Monday, January 23, 2017

"10 Things Learned From 3 Days In Washington D.C."

"10 Things Learned From 3 Days In Washington D.C." | Zero Hedge:
"Submitted by John Mauldin via MauldinEconomics.com,
I have been in Washington DC for the last three days. The ostensible reason was to participate in a board meeting of a public company, Ashford Inc. (AINC). We manage hotel REITs that own three hotels here in DC, and the group decided to move our board meeting up a few weeks and hold it in DC during the inauguration. That gave me the opportunity to set up a few meetings to try to gain some insight into what the first 100 days, the first six months, and the first year of the Trump administration might look like.
This is going to be a short letter summarizing my impressions from the last few days. 
I think it might be easiest to present them in the form of a list.
1. If you listen to the media you might have the impression that the Trump transition team is in complete disarray. Talking with leaders of the transition team certainly didn’t leave me with that impression...
2. There seem to be two general types of agency plans.
First, there are those where the culture of the department has to be changed, and then are those where the current staff seems to be doing its job but the culture surrounding the department has to be dealt with. Those are entirely different issues. The first can be handled to some degree by the executive branch, but the latter needs to be dealt with by congressional action.
3. Trump’s management style is going to drive the media (and admittedly, much of the country and the world) nuts...

I have met three types of people here in Washington DC. 

  • There are the Trump supporters, who seem to be wildly optimistic. 
  • On the other hand, as I look out my window here at the Capital Hilton, I see hundreds if not thousands of protesters walking by wearing little pink hats, and they are decidedly not happy. 
  • The third group is much smaller and consists of those who are actually aware of the amount of work that is going to have to be done and who recognize what a daunting task it will be..."

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