He’s a Mighty Scared Mad Man

Jim Cramer is no conservative, he’s no right winger. The CNBC Business host began his life as a reporter and he got started investing in stocks for Marty Peretz of the liberal New Republic. He doesn’t agree with Rick Santelli on the mortgage bailout. He’s fine with that. From 1997-2000, he made $120,000 in Soft Money contributions to the Democratic Party. He criticized the Bush administration for being too Laissez Faire in its handling of the stock market.

I don’t live or die with Jim Cramer’s stock picks, but I’ll occasionally watch his show because he’s  entertaining. Whether he’s right or wrong, who cares?

However, watching the Friday edition of Mad Money, Cramer has taken a remarkable turn. He “mistakenly” referred to President Obama as Jimmy Carter. He declared that President Obama has decided to attack Capitalists and that people needed to Obama-proof their stock portfolio.

He’s begun a 6-part series on making your portfolio Obama resistant. His first strategy: He’s calling for his viewers to buy Foreign Stocks. “You need to own a stock outside this country. Something’s that beyond Obama’s reach.” He points out that Australia is less likely to go the way of the U.S. because they don’t want to return to the days of indentured servitude.

Comparing the U.S. Stimulus to the Chinese Stimulus, Jim Cramer declared, “The Chinese government is stimulating it’s economy, our government is stimulating Nancy Pelosi’s agenda.”

Now, let’s repeat. Cramer is no conservative, Cramer is a big time Democrat who contributed $120,000 to the Democrats and he’s bearish on this administration. If he’s bearish and he thinks the administration’s going to bring disaster, what are other traders thinking? If you’ve got big money, why are you going to risk it in the United States?

Why not stuff it somewhere in the Cayman Islands or invest your money in China or other nations that are welcoming to Capital? Except for concern for the nation and its future. All the Wall Street folks who backed Obama assumed the Democratic Party had essentially become far more business friendly, that it had Clintonized. Clinton had no problem with people earning money, with the Dow surging, and there was huge money to be made during the dot com boom.

This however is Obama and there’s no reason to invest in Barack Obama’s America. He’s raising Corporate Taxes which will cut into funds being available for dividends, he’s increasing capital gains taxes in 2011 which means that if you take advantage of the low stock prices we have right now and sell at a profit, you’re going to get soaked in 2011.

It’s as if, just in the case the economy starts to turn around in 2010, the President wants to give traders on Wall Street an excuse to have a gigantic sell-off to avoid his absurd tax rates.

Why is the President doing this? Others have said it. It’s a war on the investor class. The Investor class is a growing number of Americans in recent years who have invested in the stock market through 401(k) plans, IRAs, not just big institutional investors. As the Investor Class becomes a growing concern for the Democrats.

Why? Because if you invest smartly and squirrel away enough money for a good retirement, you’re not going to spend your sunset years dependent on the government. There’s a danger that the Investor Class could begin to think like Investors when they vote which is going to be bad for any Democrat to the left of Clinton.

You’re going to shrink the investor class and grow the number of union voters. That’s the Democrats plan for success. Folks who are many years away from retirement are going to get scared into the market, scared into selling good investments that will rebound, and will end up more or less dependent on the state for their retirement. It’s great politics.

It’s lousy policy. Obama’s tax policies are making it far more attractive for people to invest overseas, which means less investment money in U.S. business which means less job creation, which means stagflation.
No wonder Mr. Cramer is scared.