Wow. No wonder all the traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange broke out in a USA, USA, USA" chant when Trump visited last week.
The HOTLINE has frequently reported on the rising global dominance of American stocks. The end of November marked a new milestone: US equities now represent over 65% of global market capitalization. Japan is number two at just 5.5%. China's companies are about one-twentieth as valuable as U.S. firms.
If the Magnificent Seven tech companies were a separate stock market, they would be nearly as valuable as all the rest of the companies publicly traded around the world. How moronic that our OWN regulators want to break up these American wealth creators for the unforgivable crime of being TOO successful.
Bloomberg notes how badly foreign markets have lagged:
Over the last decade, in price terms, the MSCI Europe has lagged the S&P 500 by an average compounded rate of 7.7% per year, while the MSCI Emerging Markets has lagged by 9.6%. That's terrible underperformance.
Can it continue? The bull case is that the political party that wants America to follow Europe on energy, tax, and regulatory policy lost this year. Badly.
The United States is also completely dominating the global race to build data centers, with more than the rest of the world combined. The biggest concentration of data centers in the world is in Loudoun County, Virginia - known as "Data Center Alley."
That is a result not just of US dominance of Big Tech, but also the availability of reliable energy that - despite the best efforts of the left - remains relatively affordable and abundant in the US. Especially compared to Europe, which is much further down the green rabbit hole.
To ensure U.S. economic dominance, let's not go down that hole.
Our good friends did some digging into the historical data on the use of the presidential pardon power.
It turns out that with the just-recently announced pardons of several thousand convicts, Biden has smashed the old record - held by FDR - by almost double.
We don't know much about the specific cases of the Biden pardons and commuted sentences (except for the shameful Hunter pardon).
But it is true that in our capricious justice system, there are thousands of people in prison who were unjustly imprisoned due to rogue prosecutors.
Trump should immediately pardon thousands of Americans (including most of the Jan 6 protestors) who have been wrongfully imprisoned because of their politics, not their "crimes."
Banks are facing growing pressure over the perception that they are canceling bank accounts and other services, to target conservatives and conform to corporate wokeness. There is definitely some of that going on. But the villain here is Congress and the regulators, not the banks.
The WSJ's Allysia Finley explains:
The Bank Secrecy Act requires banks to build profiles on customers, monitor their activity, and file Suspicious Activity Reports, or SARs, with the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network if they suspect illicit activity. Such "know your customer" rules are intended to prevent money laundering...
Examiners may also covertly require banks to designate certain accounts as "high risk." Such designations impose hefty compliance burdens that effectively force banks to close accounts...
FBI officials suggested banks file SARs on "suspicious" people so the bureau could have more financial data to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
When government makes a suggestion, it's an order. As a result, banks may have felt compelled to close accounts--without being able to inform customers of their reason for doing so. All the while, the mainstream media obsessed about Mr. Trump's supposed danger to democracy.
Trump's appointees should commit to immediately end these abusive practices - and Congress should repeal their statutory basis. In the meantime, banks should keep explaining what is actually happening to the public.
