At the risk of inflaming a sensitive political environment I am going to try to talk objectively about the economics of our political environment. I have my flame retardant suit on so let’s get started.
Jerome Powell is the new Fed Chief
Trump’s appointment of Jerome Powell is kind of strange in my view. Powell is totally status quo. He doesn’t have many beliefs that veer too far from the Yellen Fed. I suspect that Trump didn’t want to be associated with Yellen’s Liberal views and that Powell is somewhat more likely to be amenable to Trump’s deregulation agenda. But the big story here is that nothing much is going to change at the Fed. And maybe that’s Trump’s most important message here. While he disassociates himself with the Liberal Yellen he also doesn’t disturb what the Fed is doing. And that’s probably a good thing in Trump’s view as the stock market is one of the definitive positives that Trump has going for him right now. So, long story short – this is a non-story in my view.
The Cut, Cut, Cut Act.
A new tax plan is out and it’s called the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act”. I much preferred the name that Trump wanted to use – “The Cut, Cut Cut, Act”. I think we could all use a little humor in our politics these days and that name would have been just the thing to provide us all with a good laugh.¹
In all seriousness though – this bill isn’t as bad as some expected it to be. There were rumors about some seriously stupid things like a low cap on 401K contributions and things like that. But the actual bill has turned out to be pretty benign as far as Republican tax bills go. Here are the big ticket items:
