Earlier this week I read an interesting article in The Wall Street Journal, “Higher Education’s Enemy Within,” written by Jose Cabranes. Judge Cabranes serves on the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. He was the first general counsel at Yale and later served as a trustee of Yale. He was writing about the current state of higher education and referred to Yale’s mission statement, which was altered in 2016.

The previous mission was, according to Judge Cabranes, “To create, preserve, and disseminate knowledge.” The new mission says nothing of knowledge. Instead, Yale is now “committed to improving the world.” It goes on to say that Yale educates “aspiring leaders” through research but also through “practice.” The quotes belong to Judge Cabranes, not to me. He goes on to make some great points about how administrators throughout higher education have usurped the power once given to professors and, as a result, we have fewer scholars and far more protesters. It is an interesting article and I would recommend it.

The current condition of our educational system is a pet subject of mine, which is why I read the article in the first place, but it was the reference to knowledge – once foundational and now completely missing – which got me. At Iron Capital, one of our guiding principals is that all employees are to strive for wisdom. We define wisdom as “the combination of knowledge and experience,” and we use the phrase “strive for” because enough wisdom can never really be attained. Of course, we are speaking of a particular type of wisdom – wisdom in investment decisions – but knowledge is the key here. Knowledge is the first step; one must actually know what one is talking about.

The good Judge is pointing out that we have lost this understanding at our most prestigious of universities. If it has happened there, one can only imagine what has happened elsewhere.

Senator Elizabeth Warren has made a name for herself recently by proposing a wealth tax. She has found a few young left-leaning economics professors to give it some credence. Forget the knowledge that of the 12 countries that have already tried it, nine have dropped it…given that the idea has been around for only a handful of years, that is a pretty miserable track record. No worries, Warren’s scheme is polling well, so what other knowledge would she need?

Americans are rightly concerned with inequality. The strange omission in all of this is the lack of curiosity about what causes inequality. We all know that treating a symptom will never cure a disease, and in many ways only makes things worse over time. Yet no one seems interested in the root cause of inequality; all they talk about is taking from one group and giving to another. This would help with the symptoms of inequality, and actually already does, as the rich do pay most of the taxes while approximately half of Americans gain from government programs. There have been several articles written about how both taxes and government benefits are not included in most inequality measures. I suppose that is helpful to politicians who are more interested in having something to run on than actually fixing anything.

In the history of the world no one has ever been lifted up by tearing someone else down, yet all anyone seems to talk about is how we can tax the wealthy more. There really isn’t even any talk about what the extra tax revenue will do to help the poor and lift inequality. There is talk of Medicare for all, but that is for “all,” not for the poor or those who cannot afford their own coverage. That doesn’t move the needle on inequality.

I’m picking on Senator Warren and her plan, but I could just as easily talk about tariffs or several other current issues. It seems today that everyone cares deeply, but not so deeply that we want to actually know anything. We no longer even ask the questions.

Inequality is a serious issue and it deserves a much more serious discussion. Not about how we can tear down the rich, but how can we actually solve the problem? The first step on the road to knowledge is admitting that you don’t know. That may be the problem in this social media age where everyone feels pressure to put forward a good image.

At least that is my perspective.

Chuck Osborne

~Knowledge

Several years ago I was interviewing a prospective new employee. The gentleman was currently employed by one of the financial institutions where our clients custody their portfolios. I told him about Iron Capital’s code of ethics and how we have zero tolerance for violations of our code. Put simply, we expect our employees to behave with integrity. He told me that this was music to his ears. He was “Mr. Integrity.” (He really said that.)

The next week we had not made a decision on the position yet, but we needed the same gentleman’s help with his current employer. They wanted us to commit to bringing more assets to their firm. We don’t do that. It is up to our clients to make those decisions. We may guide them, but we never force them to use a particular custodian. He told me that he understood and suggested that we should just lie. He explained that they ask for these commitments but they don’t enforce them, so no worries, just tell them what they want to hear. So much for Mr. Integrity.

It is easy to have integrity in theory; it is a little harder when we demand it in practice. Of course, most would laugh at the idea of discussing integrity and politics in the same post, but here I go. Everything seems to be political today, and that especially goes for the policy of the Federal Reserve (Fed). Jerome Powell, the current chair of the Fed, is getting political pressure from all sides. Recently the pressure came from a former Fed member.

William Dudley, the former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, wrote, in essence, that the Fed should not lower interest rates in response to a slowdown in the economy caused by the Trump administration’s trade war. This, Dudley hoped, would bring on a recession and cost Trump the election. He later tried to walk back his remarks, but not that far back. Mr. Dudley obviously does not like President Trump.

One of the many problems with our politics today is that it has become all about what side are you on, not about the substance of what anyone actually believes. There is no intellectual honesty today. If a politician we don’t like supports a policy we do like, we change our mind on policy. If he is for it, I’m against it, no matter what “it” is.

