1/3/2012
By Charles Payne

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That's my one fear: that everything has happened; nothing exciting or new or interesting is ever going to happen again.
JG Ballard, 1982

The future begins today, or as the old saying goes, today is the first day of the rest of your life.  We can toss out all the old clichés, but the fact remains that old hope for the future has faded as the country has become weighed down by an odd mix of arrogance and anxiety.  On one hand there are those that simply believe America has been blessed and will always be number one while there is a growing group of Americans that simply see our best days in the rear view mirror.  The combination has resulted in a nation that's crawling where it used to gallop and is looking down at all the pitfalls when it used to look into the sky and see no limits.

In the past, the future was about flying cars; today it's about legislation to make sure those flying cars never leave the ground.  

I think 2012 is going to have to be the year when we focus on the future with that child-like innocence that made the country great.  We have to re-break the mold once again and unleash the internal greatness that's currently being held at bay.  Can that happen when we are potentially facing $2.0 billion in negative ads during the race for the White House and airwaves filled with stories that focus on weaknesses and doom?  In the meantime, the war against business is now a war against states and their sovereign rights.  It is true these things will slow and detract from the idea that the future is going to be great, but there is always a sense of renewal at this time.

In the stock market investors understand that from historic standards there is significant undervaluation.  There was a time when investors would leap at such an opportunity.  There was a time when we felt investing in general would be rewarded in the future.  So once again we are dealing with an indictment over the future in general, not the stock market in particular.  The self-doubt that has held stocks back for a decade (I don't count the natural corrective action of the market but the point where one could argue it has been at fair value) is a self-doubt that extends beyond the market.

On the surface, it would be easy to suggest 2012 will not be the year when the nation reverts to that innocence where anything is possible.  Yet beneath that surface, that innocuous belief in fairy tales exists.  It's in the DNA of the nation to do things that make us great even when our goals are simply to unlock possibilities or meet a challenge.   Yes, we are mired in runaway debt and mounting self-doubt while scientists in Switzerland are working to unlock the God particle.  I'm not sure when or how we get back to that period of dreams and making them come true.  A lot has happened, but not everything; and it is harder to wow folks, but excitement can be sparked and while it's true "new" is mostly boring refresh of stuff that's really old, we are ready and interested. 

I just want America to be at the forefront of such exciting, new and interesting developments. 

Of course, there is that war against businesses and states, and it will harm the economy.  This is the focus of our January monthly newsletter, which will be released on Friday after the jobs numbers. There are a lot of areas in that war including deliberate muddling that can best be underscored by a piece in the Washington Times on the ambivalent process at the ATF for approving new gun designs.  A non-transparent process with wild parameters that are so convoluted that one former ATF official said it could find a shoestring was a machine gun.

Charles Payne
Wall Street Strategies