Pay Me Weekly - What Was and What Could Be

	What Was and What Could Be
	By Neil George
	Who likes to live in the moment? Most folks either love to reminisce about the past and what was or are fixated on the future and what could be if only this, that or the other thing comes true. When it comes to investing, fixating on the past or the future can end up costing you plenty of money in the here and now. Too many of us look at our stocks and, if they’ve been winners, we fall in love with what they did. And if they’ve been losers, we tell ourselves that if they just came back to our cost we’d sell. But winners of the past often become laggards in the future, just as losers only get worse. And we keep thinking wishfully of what might have been, looking back on the past with rose-tinted glasses. This is about more than individual investing; it’s also a fixation when it comes to economic policy. Policymakers always want to look backward to old playbooks for answers to current issues--while diverting our attention from pending problems by encouraging blissful beliefs in what could be if we’d go along with their plans for our tax money. A prime example is the rollout of what I see as the next market bubble in the making, the era of the biggest government ever seen. With Uncle Sam turning into Uncle Sam Inc., we’re going to be experiencing a huge surge in direct government ownership. And we’ll see billions flowing to individual companies as well as entire industries. Although we’ve seen hints of this massive change with the US Treasury Dept taking direct stakes in dozens of banks via the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), this is only the beginning. The next mode is going to be in Uncle Sam’s Treasury buying into a host of other companies beyond the banks. Click here to continue reading
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