From polling shifts to market reactions, Chris Casey provides a comprehensive look at how the U.S.A.’s 2024 election could reshape your financial future. He breaks down the differences between traditional polls and betting markets, revealing what they indicate about the race and highlighting key battleground states that could tip the scales. Chris, the co-founder and managing director of our RIA partner, WindRock Wealth, also dives deep into the economic policies of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris and examines the blunders and successes of their respective campaigns. Learn how voter priorities and these policies will influence market expectations, and discover strategies to protect your wealth, no matter who takes the Oval Office.
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Chris Casey 0:00
If you look at the polls over let’s say the last two months, what you’ll see is that Harris has consistently been the lead. The betting polls are saying something very different. Things can be especially difficult or volatile, I think over the next couple of months prior to the inauguration, going into the next administration, no matter who’s president, I think inflation hedges will make sense. But
Andrew Brill 0:22
do you see the markets continuing to march a little bit higher? Well, they
Chris Casey 0:25
could, especially, I think with the Trump election, they would continue to march higher.
Andrew Brill 0:33
It’s on everyone’s mind right now, the presidential election and how things will play out. I’m your host. Andrew brill, we’ll talk about the election and some of the issues affecting all of us, and if you need help with your finances. Moving forward, head over to wealthion.com/free for a free, no obligation. Financial Review.
Andrew Brill 0:55
I’d like to welcome back our partner Investment Advisor Chris Casey, who is a founder and managing director of wind rock, Chris, welcome back. It’s certainly an interesting time we live in right now, isn’t it?
Chris Casey 1:07
It certainly is. Thanks for having me on. It’s good to see you again.
Andrew Brill 1:09
So we’re gonna talk a little bit about or a lot of bit about the upcoming election and what it all means. And I’d like to start Chris by asking about the polls. Now, there’s two different polls that we hear about, or I guess, a few different polls that we hear about, but one of them is a national poll. And then you also hear about betting polls, and I want to differentiate between the two, because they are very different. Well, they’re
Chris Casey 1:34
very different by as far as the mechanism, by how they come up with the results, but they’re also very different in what they’re saying right now, and it’s been a bit of a roller coaster. If you look at the polls over to let’s say, the last two months, what you’ll see is that Harris has consistently been the lead, and maybe it’s narrowed a little bit, but they still call Harris the winner on a tight, very tight type of election, the betting polls are saying something very different. They’ve changed dramatically since the conventions. They were heavily in favor of Trump, obviously after the assassination attempt, and now they’re finally over the last three weeks, they’ve marked they’ve moved decidedly in Trump’s favor again. So what you’ve seen is anywhere from October 1 really, really took off for, I’d say, October 7, and now you see Trump widening a lead where, pretty dramatically, where it’s almost we’re talking landslide type predictions coming out of several different betting websites, and kind of a 6040, type popular vote, or at least the odds are, of him winning. Is
Andrew Brill 2:39
this this is this something new, where there’s betting sites that are all of a sudden taking bets on who’s gonna win the presidency? They’re
Chris Casey 2:48
not new, per se, but they’re becoming more popular. Like London’s, you’ve been able to bet on London for quite some time, but now you have another number of markets. Not all of them are open to Americans. However, it’s easy to get around that as well. But the reason betting polls, I think, make a lot more sense, is because no one is giving a false answer. You pick up the phone and someone calls you, you could say whatever. You just want to get off the phone. Maybe they call you twice. What? Hey, you give the same answer twice. Well, when you’re putting money down, that’s your actual deep felt conviction, whether it’s for that person, meaning you’re in favor of that candidate, or because you just can see the way the winds blowing, you believe that person will win, actually. So I think the betting polls in general give more accurate answers, and they’re becoming more popular. I think there’s a lot more attention on them right now, which I think is a
Andrew Brill 3:36
good thing. I bet the commanders yesterday to win on a Hail Mary pass, and that was actually brutal, because I was watching that game, but I digress, and you being in Chicago, probably reading all about that today in the newspapers. But how is this all changed? July 21 will go down in our history. Is a very, very big day, because that’s the day that Joe Biden decided that he wasn’t going to run any longer. He was going to pass the reins off to Kamala Harris, and it was Trump in a landslide at that point. And I think it caught his campaign a little off guard, and it probably caught a lot of people off guard that he did that, even though there were a lot of people calling for Biden to step aside. But what’s changed in that time period from July 21 to now, where it’s, in essence, too close to call, because all the polls have it within that margin of error.
Chris Casey 4:33
Well, first of all, please don’t bring up the bears this program. But there was a there was a heartache outside Chicago, obviously. So those are hard game to watch. So I think I said on a previous podcast with you that, in my opinion, the candidate who would win would be the one that avoided the most missteps, because, face of both these candidates have a lot of flaws, as far as inability to have gaps from missteps. What. Have you and, and Trump, I think, has had a couple and, but they’ve been fairly early on. So going back to the assassination attempt, right? A few days later, he had Republican National Convention. He is on a high note, right? I think that was his first misstep. Was the was the acceptance speech he gave. It was no different than any of his other like, you know, rally type speeches, where it’s a lot off the cuff, he’s calling people out of the audience. What he should have done, in my opinion, I think would have really solidified him. Was very dignified, so called presidential speech. He basically could have just done a replay of his inauguration address, which was very un Trump, like it was. It was a great speech. It’s just not something he normally does. And he stuck to a script, right? That was one misstep. The other was the debate he did with Harris. And while I say neither one did well, I think people would say that she won only because he did so poorly. And you saw that from the first answer, right? She didn’t answer it. He could have easily, really made won some points right there with his retort, and he didn’t. And it’s like a lot of debates he’s done. He just seems unprepared. Now, the Harris campaign has been in a bind, right? Because they don’t have what I would say is a good overall message, right? The message is we’re not we’re not Trump, we’re not the ones banning abortion, and we’re the agent of change, which is a really odd position to be in when you’re part of the current administration, right? So I think give Mr. D Harris, candidates, Hayes have has had more missteps, namely, some disastrous interviews, whether it’s 60 Minutes interview, you know, the allegations of it being heavily not even edited beyond that, manipulated. You also have the interview she did with Fox with, I believe his name is Brett bear, disastrous, right? They should have never, ever allowed her to do that. I’m not sure who’s who’s calling the shots on that. And the other thing that I think Trump has done well, and I’ll just digress for a minute and tell the story. A couple years ago, in the early years of his administration, I remember seeing this economist I know, and he was later part of the administration on and off, he had mentioned, listen, Trump is the nicest guy in the world privately and one of the meanest publicly, right? And so what the campaign has done is really showed him to be more of the affable guy that people get to see when they’re intimate with them, right? So that McDonald’s thing, I think, was huge. Not so much because they’re calling out what they believe to be a lie on the Harris side, but more so it just shows him like an affable, nice guy, right? He’s just interacting with common people, which he’s very good at. It’s the reason he was in Hollywood, in entertainment for a long time. So I think they’ve managed the campaign much better and avoided some of the missteps that the Harris campaign has done,
Andrew Brill 7:44
that McDonald’s appearance has led to some pretty cool memes, a lot of them, and I guess that’s one of the things you try to avoid when you’re doing something that like that, although you’re trying to show, I guess, the American people that you’re an average American. And look, I, too, can work in McDonald’s, although I don’t know how long he was there, and I don’t think he was working the friar but it’s, it’s just one of those things where he was trying to show that he was that type of person that used that we don’t get to see. I, you know, none of us really spend time with Donald Trump behind closed doors to get the real Donald Trump, if you will. But there’s, there’s a lot of issues, Chris, that have come up. And you know, in your investment world and the customers that you talk to, I’d like to get a sense of what people are talking to you about, with what they’re worried about over the next four years, eight years, 10 years, because the issues that you know, depending on, if you’re talking to Republicans or Democrats, obviously, with Trump, they’re talking about the economy. They’re talking about immigration. Interestingly enough, because I looked it up, violent crime was the third thing that Republican voters are concerned about. And on the Harris side, they’re worried about health care. They’re they’re actually worried about the Supreme Supreme Court nominees. Obviously, overturning Roe v Wade is a big thing in that. And third on the list is the economy. So are your customers, your clients, talking to you about, hey, look, I need my investments to do this, because this is what I’m worried about.
