Guy Fawkes day 2011
On this day in 1605 Fawkes, a disgruntled English Catholic rebel, attempted to take down the entire English government—king, ministers, parliament and all—by blowing up the House of Lords during the State Opening of Parliament.
Fawkes was discovered and promptly executed, but he is remembered—in typically dry English humor—as the last man to enter parliament with good intentions.
Perhaps Mr. Fawkes was a man ahead of his time. Though thankfully no domestic political group is advocating “blowing up” Washington D.C., anti-establishment sentiment is the highest it’s been since the 1970s.
The Tea Party has firmly established itself as a political force to be reckoned with on the right by vowing to cut back the size and scope of the government and now plays the role of kingmaker in the Republican Party. Any Republican congressional candidate risks being bounced out of his or her seat in the primaries if they stray too far from the Tea Party line. Despite having an enormous campaign funding advantage and having the support of the party bigwigs, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney may well lose the Republican presidential nomination to an upstart like Herman Cain if he fails to convince the Tea Party of his conservative bona fides.
On the left, the Occupy Wall Street movement is now attracting attention by demanding an end to the bailout culture that would appear to benefit the “top 1 percent” at the expense of the rest. Occupy Wall Street has yet to congeal into a coherent political movement—and I’ve expressed my belief that it never will —yet even a loosely-organized movement could be able to tip a close primary election. Democrats in left-leaning districts ignore the movement at their own risk.
That is enough about politics. What, if anything, are investors to take away from all of this?
Source: forbes
