Barron's: Is this market keeping you young or making you older? Glickenhaus: We like the market best when the pluses far outweigh the negatives, and we don't have overhanging fears of negatives that can bite us. […]
Q: Would you like to enumerate the pluses and minuses? A: The political picture has never been as negative as it is today.
Q: Does that matter to the market? A: It matters tremendously. If Kerry is elected, the doctrinaire Republicans will sell stocks for a day or two, but then the market will go up considerably.
Q: Because? A: Because Bush has been worse than zero as a president. He is bush-league. No. 1, he got us into a war and spent billions of dollars, dollars unfortunately which don't have any positive offset in better housing, schools and infrastructure. And people are being killed. It is a war without any purpose other than to get rid of Saddam Hussein.
Secondly, he spent all his time campaigning for his next election, rather than overseeing the various departments of government. The military has many internal problems, which are surfacing in Iraq and Afghanistan. He hasn't consolidated and integrated the CIA and the FBI and his new department of Homeland Security, all the military intelligence, which he desperately needs to do.
He has alienated foreign countries. He has failed to address environmental concerns. And in his approach to the Israel-Palestine War, he has been unaware that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's policy of non-negotiation is destined to fail, resulting in increasing mutual hatred and many more deaths and no solution. Fiscally, Bush has been totally irresponsible.
Q: And Kerry? A: Kerry is a mediocrity. He is a typical senator who votes for the moment. He isn't a statesman.
Q: If Bush gets re-elected, what happens? A: If Bush gets re-elected, he will see it as a total affirmation of all his policies, and the deficits will grow. Perhaps we will have another war in addition to the two that exist, however preposterous this seems.
We wrote about Sandra Ward's coverage of Glickenhaus before.
