Drum Roll, Please -- August 21, 2018

As I've said many times, the Dow is irrelevant but we all follow it.

For investors, of the three major indices, the S&P 500 is the most important.

Today, drum roll, please --- the S&P hits an all-time high.

We never saw that under the previous administration and you can argue with me all you want, but we would not have seen this with Hillary or Marco Rubio.

 

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Back to Andrew "The US Never Was Great" Cuomo

Based on the public reaction to his comments, it sounds like folks could not understand why Andrew Cuomo would say the "US never was great." Certainly, I could not understand it.

A reader found the answer and here it is.

New York has consistently been rated the least free state of the 57 states in the United States. Link here (this site suggests there are only 50 states despite what President Obama said).

The scathing analysis begins:

New York has been the least free state in the country for a long time. Economic freedom is the most significant weakness, but the state has not kept up with the rest of the country on personal freedom either.

The only fiscal policy area where New York is not below average is the ratio of government to private employment, where the state has actually improved significantly since the early 2000s. The government GDP ratio has scarcely fallen over that same time period, suggesting that New York pairs relatively low government employment with high salaries and benefits for public employees. New York’s local tax burden is twice that of the average state: 8.5 percent of income in FY 2015. This is a dramatic rise from the early 2000s, when it was 7 percent. However, New Yorkers have ample choice in local government: 2.9 competing jurisdictions per 100 square miles. The state tax burden, at a projected 6.8 percent of income in FY 2017, is also higher than the national average. Debt is the highest in the country at 31.2 percent of income, and liquid assets are less than half that, at 14.2 percent of income.

New York is also the worst state on regulatory policy, although here it is at least within striking distance of number 49. Land-use freedom is very low, primarily because of the economically devastating rent control law in New York City. Local zoning is actually fairly moderate compared with surrounding states not named “Pennsylvania.” Renewable portfolio standards are high. The state enacted a minimum wage in 2013–14 and also has a short-term disability insurance mandate. Cable and telecommunications are unreformed. Occupational freedom is a bit subpar, but nurse practitioners did gain some independence in 2013–14. Insurance freedom is a mixed bag (the state has stayed out of the Interstate Insurance Product Regulation Compact), but property and casualty insurers gained some freedom to set rates in 2013–14. The civil liability system looks poor, but we may underrate it slightly because of the state’s large legal sector.

With that analysis, no wonder Cuomo feels American has never been great. New York has been dead last for the past sixteen years in personal freedoms. Wow. The past sixteen years.

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Geico Rock Award Nominee For 2018

Francisco Toro of The Washington Post: the collapse of Venezuela doesn't "prove" anything about socialism. Francisco Toro is Chief Content Officer of the Group of 50 and a contributing columnist to Post Opinions.

Link here. Google it if you hit a paywall; easily accessed. From the article:

Since the turn of the century, every big country in South America except Colombia has elected a socialist president at some point. Socialists have taken power in South America’s largest economy (Brazil), in its poorest (Bolivia) and in its most capitalist (Chile). Socialists have led South America’s most stable country (Uruguay) as well as its most unstable (Ecuador). Argentina and Peru elected leftists who, for various reasons, didn’t refer to themselves as socialists — but certainly governed as such.

Mysteriously, the supposedly automatic link between socialism and the zombie apocalypse skipped all of them. Not content with merely not-collapsing, a number of these countries have thrived.

The writer clearly uses the word "thrived" very, very loosely. Quick, name one country of consequence that has thrived after turning to socialism to solve their problems. The writer leads off with Peru -- I rest my case.