Enter Larry Summers. Mr. Summers served in the Clinton administration. He has had a long and distinguished career as a liberal economist. Mr. Summers is no fan of President Trump. However, he believes in the old-fashioned idea of institutional integrity. The Fed is supposed to be, and frankly does a surprisingly good job of being, an apolitical organization.

Last week Larry Summers read William Dudley the riot act on CNBC. It is simply irresponsible for a former Fed member to publicly imply that the Fed should ever ignore its mandate because they don’t like either the policy or the person who happens to be in elected office, he said. It is wrong, period. Having the opinion that the current president is a bad guy does not change that.

I congratulate Mr. Summers for having the integrity to stand up for behaving like professional adults. My father always told me that when dealing with others, I was not responsible for their behavior, but I was responsible for my own.

We could all learn a lesson from that. If we are honest with ourselves and maintain intellectual integrity, then we will sometimes agree with someone we do not like. We will disagree with someone we do like. We will understand that someone else behaving badly does not condone our doing the same.

Who knows, if we all lived that way, we might even start getting along. At least that is my perspective.

Warm regards,

Chuck Osborne, CFA
Managing Director, Iron Capital

~Integrity

Amazon is no longer welcome in the Concrete Jungle of New York City. I’m sure you have all heard by now that Amazon has canceled its plans to build a headquarters in the Long Island City neighborhood of the Queens borough in New York City due to political opposition led by local politicians, most notably Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 

Ocasio-Cortez first became famous for winning an election last year as an open socialist. It makes sense that she was against this deal from the start, but it was her immediate reaction after the fact that really got my attention. 

The “problem” with the Amazon HQ2, as they were calling it, was $3 billion in various tax incentives and grants that Amazon was receiving from New York. This amount got people up in arms, which in my opinion is understandable. Why does Amazon deserve a $3 billion break? I’ll get back to that; however, when Amazon’s decision to pull out was made public the news cameras found Ocasio-Cortez in the halls of Congress. They asked for her reaction and she was in a celebratory mood. She claimed victory for the people and then said something extremely revealing: she said that New York can now spend that $3 billion on teachers and other such beneficial things. 

This goes into the category of You Just Can’t Make This Stuff Up. Let me explain. The estimates for the tax revenue generated by Amazon were $27 billion over the next decade. I have seen more modest estimates from $10 billion to $17 billion, so I’ll use the $17 billion number for a nice round number. If that number were correct, then it would mean that Amazon would have actually been responsible for $20 billion in taxes of one form or another, but because of their deal, New York would agree to take only $17 billion. That is the source of the $3 billion. 

Let’s put it another way. Let’s say one goes shopping and a store says that if you buy $100 worth of stuff, we will give you a 25 percent discount. Does the store lose $25 or gain $75? Obviously the store is collecting $75 from the customer. If the customer shops somewhere else because protesters call them names for receiving a discount, then the store does not save $25, it loses $75. When Ocasio-Cortez chases that discount shopper away, the store does not magically now have $25 that it can give its employees. 

I understand how common people who probably are not giving this story a lot of attention may be confused when the media keeps repeating that New York was “giving” Amazon $3 billion. I get how this can be misleading. What is disturbing, though, is that at least one person currently serving in Congress evidently thought the same thing. Peggy Noonan of The Wall Street Journal gave Ocasio-Cortez the benefit of the doubt and suggested that she was being purposefully misleading. I was once advised that if my only choice was to work with someone who was unethical or someone who was incompetent, then I should choose unethical; but it sure seems like we should have better choices. 

Should cities like New York give tax breaks to companies like Amazon? That is a completely different question and, in my opinion, the answer is no, they should not. Every company, just like every individual, should play by the same rules. From my perspective the real solution would be for cities like New York to reform their tax system so that companies like Amazon would want to be there. When the enemies of capitalism point to deals like Amazon’s as an example of what is wrong today they are half right. The problem is that they don’t seem to understand it is the high tax policies that they support that lead to deals like this being made. They blame it on capitalism, but there is nothing capitalistic about different companies having different rules; no, that is what happens under the system that Ocasio-Cortez says would be better. You just can’t make this stuff up. 

Warm regards,

Chuck Osborne, CFA
Managing Director

~Concrete Jungle Not Rain Forest

This week began with the sad news of the passing of President George H.W. Bush. Whenever a former U.S. President passes, it brings back memories from his time in office. When I think back to the first Bush presidency, the one thing I really miss is having a president who was actually presidential. He wasn’t immediately running for re-election; in fact, he almost seemed half-hearted in his re-election attempt. One commentator I heard said it best when he said that President Bush was a better public servant than he was a politician. Wouldn’t that be unique today?

