait and see.  The ideas on Afghanistan make sense if he can really get India and Pakistan on board.  I don’t think however, that this proposal is anything but a good idea with no legs under it, hopefully not like Nixon’s 1969 Vietnam speech that signaled the start of the meltdown.

Tax Reform

Domestically it would appear that tax reform is front and center in Trump’s attempt to start over.  We will see if the bills are undoable Mnuchin/Cohn/Ryan ideas or really have bi-partisan support. Ironically the one good idea the fired Bannon had was moving the top tax rate up to 44%.  Something has to be done to change the tilt against the middle class that started with the tax bills of the 1980’s.

Jackson Hole

The big thing this week from an economics standpoint is the meeting of the big guy economists at Jackson Hole starting on Thursday.  Apparently the over arching theme is “how do we get inflation to come back?”.  As you know I have some ideas on that conundrum, will say more in the next few days.

Tracking Fund Portfolios

No changes to our positions.  We still believe that deflationary forces will overcome the markets. The EXTH vs ECT tracking fund performance bears that out.