Investors Need to Beware of Biden’s Storefront Platform
Many, including the presidential candidates themselves, overestimate the scope of the office. A more ominous threat to stocks and the economy lies behind the curtain.
It’s all too easy to stop at Joe Biden’s campaign platform when it comes to assessing the damage that his being elected president will bring to the stock market and the economy, a topic that has come up numerous times in our previous articles addressing this issue.
There’s plenty to worry about in Joe’s platform, which has weaved back and forth on several key issues to some degree but has remained steadfast in its efforts to raise corporate taxes, taxes on the wealthy, and in eliminating capital gains tax breaks. However, this may be only the tip of the iceberg, and we need to stand back and realize what role the president actually plays in the process, and it’s not the role of king.
The main role that a U.S. president plays in legislation is to help propose legislation with the co-operation of the House and the Senate, and also hold veto power over legislation that does not achieve a two-thirds majority in the Senate.
The President is tasked to sign all bills sent to him from Congress as the chief executive of the country. Should the President refuse to sign a bill, it gets sent back to the Senate where a two-thirds majority vote is required to override the requirement for Presidential approval.
The President may also suggest legislation to Congress, and the two will often work closely together on legislation, where the assent from the President plays a role in the formation of laws. Congress may pass laws anyway as a façade, and may not even care if a bill has majority support in the Senate, like the Heroes Act in the House that died there, where fists get pounded but nothing else happens.
During presidential campaigns, candidates will very often speak glibly about what they plan on doing in the next presidential term, with little regard to whether or not such ideas even have a chance of passing. Much of the platform of these candidates rely on support of Congress, and the President is quite limited in what he can do on his own, which we saw in full view with President Trump’s executive orders lately. It’s not that the President can’t do anything, but these executive orders, the unilateral use of presidential power, is far more limited than their platforms would suggest.
Let’s look at what is called Trump’s tax cuts, otherwise known as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. The bill may have had Trump’s approval, but it first had to pass both the House and the Senate before it ever even made it to his desk, which he happily signed into law. If the bill did not have enough support in either the House or Senate, it would have not even made it to his desk.
Candidates want to make this race for president bigger than it actually is, so they will often proclaim that they are planning on doing all sorts of things that they are limited to making suggestions with, with no authority to do anything but approve laws that have already passed. Biden has taken this charade much further with his pretending that he can lock down state economies or proclaim mandatory masks in states, issues which neither he nor Congress has any say in.
When confronted with the objection by Trump during the first debate that Biden has caved into the policies of the radical left in his party, Biden boldly and foolishly claimed that he was the Democratic Party, which is very far from the truth. The matters he had been speaking of and claiming to be his own, his own platform, were for the most part matters that he does not have the power to enact, including his tax reforms. While Biden may be consulted in these matters, in order to get his support, these are decisions made by Congress.
If, for instance, Biden wins the presidency, his party keeps control of the House, both of which look nearly certain at this point, but his party does not get control of the Senate, none of this stuff will see the light of day without the agreement of Republicans, and will end up ignored in the same way that the Democrats’ pleas of waiting until after the election to confirm a new Supreme Court justice.
This is one thing that is in the wheelhouse of a president, to appoint justices, but whether or not the selection is confirmed depends upon a Senate majority vote. Legislation requires the approval of both houses of Congress, which is a step further away from the scope of presidential power.
While many have accused Biden of being a puppet for others in the party, it turns out that the puppeteering is limited to having him raise his pen and sign into law the radical legislation that his friends in the party have passed should they get the power to do so by having a majority in both houses. This is Biden’s point of power, and he is by the very definition of the office a follower, not a leader, when it comes to legislation.
This is why the U.S. House of Representatives and the United States Senate comprise the legislative branch, as they deal with legislation. The Office of the President and his staff comprise the executive branch, as in executing legislation previously passed by the legislative branch.
The third branch of U.S. government, the judicial branch, comprises the federal court system including the Supreme Court and ensure that any law that is passed is in the keeping with the U.S. Constitution. We now have a pecking order here, where the legislative branch passes laws, the President executes them according to his wishes, and the judicial branch ensures that any laws that pass this gauntlet are also understood to be within the power assigned to the other two branches by the Constitution.
This is why we have held all along that in order for Sanders’ Manifesto or any of the left-leaning ideas of the Democrats, including any of these tax hikes, is going to require that they run the table and win all three branches. Biden’s fervent wish to undo all of the economic progress we made since the 2017 law that is credited to Trump but actually was a co-operative effort between the House, and Senate, and the Presidency, will just die at the Senate level along with a lot of other things should the Democrats fail to sweep.
We need not be too afraid of the prospects of Joe Biden becoming President in itself, although he does have within his power the ability to be disruptive for markets. The mere perception alone is enough to move markets, markets that do not normally rely on a very developed understanding of anything to act.
Stock Markets Are Driven by Fear, and There is Much to Fear Now
Fear alone is more than enough to produce some big moves down, and we saw this first hand when the idea of a global pandemic first surfaced, where the move turned out to be even way out of proportion with a market still fundamentally deceived about the significance of this.
