Believe it or not, I’m for fewer jobs, not more. Throughout 2012 we heard politicians and pundits of all stripes yammering endlessly on the need for job growth—that we don’t have enough jobs. It’s pure rubbish.

With fiscal cliff fears hitting a fevered pitch, I had the chance recently to sit down with Ken Fisher and query him on his views of this widespread investor concern.

Mid-September’s announcement of the Fed’s now third round of quantitative easing was preceded by heated debate. Monetary hawks warned of the heightened risk of out-of-control inflation due to more Fed stimulus. Doves countered that the Fed should do more to stimulate the economy to lower a persistently high unemployment rate.

MarketMinder's View: This echoes a sentiment we’ve written about many times in the past—if you tax something, you’ll get less of it. Put simply, despite wildly variable marginal tax rates, the historical record shows US federal tax revenues tend to be quite stable. That said, we’re skeptical either party’s plan necessarily meets their “goal,” considering both hinge on long-range forecasts. For more, see our 10/01/2012 cover story, “Fiscal Cliff, Meet Fiscal Norm.”

A key concern for many investors: If a fiscal cliff deal doesn’t happen soon, will higher corporate and dividend taxes hit retirees counting on dividend income particularly hard? A better question: If you need portfolio income, why are you relying on high dividends primarily? (A subject tackled in Plan Your Prosperity, the latest book I co-authored with Ken Fisher.)

When UK Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne announced Mark Carney will succeed Sir Mervyn King as BOE chief next year, the surprise was universal: The Brits picked a Canadian?!

Everyone fears America’s fiscal cliff, so don’t you dare. Others are already doing it for you for free, as a favour. So thank them.

Of all the headwinds plaguing Japan's economy in recent years, one of the biggest is political uncertainty. Japan's had seven prime ministers in as many years, making it difficult for leadership to enact meaningful economic reform—something Japan could use in spades. And with the lower house of Parliament dissolved November 15 and a snap election now scheduled for December 16, the revolving doors may soon turn again.

Politicking over the fiscal cliff has begun in earnest—highlighting the fact both sides now disavow the cliff (somehow forgetting it was entirely of their making).

If you're hunting for higher yields, be sure to watch your back.

The investor class seems particularly morose over a second Obama term. In their view, conventional wisdom is a Democrat is toxic for stocks. Naturally, Democrats will say the stock market always does better under a Democratic president.

Friday's first estimate of US Q3 GDP showed growth of +2.0% in the quarter, an uptick from Q2's +1.3% rate, exceeding analysts' estimates. Under the hood, there were some stronger points and some weaker, but overall there's little here representing a sharp divergence from other recent reports.

When China's new leaders take power in the coming months, they will face a Herculean task: Reforming the nation's bloated state-owned or controlled enterprises (SOEs). Or so vowed Wang Yong, head of China's State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC), in an Oct. 24 address to China's bi-monthly legislative session.

News stories in recent days have touted America’s recent surge in oil production, positing the US could produce more oil than Saudi Arabia by 2020.

Last month I introduced the notion of concentrating on only stocks larger than the global markets’ $80 billion average market capitalization. There are now only 70 such megacaps.

Every four years, we're treated to the spectacle of two men jockeying for power in the world's most powerful nation -- and predictably, this involves ample fact-stretching and twisting. At Fisher Investments, we're politically agnostic: We prefer neither party over the other, finding much to dislike (and occasionally something to cheer) in both parties' policies and proposals.

News to no one: Stock returns in the 2000s were overall flat—US stocks annualized -1% returns. Even today, over three years since the end of the recession and bear market, a popular media meme is because returns had been bad and we just had a big recession, America is headed into a “lost decade” of low market returns and poor growth.

For the past few years, one question has puzzled UK economic policymakers: Why aren’t banks lending more? Or specifically, why haven’t the Bank of England’s (BOE) Asset Purchase Programme (quantitative easing), Project Merlin or the National Loan Guarantee Scheme significantly increased the amount banks lend to households and small businesses?

New Jersey faces some tough issues. And not just being a ubiquitous punch line and those occasionally uncomfortably close-to-accurate Sopranos storylines.

In the second half of nearly every bull market you need only own bigger-than-average stocks to beat the market. By that, I mean market value north of $78 billion, which is the average market capitalization of stocks in the MSCI All Country World Index.

As the US's election draws nearer, I've seen more and more articles bemoaning the apparently unprecedented polarization of our great nation—Republicans and Democrats distrust each other like never before, Congress can't get anything done and neither Presidential candidate can seize popular momentum. And somehow, we're told, this is a worrisome development.
 

Stocks love gridlock. Which is why election-year stock returns historically are above-average positive.

Included in the GOP 2012 platform (which, according to many politicians, no one reads) is a proposal to consider the feasibility of a “metallic basis for US currency” (read: gold standard)— music to the ears of gold standard fans.

