”Those experts in sycophancy who roam the halls of Congress and government, attaching themselves to any powerful interest that suits their need to be relevant and feeds their appetite for power.”
— Mary Chapin Carpenter
Here we are returning to the investment landscape after our Great Complacency Tour of 2023. One of the things we see is a myriad of indictments against a former president.
Let’s look at this list:
Statista really like us to use their stuff… but they do provide a link on their site. Lots of interesting data points and charts on there. (Source: Statista)
We also note that there’s some disagreement over the handling of Hunter Biden’s laptop. Hunter is the son of the sitting president Joe, in case you haven’t been abused by the media on this topic yet.
The oft polemic site Zero Hedge also claimed that when the Biden administration started emptying the Strategic Oil Reserves of the United States, they sold them to a Chinese company with which Hunter Biden had a consulting arrangement.
Politics are not subtle. Both sides want to burn the other side down. Most of the strategists remain nameless. But, aren’t we all aware they’re lurking about the marbled halls of the Rayburn Office building on Capitol Hill?
We don’t talk about politics. We’re annoyed by the mudslinging. In fact, we’re more often persuaded by the late satirist PJ O’Rourke, who died last year not far from our family farm in New Hampshire. O’Rourke published a book entitled “Don’t Vote It Just Encourages The Bastards.” We don’t think it deserves any real attention.
O’Rourke’s title has been a modest mantra of our own for years. It used to be funny, until Donald Trump made people care about politics again.
What now?
“You can’t do anything, really,” our guest this week, Shah Galani, suggested yesterday. (His episode is in production now.) There are ways to make money and take care of your own interests whether the market is going up or down. You take care of yourself.
Sure, that might seem like a cop out. But it’s a helluva lot less confusing than keeping track of the mounting indictments or lack thereof following the Trump and Biden families around.
Follow your own bliss,
Addison Wiggin
The Wiggin Sessions
P.S. I like one quote from Bill Bonner we published in our book Empire of Debt. He said something along the lines of: “Following the news is like watching a Chinese opera. From all the noise and banging around you can tell something important is supposed to be happening, but you just can’t figure out what.”
Returning from our Summer of Complacency Tour… we can’t agree more. We like to follow the stock and bond markets. We like economics and history. You’ve probably gathered that by now. But what the heck is going on with presidential politics?
And who is Taylor Swift?
