By William McRight
Currently, financial markets, at the moment are to put it mildly, roiling.
Globally, we have moved to a time where the central planners feel it is their duty to keep tinkering. Just another trillion here or there and we will be fine. They feel like our Dad did when he asked us to give the Chevelle a push so he could pop the clutch and get it going. Just one more push and pop and this baby will start back up a get purring and we will pile in and get about our business. We may have moved far, far past the point where tinkering and quantitative easing and negative interest rates will help. They may start to accelerate the collapse. The only thing that may save us is bedrock American principles.
**DISCLAIMER** I am not a Certified Financial Planner. I am not a stock broker. I am not a financial analyst. I just watch it all and try to figure out how to be the Road Runner and not Wile E. Coyote.
I am a citizen who keeps watching the financial channels who put on one expert who says, “Wow, what a rough ride. It sure is great that we reached the bottom of this market” and in the next segment another analyst tells us, “We may continue to see downward pressure on all verticals for a continued, but unknowable period of time.” So, to summarize those two segments: “We have absolutely no clue what is happening and we have no idea what to do.”
The Federal Reserve is a perfect case in point. In December the Fed raised interest rates a quarter of a point with talk of four other additional rate increases throughout 2016 and beyond. Since then we have gone through one of the worst Januarys in the history of the financial markets. Now discussion has begun about actually pulling that increase back. That alone might prove that all of the hedge fun billionaires, speculators, brokers, big money guys and girls have no clue when this thing might stabilize and settle down. Think about that. We generate the goods and services that prime the pump for all of this and the smarty pants types at the far end of the hose have no idea what will happen.
Of course all of this financial mayhem does not happen in a vacuum. We are led by an Administration that continues to operate in a manner consistent with doing the exact polar opposite to what seems logical in regard to righting our national and economic ship. World power players scoff at our proclamations and boasts about “smart leadership.” We sign an Iranian Nuclear Deal (negotiated by the same Wendy Sherman who negotiated the North Korean Nuclear Deal) while only days later Iranians drive our sailors to their knees in humiliation before the world. Two weeks later the North Koreans conduct a test of a giant explosive something (there is open debate about atomic or hydrogen) underground. All of these factors show the world our principles, goals and institutions are rudderless. Adrift. This continues to create uncertainty that financial markets crave.
Perhaps the major contributing factor to the unstable markets would be the volatility of the oil markets. We are not too far along from oil at $145 per barrel. Oil, as of this writing is at about $26 per barrel. Factor in the trading of these products, the exchange rates, the credit markets, Chinese market book cooking, Russia economic devastation due to said oil markets and extended military adventurism and you get what we have now. A giant, steaming heap of “What Do We Do Now?”
While this piece has not exactly been a few hundred words of sunshine and lollipops, here is a pretty sobering thought. Somewhere just south of half of this country is thinking about rolling the dice on socialism and giving the government more power, more control and giving you less say on your life liberty and pursuit of happiness. If we allow it to happen we will be finished. We will not recover and we will never be what destiny still calls us to be.
This is why it is our job as conservatives to continue to “Right on the Wall” to fight for our ideals, our principles and to reclaim what made this country exceptional. So while the Perfect Storm continues to gather, we as conservatives must remember no matter how tired we are of talking about it, no matter how many alt right low lifes insult us on Twitter, no matter how many dim witted oafs think we can rebound and recover with an Authoritarian Strongman or a Socialist Septuagenarian at the helm, we cannot give up. The stock market will rise and fall, gas will be cheap and it will be expensive. What made us the greatest nation in the world is the only thing that must remain constant.
We must continue to fight for what we know is right. Whatever the cost.
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