Chris Casey 9:27
Will be we probably have a skewed, you know, sample of the public at large, only because our investors tend to be our clients, tend to be pretty knowledgeable about a lot of things, and they’re a little bit more investment focused. So we probably won’t have conversations with them about the border or what have you, but I could tell you that all of them, and I think this is prudent, and this is something that everybody, all investors in America, all American citizens, should be concerned about, is really a debt situation, because I don’t see any candidates doing anything about it. When they’re in office now, Trump was just on Joe Rogan, and one of the things I recall him saying was that, through his tax initiatives, what have you he anticipated them as being able to pay down, starting to pay down the debt in the last year when COVID hit. And then he said we had to spend, you know, because it was COVID affecting everything, right? Well, that’s just not possible, right? The deficits are just too large, with or without national emergency. They’re not going away. It’s and it’s structural. It’s a structural problem with entitlements. It’s a problem with the debt levels, with interest rates. So the primary focus, I think, of everyone’s what their investment outlook should be, is how to protect yourself from inflation, because that’s the only way they’re going to get out of this debt mess, is to continue inflate the money supply. It’s the only way out outside of an outright default, which, of course, they would never do.
Andrew Brill 10:51
So in looking at the tax plans, or looking at the plans for each candidate, it, you know, I’ve done some reading. It looked like candidate Harris is going to increase the debt over the next 10 years by three and a half trillion dollars, and candidate Trump is going to increase the debt by seven and a half trillion dollars over the next 10 years. So your point to the debt is, you know, a good one in that, you know, add seven and a half trillion dollars or three and a half trillion dollars. So you’re talking about, you know, nearly 40 to nearly 40 and a half trillion and we have to service that debt. And the bond market, for some reason, has been going up as the Fed cups cuts interest rate. So how do we get this under control? Other you know, we could inflate it, which is what Donald Trump seems to think we can do, and or try to deflate it, which is what Harris wants to do. But either way, the spending isn’t going to stop, and it could, could create problems?
Chris Casey 12:00
Oh, absolutely, it will create problems. Interest rates have gone up, most notably on the long end, right? You’ve seen the 10 year go from, let’s call it 3.6% or so to, I believe, 4.2 and a lot of people have cited that is what you’re talking about. Is that Trump may spend more than Harris. Personally, I don’t see how that’s possible. I think they’re both going to spend a lot. I don’t really see a big difference between the candidates in that regard. So the long end, and I think what that is, it’s a reflection that at some point the Treasury markets will start to be concerned about the solvency the United States, because we’ve talked about this before, but when you have 35 trillion in debt and you bring in four and a half trillion in revenue, there’s no way you can even meet your own needs. As far as the annual budget, let alone start paying down debt. It’s never going to happen. Or I can’t see it without some dramatic political maneuvers as far as entitlements, what have you. So both candidates will spend a lot. I absolutely see that, and I think the bond market is starting to reflect
Andrew Brill 13:07
that. And well, let’s get it out. We’ll talk about tariffs in a minute. I want to get into the battleground states, and they all seem to have something in common. There seems to be seven battleground states that will really decide this election. Most states stick to whether they’re red or they’re blue, but there’s a few that can be flipped to Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona. I think I missed North Carolina in there somewhere, but I think those are the seven. Are there similarities with those states that create this battleground situation?
