My Facebook feed has turned into an all-vilification-of-Donald-Trump-all-the-time experience.
My friends’ current complaint is that Trump doesn’t recognize the massive economic boom that would result from accepting refugees from violence and poverty in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.
It occurred to me that maybe there is an opportunity in the financial services industry here. For those who believe that the migrants Trump seeks to limit are an economic boon, why not offer them the ability to make infinite money by setting up a hedge fund? The “Refuboom Fund” will use maximum leverage to short the economies, such as Singapore, that won’t accept any of these folks while going long on the economies that accept the most (e.g., Sweden, Germany (at least get the dead cat bounce from VW)). (See Wikipedia then click “Natives per refugee” to sort; among countries with significant public equity markets and readily tradeable currencies, it looks as though China, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Mexico, and Chile should also be shorted.)
As there seems to be a difference of opinion regarding the long-term economic effects of growing a country’s population in this manner, the Refuboom Fund can also collect fees on the other side, offering the opposite position to people who think that migrants will be a net burden.
What do readers think? It is possible to invest based on this historic migration from Arab and Muslim countries?
Related:
Europeans are being told that this is the solution to their low fertility rates. Import Muslims so they will work to support the retiring natives. Germany is doing this, and has persuaded Facebook and Twitter to ban anyone who disagrees.
I better not say any more, or I might get your blog banned in Germany.
Phil,
Slightly off topic, but I’ve been meaning to ask you who you believe will be the Republican presidential nominee to run against and be defeated by Hillary?
(I recall you predicting Hillary to win the election, so I will forgo presuming any Republican has a prayer of defeating her!) but I would love to see your Republican nominee prediction.
Mark: I haven’t been following the Republicans, due to what I believe is their near-zero chance of winning any national race in which there is high voter turnout. Based on https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2015/11/11/thoughts-on-the-republican-debate-transcript/ I would say that Kasich would have the most appeal to voters overall, due to his promise that the Great Father in Washington will help them, give them a job, set their wage, etc. The closer that an American politician comes to promising a Soviet-style planned economy, the more popular he or she will be. Republican primary voters, of course, are just a minority of all voters.
On the theory that voters don’t really start paying attention until two weeks before an election, combined with the fact that it is tough for an amateur such as Trump to succeed in a professionalized political field… I will guess that Ted Cruz becomes the nominee and that he loses by the same popular vote margin as Mitt Romney in 2012.