Another stupid investment for stupid times.

Another stupid investment for stupid times. How many mutual funds is too many mutual funds? Currently at 8,000 and counting, surely there must be a tipping point beyond which any more mutual funds becomes absurd.

Maybe we have found that tipping point, given that there's a new proposal for The Blue Fund Group, a mutual fund for Democrats. I mocked this idea before when it was a poor-performing Republican fund, and I don't see any reason why I shouldn't mock it now. It's still a stupid idea.

Here's the real Republican revolution — polarizing and ghettoizing everything in the whole fucking country. They started with how people vote by re-engineering congressional districts and now have even affected how people save. Will we someday have savings accounts in your choice of Red or Blue?

How far can this insanity go? Should you have the choice of mutual funds in all of the following flavors?

Democrat
Republican
Independent
Smoking
No Smoking
Christian
Non Christian
Gay Single
Gay Married
Moderately Sane White
Support-the-Troops-Ribboned-SUV Chickenhawk
KKK White Supremacist
Nonwhite Immigrant
Smelly Hippie
Other

Let's take the idea a bit further. At mediocre restaurants in strip malls there should also be separate parking sections for each self-identified tribe. After all, what makes the handicapped so special?

Stop! Enough with the divisive identity politics already. Everything from our retirement pensions to our health insurance have been converted to privatized investments like IRAs, 401(k)s and HSAs. It's bad enough that privatization is enabling unwary investors to make stupider and stupider investment choices — "choice" being the code word for really bad idea, or "God's gift to Republicans." And adding ideology and identity politics into the mix makes the choices worse and worse.

The Blue Fund Group's mutual fund is anticipated to cost 1.75% of assets in fees. That's high, and high is bad. So investors will be paying a premium for ideological purity. Is it worth it, or have we up-ended the entire idea of investing? How is it even possible to judge the competence or success of such funds? Can you imagine yourself saying, "My Blue State Fund is down ten percent, but that's okay because it reflects my values"? If so, are you nuts?

I can understand not wanting to invest in Halliburton, but the proper way to fix that is to fix the US government as opposed to creating new investment ghettos as a workaround. Isolationism driven by ideology in personal investment makes no sense. It's a bad idea for bad times.

UPDATE: After the fact I learn that a similar opinion is held by Chuck Jaffe of MarketWatch.