Chris Casey 13:49
Yeah, I think so, because you look at them geographically and they have some commonalities, right? You have, on the one hand, you have a block in the Deep South. On the other hand, you have a Midwestern block, and then you also have the southwestern block, as far as Nevada and Arizona. So I’m sure immigration is a big one for those southwestern states. As far as the Midwestern states, I’m sure that this is part of the reason I believe Trump picked JD Vance right, because Ohio now is firmly under Republican control, as far as the polls show. Whereas Wisconsin’s even up for grabs. You know, it was unheard of a couple years ago, and I think Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, they’re more concerned about two things. One would be tariffs and any kind of trade policies, because, you know, there’s a lot of union areas up there, auto workers, what have you. And the secondly would be, I think fracking, obviously, with Pennsylvania, that’s a big deal with the Marcellus Shale field, which is like two covers two thirds of the states. So I think that’s another key issue there. I’m not sure. To completely answer your question, what the motivations would be, as far. Far as Georgia and North Carolina, but there have been, you know, obviously the borderline or border ground states for years now. So I think there are some commonalities between the others. It’s
Andrew Brill 15:12
interesting, and we didn’t this wasn’t on our list of topics to talk about, but when we talk about fracking and energy, oil is now because Israel decided they weren’t going to blow up Iran’s oil fields or stuff like that. Oil has actually come down. So it seems like that might be a little less of an issue. You know that OPEC and and those nations will try and pick that back up. But it seems right now oil is down. And I know that fracking is a big deal. They want to bring it down further, the cost of energy, they’d like to bring down further. But that seems like right now, not such a big deal. But once energy prices start going up, it will be, won’t it? You could
Chris Casey 15:58
make an argument that oil’s recent fall may not be so much geopolitical as it is political. Meaning, maybe they’re really looking at the outcome of this election, that could be a big argument, and that they see Trump as winning and that he’s going to drill, baby drill, right? And there’s some other signs, I think, point to that. Most telling would be the fact that the Washington Post and LA Times refused to endorse Harris, right? That’s that’s a big deal, and it’s also a big deal along those same lines that other media has come out and openly attacked her for not being sitting down for an interview. So for instance, Time Magazine recently did that they, they criticized her to say, we have an open invitation. We have interviewed every presidential candidate for X number of years. You refuse to come on. They did that publicly, which is a bit shocking. It’s it’s especially shocking because that’s probably the friendliest interview she could ever get, right? It’s kind of like Brezhnev being interviewed by Pravda, right? It’s fantastic. So I do think maybe oil has sold off a bit. It may be a sign, one of many, I think, to create, like a mosaic that would predict the Trump victory.
Andrew Brill 17:04
Hi everyone. I’m one of your hosts here at wealthion. Andrew brill, in these weird economic times where the market is up and it could go down, a lot of people calling for a correction. Some people think it’s just going to keep going up. But if you need help being financially resilient, head over to wealthion.com/free and we’ll give you a free, no obligation. We don’t expect anything from you. We’ll just help you evaluate your portfolio and let you know what we can do to help. Again, head over to wealthion.com/free for a free, no obligation portfolio review, and let us do the heavy lifting for you. So let’s get to the tariffs for a second and talk about taxes versus tariffs. Chris, how do we protect ourselves? Obviously, tariffs are going to create one issue. Taxes will create a different issue. Now, tariffs. You know, Trump says, well, the countries paid the tariffs, and it’s actually not, it’s the tariffs on the imported goods. So the company here in the United States, it’s importing those, those goods from those countries, that’s actually paying the tariffs, which will filter down to the American people in higher prices, won’t it
Chris Casey 18:22
