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Townhall
Finance
Dirty
Harry Got Richer in 2008...and You Didn't
John
Ransom
Apr
14, 2014
Congress
has inflicted frightful punishments on its members--now you know
that. When they tried Mr. Fairoaks, and a cloud of witnesses proved
him to be--well, you know what they proved him to be--and his own
testimony and his own confessions gave him the same character, what
did Congress do then?....Congress intimated plainly enough, that they
considered him almost a stain upon their body; and without waiting
ten days, hardly, to think the thing over, they rose up and hurled at
him a resolution declaring that they disapproved of his conduct! Now
you know that. –Colonel Beriah Sellers, The Gilded Age, Mark Twain,
1873
In
the Transparent Age American’s are quickly finding out that Mark’s
Twain’s adage that Congress is the only distinct criminal class in
this country is as true now as it was in Samuel Clemens’ Gilded
Age.
And,
make no mistake; this isn’t a left-right problem. It’s a national
problem that greatly needs attention if we can ever hope to restore
the trust citizens must have that our political system works for us,
not against us.
What’s
becoming increasing clear is that the government exercises too much
power in the daily life of our Republic and their own portfolio.
As
more and more Bundy Ranches happen all over the country, and more
green companies with ties to Harry Reid, Barack Obama or others with
check writing authority amongst the Democrats, go belly up, people
are getting the idea that the government is just playing a game on
the rest of us.
You
can find evidence of this in two easy-to-understand stock market
phenomena that defies the typical left-right bias.
The
first evidence is what’s known as the Congressional Effect.
“Specifically,
since 1965, 46 years of empirical data demonstrates,” write fund
manager Eric Singer, who manages a fund based on the data, “that
over long periods of time the stock market performs dramatically
better on days when Congress is out of session as compared to days
when Congress is in session.”
Singer
says that since January 1st, 1965 to December 31st, 2010 the market
has returned less than one percent when Congress is in session versus
a 16.57 percent return when Congress isn’t working. The numbers get
worse for the last decade too. Since 2001 to the end of 2010 the
market has lost 7.58 percent annualized when in session versus a gain
of 12.68 percent annualized when Congress is out of session.
Evidence
also shows that our legislators enjoy a greater advantage when
trading in the market by virtue of inside government information than
even the corporate insiders they like to rail about...
Read
the rest of the article at Townhall Finance
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