Interdum stultus opportuna loquitur...

Sunday, October 24, 2004

Reasons to be Cheerful - Part 3...

Note - from June 24th 2009, this blog has migrated from Blogger to a self-hosted version. Click here to go straight there.

That's a song lyric (by Ian Dury and the Blockheads); there's no reason for the "Part 3" as far as I am aware, but the first time I heard the track I was grabbed by the lyric.
Oddly, there aren't many reasons to be cheerful at present, at least as far as equity markets are concerned (the Oz market is near a record, but it has always been one to be overweight, EX NEWS CORP (and CSL and others like them). Look back at any of InvestorWeb's Forward Focus updates while I was there and you will see Australia overweighted in global allocations.
The US will probably get a weensie bounce at some stage this week - BubbleVision was replete with the usual crap about the recent "pullback" being "profit taking" that results in - you guessed it - a "buying opportunity". Whether that bounce holds until later in the week, will probably be a very good harbinger of the election outcome.
But if the election outcome is "more of the same", there are a bunch of things that we can expect, which will be the global equivalent of James Hardies asbestos related illness policy.
First, a National ID Card in the United States. (Speaking of song lyrics... only the oldies among us will recall Spy-V-Spy's "Half the World with Plastic Cards" from when the Hawke government was keen on a National ID card - the aborted "Australia Card").
Second, a widening of the Midle Eastern theatre of conflict (probably to Iran), and therefore, a draft in the US.
Third, a significant worsening of the long term fiscal stuation in the US as the Bush Tax Cuts become permanent. That will add two or three TRILLION to the accumulated deficit forecasts for the US budget.
It's an interesting time to be alive.