When I think about George H.W. Bush and his time in office, what I remember that is so different from every president since is that everyone seemed to respect him. This does not mean everyone agreed with him or voted for him – he was our last one-term President after all – but no one went around talking about how much they hated George H.W. Bush. It just didn’t happen. One could argue this is because social media had not been invented, but that was true in the Clinton years, and there were plenty of people who said they hated Bill Clinton.

Social media was in its infancy when George W. Bush was in the White House, but we had congressmen who referred to him as “the current resident” instead of Mr. President. I don’t believe anyone was walking around in the 1988 to 1992 timeframe saying “he is not my President.” I, for one, miss that.

I hope we regain that civility in the future. The market activity yesterday even reminds me of the first Bush years. We plunged because the interest rates on the 2-year Treasury went higher than the interest rates on 5-year Treasury. That is what investors call an inverted yield curve, which supposedly means we are headed for economic slowdown and maybe even a recession. Ignore the fact that a month ago or so we were fretting over a yield curve being too steep, now it is flat and we are fretting over that.

Are we headed for a recession? Employment is the key. We have an unemployment rate under 4 percent, and real wages are growing for the first time in a generation. It is hard to imagine how a recession could happen under those circumstances. Yesterday morning Wells Fargo CEO Timothy Sloan was asked if the bank was hearing about economic slowdown concerns from their clients. His quick response was a flat, “No.” In fact, he is experiencing the opposite. He stated that small business optimism was strong.

The economy was strong in the late 1980s and early 1990s as well. Then we slowed just a little and all the talking heads started talking about recession. George H.W. Bush stated that we were not in a recession, which was, at the time, technically correct. Bill Clinton said he “felt our pain” and was our President for the next eight years. The lesson is that we can talk ourselves into a recession very easily, even when times are actually very good. This is why these market signals cannot be ignored.

That economic blip in the early 1990s was over before inauguration day, and what followed was some of the strongest growth we have ever seen. While we feel the pain of the market, fundamentals remain strong and as long as they do things will work out in the long term.

Markets may be down, but the biggest loss this week is for our country. George H.W. Bush will be deeply missed.

Warm regards,

Chuck Osborne, CFA
Managing Director

~The Last Presidential President

There is an old saying, “Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, and small minds discuss people.” It is often attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, although there is no evidence that she ever said it. It is on a plaque in my house because it was one of my mother-in-law’s favorite sayings.

I thought about that over the last few weeks. I don’t know how it was for you, but this past election season was horrible in our neck of the woods. We had to turn off our phone because politicians are exempt from the no-call list. We couldn’t stop the mailers.

I received a mailer from one candidate which made the following argument: I should vote for this candidate because the other candidate had made a poor advertisement. I’m not kidding. There was no mention of any platform; in fact, the candidate did not make a single positive argument for casting the ballot for anyone. No, I was to vote against the other candidate because the camera angle on one advertisement was awkward. You can’t make this stuff up.

I know discussing politics is dangerous, because we live in this polarized anger- and hate-filled world, right? I am not so sure. I have made many investments over the course of my career, and the best ones are always when my team and I have been able to discern a truth which is counter to the current perception. Are we really as polarized as the media claims? I think the answer depends. Are we talking about ideas, events, or people?

Earlier this fall I had the opportunity to return to my boarding school in Indiana for a gathering of alumni volunteers who help the school across the country. One of my classmates was there from Colorado, and we had a great conversation while catching up.

He and I see the world completely differently, at least that is what the pollsters who try to pigeon-hole everyone into a data point would tell you. I believe that it is pretty accurate to say that come election day we would cancel out each other’s vote on most occasions. This notwithstanding, we did what nobody is supposed to do: we discussed politics…and it was great. How is this possible?

We kept our discussion about ideas, not people. When two people do this I believe they will find exactly what we did, which is that what we have in common far outweighs our differences. I know that goes against what the media would have everyone believe, but it is a fact. When one takes away the team colors and the divisive personalities, the vast majority of us get along very well. It also helped that we both kept in mind that even when we disagreed, the fact remains that we are friends, and in this case have been for more than 30 years. Isn’t that more important than winning an argument?

I know it happens every election because of the calendar, but for some reason, this year’s election being followed by Veterans Day seemed especially appropriate. Maybe because it is the one-hundredth year of the armistice that ended World War I, which occurred at the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918. Maybe it is because with all of our differences, veterans have a way of reminding us how fortunate we are to live in a free country, and that freedom is never free.

The issue with our politics is not that we are polarized; it is that our political discourse has become almost solely about people, not about events, and certainly not about ideas. Change the level of discourse and we can change the atmosphere. That has to start from the ground up. I’m willing to give it a go, and I hope you all will too.

Warm regards,

Chuck Osborne, CFA
Managing Director

~Great Minds