absolutely I think you’re referring i There may have been more coverage on this, but I just know from the recent Joe Rogan interview that that that Joe Rogan insinuated, Hey, have you even thought about replacing the income tax with tariffs? And Trump was like, yeah, it’s on the it’s on the table. Is basically his answer. No tax is perfectly neutral. No tax is without its repercussions. This misallocations they cause. However, I’m a little bit intrigued by doing something like this. You may remember, you know, for the first 100 years of this country’s existence, that was really the only source of revenue. It almost led to secession by the northern states several times over this issue, right? That’s how strong the issue of tariffs was back then, because it definitely impacted the southern states negatively relative to Northern so one thing to keep in mind, though, is that everyone talks about so called sin taxes, right? Taxes on alcohol and tobacco, and everyone agree. Well, that’s to diminish demand for those products. Well, what do you think happens when you have taxes on income, right? It diminishes, you know, the incentive now, people would say, Well, I’m still going to work because I want to make certain amount of money. That’s true, but it’s not a tax on the wealthy. It’s a tax on people trying to get wealthy, the income tax, right? That’s, that’s what really makes it a problem. It’s it impedes social mobility for people to get rich, right? Because a lot of tax people like Trump, like Elon, they have paid a lot of taxes, but it’s not from a big salary, right? So whenever they have to sell a stock and they’ll they’ll pay lower taxes. So they’ve paid a lot, in absolute terms, but compared to probably. A lot of people that are, I’d say, in the in the middle class, they’re paying probably a lot more in percentage basis. So no tax is perfect, but the income tax, you could argue, is one of the worst possible taxes that could exist, right? I I would argue the only one worse, I’m going off topic here, would be the inheritance tax, because, and it’s pretty meaningless to government revenues. It’s pretty small, but I just find it’s offensive that someone dies and wants to give someone else money, and that the government feels that it’s okay to come in and take a big take of it, right? Just, it’s, in my mind, it’s just, it’s silly,
Andrew Brill 20:35
and that money you’ve paid taxes on that money already, because that’s money that someone earned and put away and paid the tax on that money, and now the government says, well, they died, so we get our piece also. So it’s like being double taxed. So I hear you in that respect, and it’s a it’s it’s upsetting. Now, what about the capital gains? Chris and I know that you this is your business. This is what you deal with. Kamala Harris is talking about long term capital gains going from 20% to 28% look, you know, if you’re a savvy investor like Winrock is, and you’re smart about what you’re doing, 20% is a pretty big chunk already to up that by another 8% on on us, people that are just trying to make extra money with the money we’ve already paid taxes on is it seems a little unreasonable.
Chris Casey 21:31
I totally agree. I mean, I I’m in favor of, you know, zero capital gains tax. There’s really no reason for it. It. It is a creates a misallocation of capital. It also impede social mobility on people that maybe start businesses or what have you. So I think it’s a horrible idea, but going from 20 to 28 isn’t nearly as bad as her proposed policy of taxing unrealized capital gains that is now, I never think that would be enacted, because at best, I think we’re looking at split Congress. And also you’re always going to get Democrats, or reasonable and say, This is a ridiculous idea, right? That basically the the equivalent of like West Virginia Senator, right? They’re going to have a lot of people that just balk at this because it doesn’t make any it fails a common sense test. But if that was to happen, or even if there’s a threat of it happening that would have a very pronounced chilling effect on a number of different investments, primarily venture capital, right? Because everything there is based on appreciation and capital gains over a period of time. So yes, increasing in capital gains tax is bad, but I’m almost a sigh of relief, as long as it’s not an unrealized capital gains tax.
Andrew Brill 22:41
What about the proposed billionaires tax? Now there’s, I don’t know how many was before, but right now, there’s about 750 billionaires in the United States. I’m not one of them, so this won’t apply to me, but you know, there is a proposal on the table to have a billionaires tax. Look, I think that if people pay their fair share, you shouldn’t go after them further, but it’s a matter of paying your fair share, whether it be an individual or a corporation.
