Friday, October 22, 2010

A Benefit of Aging

One of the benefits of aging is that a person has had time to benefit from all the good advice they have received over the years. One of the disadvantages is that you cannot remember who gave you the advice . . .

Some of the best advice I received as a young investment advisor was to be an "economics agnostic and a political atheist".

Long time readers know I have written often that there are lessons to learn from Supply-side economics, Keynesian economics, Monetarism, Classical economics, etc. No one school of economics has a monopoly on forecasting, truth, realism, or logic. I'm agnostic on economics.

Whomever it was that gave me this advice also said "The Repubican Pary and the Democratic Pary both make whorehouses look respectable." A person may hold conservative or liberal philosophies, but neither political party reflects well on either political philosophy. I'm an atheist about politics.

What does all this mean? Don't expect predictability in economics and don't expect truth in politics. Trust only in unpredictability.

And, if you are the long forgotten person who gave me this advice . . . Thank You!