From one of my Wall Street Guys:
Jonah,
I’m quite torn over what I’d like to see the Obama Whitehouse do with the economy. So far, every economic move he’s made has been pedestrian and straight from the progressive playbook. And since we on Wall Street have all seen this movie before, what comes next has been highly predictable. I’m a portfolio manager at a large hedge fund so I make my living predicting results not hoping for growth. That has made Obama a boon for me personally.
As an American I’d love it if he’d embrace the free market reality and start doing things that would actually help create jobs. But the economy will recover eventually no matter what he does. In the meantime, as a professional investor I’m delighted to see him embrace the bat guano. It’s bad for America but good for me personally. There’s more than a little irony in that because as a (comparatively) rich, white, southern, quant who works on Wall Street and has built a career trading derivatives, I’m almost certainly the guy that they would most like to punish for any success.
I have a friend who is a currency trading legend (and also a major AEI money man) whose conservative credentials are beyond doubt. He’s a little older and can remember what it was like to trade the markets during the Carter administration. When I was lamenting Obama’s impending election with him last year he said to me, in a glass half full fashion which is typical of him:
“It’s never easier to make money in the markets than when there is a Democrat in the Whitehouse who thinks he’s smarter than everyone else”.
So far he’s been dead on, but I think it would be better for all of us if he wasn’t.