O Captain My Captain...You Stink

Barron's gets it dead to rights with the cover cartoon of their latest issue. Investors, large and small, have abandoned this President. Companies are taking their dollars abroad where they want and need economic growth and have the policies to achieve it. Mom & Pop investors are heading for mutual funds that will put their money to work abroad. The rest are just hiding under their desks. Mark Perry has two consecutive posts up today that are beautifully interrelated, the first shows that Asia is kicking our ass in signing free trade agreements, the second is that the Emerging Market stock indices are way up. Investors want to put their money where they can gain from the openness to trade, because the gains are well known. Meanwhile, here in the US we are stooping to protectionist, squashing business confidence, centrally planning major chunks of the economy, raising taxes on capital, and racking up massive debts to support government worker pensions. Who wants to have capital tied up in that kind of disaster? Abondon ship, indeed.