Chris Casey 23:14
Yeah, that sounds like a horrible idea, too. I mean, for a number of reasons. First of all, it strikes me as unconstitutional, just from an equal protection clause of the Constitution, right? I don’t see how you go after someone just because their net worth happens to be more than someone else’s. But it’s also important to remember, because it’s easy to sell anything when you’re talking about the so called Rich, right? So the income tax in 1913 that’s how they build it. It came out, and it’s like, Well, don’t worry about it. It only affects 1% of the population, and it did for a very limited amount of time. And then all of a sudden, obviously, today, those tentacles reach everything. So when everyone, so anyone talks about this is a very limited scope. It only targets the rich. I always view that as a distinct red flag, and I think this case is no different.
Andrew Brill 24:00
So have you noticed distinct differences in the two plans? I don’t know if you’ve studied them, so I’m kind of putting you on the spot a little bit, but between the two economic plans that you see, could be a red flag for investors,
Chris Casey 24:14
absolutely. And I actually did that last week. I went through each campaign’s website and read all their so called policy proposals. Harris has some. Now, I think last time we talked, let me just kind of generally summarize, and I’ll tell you what I noticed about him on hers. It’s mostly kind of two things. It’s a free giveaway, right? It’s, it’s everything from tax credits or breaks for, for instance, starting a new business or buy a new home. Well, obviously she’s never started new business, because new businesses generally don’t need a tax break because they’re not paying taxes for a couple years, because they’re probably losing money, right? So it doesn’t really it, I would say those are fairly immaterial, immaterial proposals that don’t really move the needle and. Other overall theme was a hostility, I’d say, to the free market determination of prices. So whether it’s the well known price gouging proposal against pharmaceuticals, maybe it’s in disaster areas, maybe it’s prescriptions, she’s calling for a price cap. There’s anti trust. She’s proposing more robust, I don’t know how you get this is a, we already have a really pretty bad FCC right now overseeing any kind of mergers, but they she would be worse. I mean, she’s already called out, hey, it’s grocery stores. You can’t do any mergers right now because they’re gonna consolidate and, you know, raise prices, you know. So it’s very misguided. I think the overall theme is that there’s very misguided understanding to basic economics. Now, Trump is somewhat similar to his potpourri of offering somebody for everything, right? It’s okay, no tips. You know, tax. Tips aren’t taxed. It’s all over the place. But in general, they’re, they’re more concrete proposals, right? It’s going to say what they’re going to do exactly. And I think they are, on the whole, far more beneficial, and they’re not, frankly, they’re not hostile to the free market, because he has a basic understanding, being a businessman, of how it works.
Andrew Brill 26:11
Yeah, there’s all of these. I should say there’s a lot of people that complain that, you know, corporations don’t pay their fair share, or there’s corporations that don’t pay enough, or there’s tax breaks for corporations. How do we get around that? You have the you know Trump, who wants to lower the corporate tax rate to 15% and use tariffs, whatever those might be, to to make up the revenue. But you have lower income people who under Trump are going to end up paying more in taxes, whereas higher income people will get, in essence, a tax break or pay less in taxes. But the percentage that lower income people are going to pay under Trump is actually more than the higher income people. So how do we justify this? Well,
Chris Casey 27:04
I don’t know if that’s exactly true. I mean, I’ve seen that. The headlines on that too. It’s all over the Harris campaign, because they talk about all of her points, and then they always, they always do it like a foil of what Trump would do. If you under Trump, you’re going to pay 4000 more. But with us, you won’t. You know that kind of thing. So I’m not sure the exact I haven’t seen that, apart from, like, for instance, her website, as far as lowering the corporate income tax, I think it’s a great idea. America is a very high income tax, corporate wise, when you compare it to any other country, or most countries in the world now, in general, I hate that type of comparison, because normally it’s used to make things worse here, right? It’s like, well, you know, they have socialized medicine in England. Why don’t we have it here, right? Well, well, thank God we don’t have it here. You know, make it worse. So in general, I don’t like that comparison, but it is, it is insightful that you see that, yes, we’re taxing our companies more so anyone else. And all that means is we’re taxing shareholders and investors. That’s all that means. It doesn’t mean anything else. So I think lowering the corporate tax would be great. And you’re right. He has talked about going down to 15%
Andrew Brill 28:11
so let’s talk about the election itself. And it is close, and we all remember what happened in 2020 and the talk about stealing the election, talk about this. Chris, explain to me how someone does get elected president, because we look at the national polls say, oh, you know what? Harris is leading, I think by 1.7 points or percentage. You know, it’s very, very close, and that 1.7 is within the margin of error, but I don’t even know why they do national polls, because they don’t mean anything. And I know you’ve written a paper on the 12th amendment, which is exactly how we elect a president in this country. So educate me, please.
