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As I wrote in yesterday's newsletter (to which you should subscribe!), amateurs talk about stocks, but professionals study bond markets. As of this morning the bond market is basically begging governments to borrow: the US 10-year real rate just 0.02 percent 1/ 
These low, low rates are telling us several things: (a) private investment demand is really weak despite tax cuts (b) recession risks are pretty high (c) infrastructure! I mean, with borrowing virtually free, why not fix all those falling-down bridges? 2/
But not going to happen. One of my better takes early on was that the Trump infrastructure thing was never going to happen; sure enough, "infrastructure week" became a punchline, and now isn't even that 3/ nytimes.com/2016/11/21/opi…
But why isn't the obvious thing happening? If Trump proposed a serious infrastructure plan, Dems would have a hard time saying no even though it would help him politically. But no such plan has been or will be offered, for a couple of reasons 4/
One is that Mitch McConnell and his wing of the party oppose any kind of government program, no matter how much good it might do — actually especially oppose programs that might work, and make people think better of government 5/
Another is that Trump and co just can't bring themselves to advocate anything that doesn't include scams on behalf of their cronies; so their vague suggestions for infrastructure always look more like stealth privatization than public investment 6/
So we're left, as I said, with markets basically begging the government to do some investment, but this plea falling on deaf ears 7/
