I should have completed my thought (I blame multi-tasking with toddler bedtime): I would wager running a fortune 50 firm makes you as qualified to be president as being a senator or state governor. You can say that Rex tillerson is an example of a failure and that would only be because he can't fill his despartment - trump won't allow anyone who signed the never trump pledge to work in the administration (and much of the diplomatic community was thus barred from working in the state dept).
So I have a somewhat jaded view on this because I went to a pretty good business school specifically so I could bring best practices of business to the federal govt, and left to start my own company after 3 years of utter frustration. The problem isn't stupid government employees or fraud, waste, or abuse, or even unnecessary bureaucracy although there is plenty of that. The core issue is that at least at the federal level, government is supposed to and by and large does perform only inherently governmental functions. These are by their very definition those functions that are unable to be performed by the private sector. And so it turns out bringing private sector experience and solutions to those tasks is generally counterproductive and what works great in the private sector is often not the answer to a similar problem in government because of how government inherently operates. I don't disagree with your assertion, but more because of my lack of confidence in the skills of a senator or most state governors rather than agreement that a fortune 50 CEO knows how to operate at the federal level. It's just a completely different world.
I agree they are different worlds. And being a “businessman” doesn’t mean you can run the government like a business successfully. The reason is that you have people who only gain by not dealing with you. The reason that I would vote for a fortune 50 ceo is that running a massive Corp is like running a massive government. You have many moving parts, several constituencies, complex decisions, and are facing public scrutiny. The only other job that’s similar would be a military general or navy admiral. Further I would think operating in top levels of government would be very different than operating at the lower or middle levels of government. PS: As I think about it more, most of trumps cabinet are fortune 50 executives and none of them are really doing a great job. I don’t know if that invalidates my theory or shows how bad of a leader trump is.
Trump is doing exactly what Bush Jr did. Deregulation, tax cuts to corporations and starting a war. He brought us from a period of growth into a recession and 12+ years of war.
Obviously, it's impossible to know anything with certainty, as far as this tax bill is concerned. However, it seems that the reconciled version will preserve the deductions for tuition waivers and student loan interest. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2017/12/14/grad-tax-dead-student-loan-interest-deduction-saved-in-final-bill/
I think we should wait for them to pass the bill, and then we as traders will be able to earn on the dollar.