However, the market has been remarkably resilient about this purported existential threat, taking it in stride really. There were many unknowns back then and people reacted out of sheer fear, but as the event played out, the market at least took a more considered view and rebounded, all the way back in fact, but the threat that the election has to the stock market is of an entirely different sort, a much more enduring one than our panicking over an alleged pandemic that is only scary if you purposely exaggerate the number of deaths as we continue to do and not even put the total in perspective.
It turns out that the number of deaths overall from respiratory infection this year isn’t even above average, and when we deduct the clearly fraudulent ones, the people who died of something else like cancer, heart attacks, trauma, and the like which are included in the official count, COVID isn’t so scary, no more than the seasonal flu is, given that the numbers are similar. It’s harder to scare people with a normal sized outbreak, but much easier if we just exaggerate the numbers the way we have.
The threat from the Democrats running the table needs no exaggeration, and we especially need to be aware of the fact that Joe Biden is just the front man for these radicals and his platform is indeed more moderate than theirs but he is not the one to set the agenda and is just along for the ride. If we fear the monster, we need to be afraid of the actual one we’re going to be facing.
Joe Biden’s ignorance toward everything it seems knows no bounds, and his scolding Trump for not ordering the wearing of masks really hits this point home. Joe has waffled on this as well with his fantasy of a national mask mandate, where he has suggested at times that he is aware that he does not have the authority for such a thing, then he goes back to shamelessly promoting his ignorance and using it to attack Trump for not doing something he has no power to do anyway.
Biden is not alone in accepting these things unquestionably, even though scientists who study these things have shown for over 100 years that masks do not and cannot possibly protect anyone from any virus. If we wonder about such things, we owe it to ourselves to at least take the time to verify these claims, especially when made by the head of the CDC who have some real skin in the game and stand to make potentially make billions from their vaccine patents. This does not make them wrong in itself, but surely should be a reason to want to actually verify their claims, and when we do, the actual science tells a different story.
What really gets lost in this false narrative is how everything, including our most basic freedoms, get trampled under this mass hysteria stampede. Trump has waffled as well on this at times, although he has kept a more open mind than Biden has overall, and Biden is completely on board with at least wanting to inflict more social and economic damage upon us, including wanting everyone to wear masks, whether he has the power to do so or not. The fact that he does not should perhaps scare us the most.
Trump is at least asking questions and at least attempting to strike a balance between our response to the virus and other practical concerns. When we stop asking questions, we are doomed, and the fact that anyone questioning these authorities, including legions of scientists and medical experts, gets censored, only hints at how deeply disturbing 2020 is, and this has less to do with a greatly exaggerated pandemic and is more about how brainwashed people have become, including and perhaps especially Joe Biden.
We need to do our best to keep our minds as clear as we can and insist on facts and not just appeals to authority, which is itself a fallacy, and an especially egregious one given how fraudulent the official narrative espoused by these authorities is.
We need to take this same commitment to the facts to examine Biden’s claim that he is the Democratic Party as the other party members are not bound to even take his advice if they do not wish to, and we saw that with many Republican congressional members being at odds with their president even though they belong to the same party.
This is not a matter of their using Biden as a puppet to enact their machinations, to rely on his personal ideology and platform to guide them, as he’s really only the guy who will sign their bills at the end of the day, where his only real involvement is to rubber stamp his party’s legislation or not, and it doesn’t take all that strong puppet strings to get him to do his duty here.
There’s no telling how bad it might end up being if the Democrats have their boy in the White House to sign their bills into law, and also have control of both houses to make whatever laws they want, especially if they manage to get rid of the filibuster rule as they intend to do. It won’t be Joe deciding what they pass, as this isn’t even his job, and it’s not even that the people in the shadows are using Biden as a puppet, because they get to decide these things with or without him. Biden’s views don’t even matter as long as they don’t upset him so much that he will wish to refuse to sign their bills.
Biden may or may not accept Sanders’ Manifesto, even though his denial during the first debate was the only indication he isn’t on board, but it doesn’t matter at all whether he is or not because he’s just an observer in this process. The President works alongside Congress, he does not in any way lead them, regardless of what the party affiliations may be.
This is all common knowledge and things we teach our kids in school, and it is both amazing and disturbing how the media continues to ignore the realities in elections and support patently false ideas that represent the president as being a monarch with powers greatly in excess of reality, such as the ability to define a party’s congressional agenda as Biden has claimed.
We Should Understand What Presidents Can Do Before We Vote for Them
It’s quite understandable that the candidates may do a lot of this, taking credit for things that they may have not even had a substantial role in, and casting blame on opponents for things they have no control at all over, but given that so many of us have handed over our brains to the media, someone needs to be doing the thinking for us if we are unwilling to do it ourselves, and if we leave it up to them, they will do so to suit their own agendas, which obviously isn’t to inform us correctly.
This does not mean that the presidential election isn’t important, and as it turns out it is vital if we wish to have any defense against socialists in the Democratic party considerably more radical than Joe, even though Joe is plenty radical in his own right.
