January 6th How Time FliesGawd it's been a year already!!
So what if anything have we learned and what are the implications?
1...the Democrats set up a Select Committee to "study" the incident. What have they learned so far? Well they learned that Trump is an egocentric ahole. But wait. We already knew that!! They didn't to spend millions of tax payer dollars to find that out!!
2....Have the millions spent been successful from a political perspective? Polling suggests that people's opinion on both sides of the aisle remain unchanged. So I guess those millions were a waste of time from that perspective.
3....So what has the Committe accomplished? The most clear accomplishment is that it has hardened the political divide in Washington and will make it even harder for sensible legislation to help the economy and generally government the people of America. Is this is good thing for the stock market? Hard to say. There is a camp that believes that if Washington is gridlocked it is a good thing for business. For a long time I must admit that I was a member of this camp but as the list of things that need to get done like addressing unfunded liabilities like social security and medicare and growing budgetary deficits loom ever more important I am having second thoughts.
4...with inaction from the Legislative Branch since they are spending all their time on useless political investigations, there has been a trend to more Executive Orders from the Executive Branch of government. So what's wrong with that? Well, as we have seen from Trump and Biden, Executive orders can be easily recinded or changed as opposed to a more laborious process in the Legislative Branch. This makes corporate planning much more difficult since things can change quite quickly and often in the middle of longer term projects (witness KXL). This uncertainty hasn't made it to the market just yet, but IMO it will especially if as expected the Republicans win the House and the Senate this coming November.