By now you know the Food and Drug Administration, in conjunction with effort by First Lady Michelle Obama, proposed new food labeling. The proposed labels would shift the focus from fats to calories, and honest serving sizes.
The thinking is new labels would prompt shame and embarrassment on to food companies forcing them to create healthier products.
I appreciate Michelle Obama's efforts to get children to exercise more, but this scheme dovetails into the truer agenda of removing responsibility from the person to the evil corporation. A representative from the FDA said "No food company wants to look bad," so they'll do the right thing.
We look at food labels all the time, especially my wife, but we are mostly on the prowl for high sodium. Most of the time I'm not shocked at the levels of sugar or fat, but sodium is tricky.
Be that as it may, most people will look at labels and still eat foods the First Lady would frown upon.
The $2.0 billion price tag and redistribution of accountability aspect makes this a no-go for me, not to mention the proposed labels would look just like the current nutrition labels. I have a better idea...some kind of "nutrition facts" label should be affixed to the administration's economic policies. The nanny state is so important for elites; nothing underscores their true contempt for personal thought and choices.
Who's Watching the Watchdogs?
A new report (4,000 employees and 7,200 trades between 2009 and 2011) shows an amazingly lucky occurrence at the Securities and Exchange Commission. The men and women in charge of making sure there's no cheating in the stock market are all-natural born traders. Somehow they sell holdings, just days before there is an official SEC action. Imagine that. This is the same SEC that missed the scandals of Enron and WorldCom while swooning over Bernard Madoff, and his magical investment touch.
I watched the SEC wipe out hundreds of small investment firms and harass a lot of people, who are doing well in the market, only if they could lawyer up with the best.
I doubt if anything comes of this latest report as I've seen this before, and the news makes headlines and angers a few people then fades away. Yet something smells rotten when SEC employees get out right before the hammer comes down. Just for fun I'd like to see a further report on the 26% of employees, who buy stock the agency is preparing action against. Are they the office misfits?
The Market
For all the talk of this market resembling the tech-bubble days, how many people do you know celebrated the S&P 500 reaching a new all-time high? There were no party hats on the trading floors and cab drivers in New York aren't trading at red lights. The mountain of skeptics if stacked on top each other could reach the moon and back, and yet they all pitch the doomsday scenario as if it's them against the world. (It's going to be one heck of a crowded victory lap.)
Of course I'm thrilled because people are making a lot of money, but I think the market needs to take a break in general. With that said, we have been closing losers to focus on letting the winners ride and finding fresh ideas, because I think there's a parabolic phase that happens before the guys and gals, who talked Americans into missing 10,000 Dow points and counting from taking their bow. The most important thing to remember is this is a life-long endeavor. We calibrate cash levels to mitigate exposure, but owning great companies at discounted values is always the goal during record-breaking rallies and while enduring pullbacks, even crashes.
Q4 GDP Results
This morning, it was announced that US gross domestic product (GDP) increased 3.2% in the fourth quarter of 2013, which was lower than the 4.1% gain in the third quarter of 2013 but slightly higher than economists' expectation of a 3.0% increase. The good news is that we can see some signs of life in the private sector as there were substantial increases in sales of equipment (+10.6%), non-fixed residential (+7.8%) and intellectual property (+8.0%). While these headlines appear strong, the underlying trends do not signal much acceleration in economic activity as of late.
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