Chris Casey 28:55
Yeah, I would say that. Well, first of all, just put it in perspective, focusing on who’s ahead nationally is kind of like focusing on who may score more runs in the World Series. It doesn’t necessarily translate and who’s winning, right? Because you can win one game 10 to one and you lose the rest of them by, you know, one run for each each game thereafter, right? So it’s, it is a bit misleading. So a better, much better way is to look at it from a battleground perspective, always, and things could get messy. I mean, the problem is, is that after the 2020 election, we I think what that really did was expose the flaws in the system. There’s a couple flaws. One, there’s no remedy. If someone believes there was actual cheating done, right? There’s, there’s very little things. What’s the judge going to do? He he’s not able to tell you if some Dominion machine was actually tampered with. But more importantly, so is more so is the tight time frame that we have between the election and the inauguration, and the steps that happen in between it, as far as certifying electors, what have you, it’s an extremely tight time frame to the point where you may remember from. The the gore, the gore Bush election, with the Florida issue, with the with the hanging chads right the issue there was that the Florida Supreme Court, I believe, was the court that demanded that they have recounts, I think, in four counties and anywhere else where there was some certain discrepancies were found, and the reality is Florida could not adhere to that timeline. There’s no way they could do it and get their slate of electors submitted to Congress and certified in time. So that’s really fundamentally the issue is that there’s no remedy, but maybe there could be, if we had more time. It’s just a very tight time frame. One of these candidates
Andrew Brill 30:40
is obviously going to be elected president, unless there’s a lot of people that write someone in it gets elected. What kind of policy changes are we looking at day one, day two, or within the first 100 days that would affect investors like you and I? Well,
Chris Casey 30:58
it’s difficult to say. I’d say with Harris as president, there would be less of a so called 100 days, a lot done there. And it’s primarily just because I don’t think Congress is going to flip where it’s going to be all Democrat, right? We’re I think at least Republicans retain the Senate, or have the Senate, and I think they, I think they may retain the house as well. So I think she would be looking at Congress that’s run by the opposite party for Trump. He, if the same situation arises, he will obviously have a lot more ability to do things, and some of a lot of this could be done via executive order. So regardless who’s who’s president, you could address the border, right? There’s things you could do right there. Um, foreign policy, obviously you’re going to see some marked changes depending on who’s in office. But as far as the first 100 days, if you have a cooperating Congress for Trump, I think tax legislation is going to be one of the first things, because in his mind, cutting taxes and spurring productivity and spring economic growth is the key to reducing the deficit, ultimately the debt, he feels like that’s the best way to make America competitive. I think he would aggressively go after a tax and we saw this before in 16, right? We had this is one of the first things he did was push a pretty sweeping tax legislation that we got in his first term.
Andrew Brill 32:21
How are we protecting ourselves? Chris, where are we putting our money? If you know, you get the investor call and you say, help me. What am I doing? I just I I’m in disarray here, and I need your help.
