Jurgis

I wonder if Buffett would buy AXP if he could.

I'm not very familiar with DC names, but this http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/10/politics/donald-trump-transition-drain-the-swamp/ seems to indicate he's more likely gonna be coopted by conservative GOP "advisors". So far things seem to be pointing to GOP congress/senate driving the agenda or at least picking the bits they like from Trump's soundbytes. OTOH, the only thing I learned from hanging out at another forum with someone who was DC insider is that outsiders (and especially Internetz commentators) mostly have no clue about the process and influences there. So I'll try to shut up since I definitely don't. 8) Peace.

You would have thought people learned that lesson after Brexit...

See also http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/books/max-gunther-'how-to-get-lucky'/

"13 techniques for discovering and taking advantage of life's good breaks" https://smile.amazon.com/dp/1906659982 OK, I was sure that this book was mentioned here on CoBF, but I can't find the thread. Maybe it was mentioned on Farnham Street blog or somewhere else. Anyway, IMO this is a great book. Ignore the title. Ignore most of intro. Ignore some of the stock market examples. But the gist of the book is pure gold. It's not metaphysics. It's not hokey new age stuff. It's pretty much heuristics on how to make the chances that occur in the universe work more in your favor than against. Definitely applicable to your life. Might be applicable to current political situation. Some of the book's suggestions have been mentioned on this board in other threads, e.g. on how to get your (hedge fund/investment) business going. You might be already using some techniques like "Worst Case Analysis". Others you might not like or object to. For example, his stock market suggestions are mostly based on random walk and regression to mean, so the concentrated moat investors will ignore most of what he says there. But there might be some techniques that will give additional punch for your life and/or career. "Recognizing a Nonlesson" and "Accepting an Unfair Universe" might be good ones to reread now. ;) I should learn to adopt "The Closed Mouth" more. At least I'm definitely on the road of adopting it for investment ideas. 8) Anyway, the 14th lesson would be: know how to balance 13 techniques, when to use which one and when to not. ;)

+3% in two days ain't life hitting you. Oh, you guys might not be talking about the newfound prosperity under the president elect. ::)

I'm so happy there's ignore feature on this forum. ;D I'd say "don't feed the trolls", but it's really your choice guys. Peace.

Yeah, unfortunately Paris climate agreement promises are likely dead.

Good article. Unlike others that I've criticized for Monday morning quarterbacking the narrative to fit the results, Silver makes valid points on existing data as well as showing how small margin is there from another narrative. A++.

Interesting suggestion. I don't think it's that easy IRL but interesting nonetheless. :)

Depends on how you choose to disect the votes. But, yes, part of reason of Trump's win was due to sexism (btw, perhaps you don't realize that women can be sexist against women too). And yes, the white racism also played the part. Read Nate Silver's site slicing of the votes. I'll repeat myself: let's see how many of these Trump will even try to resolve.

From BAC thread: I'm confused. What about all the articles claiming that people voted against Dems/Clinton because they were in bed with big banks? Wasn't Trump supposed to be for the little guys and against (financial) establishment?

We can hope. :)

@post_election_articles: A lot of the articles that people post and like are just post-factum rationalizations of what happened. It's the same as the rationalizations of why Obama won and Reps lost in 2008/2012: they have some kernels of truth, but huge dose of fitting verbiage into what happened. There's gonna be more of this in coming days and weeks. But like announcements that "Republican party is dead" in 2008 were a bunch of rationalizing crap, announcements that "Democratic party is disconnected from voters, elitist, etc. whatever, dead" is also a bunch of rationalizing crap. Just as a reminder Clinton (probably) got victory in popular vote (and even if she did not, she came close) and Dems still have close to 50% of Congress and Senate. And Reps in Congress/Senate are mostly party-line. This is not a revolution. This is not death of Democratic party, etc. Trump also won while running pretty much against all Rep post-mortem analysis from 2008/2012. I'm not saying that post-mortem of Dem loss is worthless, but it might not be worth as much as people presume.

I'm not worried at all about inflation. Btw if you get the inflation it means that things are going well and you got nothing to worry about. Not if the inflation is caused by prices rising due to trade war... Anyway, we'll see.

Well if you take Keynesianism seriously a large massive tax cut should massively stimulate the economy and lead to a huge boom. The greater worry now is inflation...not depression. Paul Krugman should love Trump...he argued against austerity for years and for more stimulus. Now he is about to get what he always wanted. I've been thinking about that quite a bit. Basically no one can know what's gonna happen because Trump is all over the place. The stimulus helps if the money goes into the real economy and is spent. So 1. The infrastructure plan. This will definitely help the economy. It's gonna be spent and create jobs. 2. The tax cut. Not so much help because it's geared to mostly high incomes. So most of the tax cut will be saved not spent 3. With Trump coming in will businesses cut investment due to uncertainty? 4. If Trump starts a trade war there will be job losses with maybe not so many corresponding gains. Aerospace sector (coincidentally the largest US export sector) comes to mind as greatly at risk. Also how do you pass a large public spending effort, with a tax cut, and the resulting blow up of the deficit with a republican congress? Will there be draconian cuts to public spending? If so that's hugely contraction. The worst case scenario is abandoning the infrastructure plan cause he can't get it through Congress, then passing the tax cut offset by large cuts in public spending. Good post, rb. There's also a question of inflation, which might be why banks are rallying. But that's also not necessarily good.

They think they are not seeing the benefits. Wait until the products they buy rise in price 2x because of trade war with China. If only this was true. The likely outcome of Trump presidency is actually more income inequality and benefits to 1%. For poor people to think that Trump is their guy and what just happened is "revolution" (like some commentators said) is likely total delusion.

This is what decent people do, admit the defeat and move on. I doubt it if Trump would have done that. I seem to remember someone on this forum claiming that Obama will impose martial law to prevent Trump from becoming president... ::)

Yes, maybe, who knows. We don't really know what Trump will try to do. In some cases he might have Rep support, in others no.

Are the electoral votes binding? That is actually a fascinating question. In this United States' history there have been, I believe 157, so-called "Faithless Electors" - meaning Electors who vote for a candidate in the Electoral College that won their state. Of those Faithless Electors more than half have been due to the death of the POTUS/VPOTUS candidate that won their state prior to the date of the Electoral College vote - so there have actually been about 70 "True Faithless Electors." The Faithless Electors have never impacted who was elected but in 1836, 23 True Faithless Electors from Virginia refused to vote for Richard Mentor Johnson, the presumed VP elect, so the United States Senate eventually had to elect Johnson VP itself. In response to the Faithless Elector phenomenon, approx. 30 states have based so-called Binding Laws - which hold that an elector must vote for the winners of the state (or congressional district in the case of Nebraska or Maine) which they represent. Some have claimed that Binding Laws are unconstitutional and electors can "vote their conscious." BUT a 1952 SCOTUS case called Ray v. Blair upheld that Constitutional validity of Binding Laws. With that said, can you guess how many Faithless Electors have been charged with a crime under Binding Laws? Go ahead and guess... The gap is too wide I think (though final results not there yet?) for faithless electors to have impact. And if they did, Trump and right would revolt like heck. For future of democracy in US, unfortunately it's probably better that electors did not bolt.

Great post. +1.

Sold a bunch of stuff today. Good day to raise cash and clean portfolio. Sold some stuff yesterday too.

Yes. Hoping on checks and balances.

This.