It is not Joe’s policies that matter if we are concerned with the radicalization of American politics that people like Sanders, Warren, Ocasio-Cortez, Pelosi, Schumer, and others wish to inflict upon us, it is losing the last line of defense against this that Trump would hold, the last check in the American system of checks and balances that seek to protect us against this very thing being lost, to give the woods completely over to this pack of political wolves.
Biden’s ideas are indeed more moderate than theirs, but it is vital that we understand that this makes no difference at all. Medicare for All, Welfare for All, Free College for All, crippling tax reform well beyond anything Biden would agree with, massive reparations for slavery, defunding of the police, corporate and wealth taxes aggressive enough to drive away both the wealthy and the corporations, crippling surcharges on financial transactions, the government seizing part ownership of corporations along with voting power, and other radical proposals all depend not on a president promoting these ideas, but instead not standing in the way of this extreme radicalization and the economic and political devastation that will result.
With the prospects of the Republicans maintaining their majority in the Senate growing dimmer and dimmer each day, with the sun almost set on this possibility, the combination of the complete power that a sweep would represent and what they actually plan on doing with this power makes the Presidency our last hope for defending ourselves against such an attack.
Democrats have not only declared war on the economy, they are also out to attack the Constitution itself, where they are very eager to have our constitutional protections diminished alarmingly, including both the protections of the first and second amendment.
It is their opposition to the first amendment, our right to free speech, that we should be the most concerned about, even though the media has taken it upon themselves to censor any speech that they do not agree with, already being in essence the arbiters of truth where anything not corresponding to their view of it becomes ignored and deleted.
It’s not that Joe Biden’s platform isn’t scary enough though, and if this was all that was at stake, and he wasn’t just being used as a front man with the illusion of these decisions actually being his, there is plenty in his platform to be scared of. We’ve spoken about his confusion about corporate tax hikes at length and his grossly mistaken view that this will just punish corporations and not have the effect of increasing unemployment notably, and while this is certainly a huge concern, it’s not the only big concern.
His wishing to rid us of capital gains benefits will only punish those who hold stocks, and those of us who do can at least hope that this may eventually be made right again, where people may choose to hold on to their stocks until the anger about this can be properly expressed at the ballot box.
What is also dangerous and will hurt everyone is Biden’s plan on jacking up social security contributions, and this is yet another example of Biden not seeing things beyond first glance and therefore missing the effect that his new proposal will have on businesses. Businesses are required to match these contributions, and many are barely breathing now and this may serve to have their life support measures fail.
So many businesses are already dying due to the senseless and draconian lockdowns which have only served to increase the overall death toll, a fact that all the unbiased scientists are quick to point out, and while Biden does not have the power to order lockdowns, he and his gang can surely help put more people out of business with additional burdens such as this.
2020 has been a horrible year overall so far with the way that we have seen the world so easily tricked into lunacy, where an outbreak of no particular note has been exploded into something that the great majority of the population still believes is some sort of existential crisis. We do have a crisis of this magnitude happening, an exercise in control so complete that we happily mutilate our society in the manner we have and obey Big Brother’s every command without question in a shocking manner well beyond anything Orwell could even dream of.
At least Donald Trump had the courage and sensibility to speak out at least somewhat about this at times, although even he got reigned in and he no longer compares COVID to the flu even though the actual COVID deaths are quite comparable to the flu, as we accurately predicted from the outset. What has surprised us is how the authorities have been able to ramp up the panic as the crisis has waned, and their power seemingly knows no bounds.
Not having President Trump who is at least willing to question this false narrative a little will represent a significant loss to those who wish not to be ruled by using blatant lies as a pretext to usurp our constitutional freedoms in favor of the totalitarianism that is quickly replacing it. Joe Biden, on the other hand, has clearly been completely brainwashed, and his being such a champion of this propaganda is the last thing we need at a time of such crisis, even though he has no real say in the matter and his leadership will be no more than symbolic, as a cheerleader for this despicable fraud.
There is no telling just how bad things will get should Biden win and his party of hard line socialists get to do whatever they want over the next 2 years at least, until such time as the mid-term elections bring a third of the Senate as well as the entire House up for vote.
To make this more challenging to undo, the Democrats are at least considering adding 4 more Senators to their ranks by admitting D.C. and Puerto Rico as states, which would make it harder for Republicans to regain control. The House remains a bigger challenge due to its representation by population and not by state, where the Democrats do much better in heavily populated urban areas and particularly in recent years.
Should this happen, and it is not certain but very close, there just isn’t any way that the stock market could thrive or even hold up under the frontal assault that Biden and friends have planned for us. This is a far bigger deal than the financial media leads us to believe, or whatever friends Biden has on Wall Street who have told him he will be good for the economy and the market, which is purely delusional, especially since this runs counter to Biden’s own explicit intentions. He wants to make Wall Street pay, and pay dearly, and that includes all of us who are in the market.
We need to have our sneakers on now and our hands on the doorknob to be ready to run for our lives, because a Biden win will be very ugly for the stock market, and unlike the COVID panic of February and March, this infection of the market will be both real and massive and won’t be going away anytime soon.
Chief Editor, MarketReview.com
Ken has a way of making even the most complex of ideas in finance simple enough to understand by all and looks to take every topic to a higher level.
Contact Ken: ken@marketreview.com
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