Chris Casey 32:33
Well, things can be especially difficult or volatile, I think over next couple of months prior to the inauguration, because we can have a number of things. We can have a tie for all we know. We could have, um, unheard of things have happened before. So for instance, we could have a slate of electors that’s not certified in the safe harbor time period, and maybe Congress won’t accept it. We could have what they call faithless electors who switch their votes. And maybe that could move from a close race to push someone over the edge, who knows, there’s a lot of things like that that could happen and could raise a lot of issues. So I think being very liquid over the next few months makes a lot of sense going into the next administration, no matter who’s president. I think inflation hedges will make sense because of we talked about the debt situation, and you know, no end to the spending is going to take place. So there we’re looking at precious metals. I think you should look at cryptocurrencies, you know, farmland, any exporting company that makes their money exporting all the US, I think would would do well under that circumstance. And you’re looking for any kind of real estate that has tenants, you know, because it’s to protect yourself. So I think overall, no matter who is president, you’re looking at inflation hedges first and foremost.
Andrew Brill 33:46
So the bottom line is, we’re going to have a new president come November 5. Actually, we’ll have a new president in January, but we’ll have one elected november 5. We think what happens in the event of a tie? Chris, oh boy. It gets
Chris Casey 34:00
really messy. I mean, there’s a lot of steps to stuff to even get there, but theoretically, if you did, then you have the House of Representatives actually elect the president. And most people think, well, it’s gonna be really tight, right? Because the Republicans have a slim majority, but they don’t vote like they do for any kind of legislation. They vote as a state. So you get 50 votes right there. And if you look at if you go through all the congressional political affiliations for Congress by state, you’ll see that I believe Republicans control 27 of them, so majority. And I think there’s two ties, one being North Carolina. I can’t recall the other. So this could very well be contested reelection that goes to Congress in that event too. You have the Senate then picks the vice president. Now, if they’re unable to decide, and that’s a very real possibility, right? They could be deadlocked. Go on for some time, we saw this with although the 12th amendment was around at the same time, we saw this with Thomas Jefferson and. We saw in 1876 with Hayes and Tilden Jennings, like we’ve seen this before, right? So it could go on, and if it goes on post inauguration, then automatically, Kamala Harris would become the president by virtue of being the vice president. Right now, while that’s getting sorted out, she would be acting president. Can
Andrew Brill 35:18
we just say that’s not going to happen. That is a mess.
Chris Casey 35:23
I you know? I hope we don’t have a mess, because, frankly, one of the arguments for democracy is for a peaceful transition of power, and if you don’t have that, well, then what are we doing? Right? Like, that’s one of the keys they always laud democracy as being able to do is have this peaceful? Well, that no longer is the case, and we have real issues. So I really hope it’s clear cuts, and I do think there should be some reforms on the table for future elections, because whether it’s a timeline, whether it’s a method by which disgruntled candidates can Can, can air their grievances about, you know, so called election fraud. That’s really should, should be what what happens to prevent this ever again from happening in the future?
Andrew Brill 36:05
Do you see the market continue to hit new highs? Obviously, gold, precious metals are are on the rise. Gold and silver, as you said, there are hedges against inflation, against disarray in the markets. But do you see the markets continuing to march a little bit higher? Well, they
Chris Casey 36:22
could, especially, I think, with the Trump election, they would continue to march higher, and that’s just because the large part the investment community tends to favor Trump. I just just saw that in a Poland barons. So it wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of hedge funds and stuff, you know, kind of jump back into the markets. However, I’m less enthusiastic. I think we could be very well in a recession as we speak. If that’s the case, it’s only a matter of time before those cracks really start appearing. And whether it’s in corporate earnings, whether it’s in employment numbers, what have you, but I think there’s going to be some cracks. And so while things seem okay right now, there’s a lot of complacency out there. I’d be very defensive in how I’d be positioned within the bond and stock markets.
Andrew Brill 37:06
Well, there you have it, Chris, I appreciate you coming on. I always appreciate your expertise. And I know this is one of those, those areas that you’re well versed in, because this is, this is right up your professor alley. So I thank you for coming. I appreciate your time, and we’ll see what happens on november 5.
Chris Casey 37:28
Sounds good. Thank you very much.
Andrew Brill 37:29
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