You won't find it on any top-10 lists, but to me, free trade belongs with Bill Buckner and Steve Bartman as one of the greatest scapegoats in modern times. Sure, free trade agreements never robbed anyone of a World Series title, but they've been pinned for more job losses and business woes than I can count—and, likely, far more than they should be.

The Republican National Convention starts Monday, and the Democrats follow suit next weekend—which means the campaign is officially under way.

So turn your hot-air detector on high. Here are three things both candidates will likely say (repeatedly) during this election cycle that have little grounding in reality.

Leave it to California to get its financial scandal completely backwards.

In most places, a state funding scandal would involve money going missing. But here in my great state, alarm bells rang when officials discovered many departments had, well, too much money. An extra $2.3 billion, in fact--not exactly chump change in this cash-strapped state.

As PIIGS go, Spain and Italy have hogged headlines since July 26 when European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi suggested the bank may purchase Spanish and Italian debt to help ease borrowing costs.

Frequently, you can hear (or read) that because stock returns have been, on average, materially higher than average US GDP growth rates, there’s a big disconnect and shouldn’t the two roughly match? Hence, doesn’t that mean a new era of long-term lousy stock returns must kick off, forthwith?

Nope.

n a year there’s been much jaw-wagging over whether certain people do or don’t pay their “fair share” of taxes, you’d think the CBO’s latest report on the distribution of household income and taxes would garner more prime time.

Plenty of editorial space has been dedicated lately to the dearth of fiscal stimulus measures being globally employed — and the overabundance of “austerity” measures, ostensibly referring to some countries’ mix of (typically) tax increases and government spending cuts.

Another day, another op-ed about how high unemployment is a hindrance to economic growth.

Homebuyers rejoice! The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has found a way to potentially make the mortgage application process very slightly incrementally less onerous.

Evidently, France has discovered the secret to enhancing economic competitiveness: really, really high taxes!

Herman Van Rompuyhas a vision problem. Oh, I'm sure the good man-EU poet laureate, Belgian Prime Minister and European Council President-sees just fine through his eyeballs. But the quixotic ambitions in his recent proposal for a federalist eurozone suggest his mind's eye is a touch fuzzy. He seems to think he can help create the United States of Europe. But it won't work, at least as he envisions it.

In the ongoing fiscal cliff saga, additional volleys have been fired in recent days. For the uninitiated, the so-called fiscal cliff is most often referring to the confluence of sunsetting Bush-era tax rates and some automatic spending cuts tied to last year’s debt ceiling dust-up. Left alone, tax rates for all US taxpayers could move materially higher in 2013.

It is a "truth" universally acknowledged: The repeal of 1933's Glass-Steagall Act was directly responsible for the events of 2008. After all, had the Financial Services Modernization Act (FSMA) of 1999 not removed the dividing line between commercial and investment banking—had banks been properly "ringfenced," in today's vernacular—banks' balance sheets wouldn't have been overleveraged and riddled with so-called toxic assets. And the wave of failures and bailouts thus would never have crested.

“It is not clear why a bank needs to do lots of activities in financial services that aren’t banking,” Ken Fisher, CEO and founder of Woodside, California-based Fisher Investments, which manages about $44 billion, said in an interview. “It is not clear to me, other than perhaps in some very specialty cases, that being a bank helps you be an investment bank or an asset manager or an insurer.”

You may already be acquainted with Ken Fisher. He's the author of "Portfolio Strategy," a long-running column in Forbes, and he's well-known as the biggest wealth manager in the U.S.: His firm, Fisher Investments, has more than $41 billion under management. He's also got a lot of wealth in his own right; Forbes estimates his worth at $1.7 billion.

Other banks challenging Moody’s include Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Royal Bank of Scotland. Moody’s said that those three plus Citi, which were all recipients of taxpayer bailouts, have a history of “high volatility” and problems with risk management.

President Obama continues to get hoots and hollers over his statement the private economy is doing fine. He then later attempted to walk that statement back, which only led to speculation whether the first statement was a gaffe, not a gaffe, or a Washington gaffe (that’s when politicians inadvertently say something they mean).

A common investor fear thus far in 2012 has been the potential fallout from a slowing Chinese economy. And it is true China's Q1 GDP growth rate decelerated from Q4 2011—and that may have carried a bit into Q2. However, more recent numbers suggest the stimulus measures China continues to employ are having an impact.

Eurobonds. German Chancellor Angela Merkel hates them. French President François Hollande loves them. And a growing chorus of EU officials think they're the best bet for preserving the euro.

But are they, really?

If any word in the English language seems to give Angela Merkel hives, it’s this: eurobonds.

Eurobonds, in case you’ve missed it, is the latest “big idea” in the eurozone

Since its 2008 launch, the Market Vectors Solar Energy ETF (KWT)has fallen 94% from a peak of $43.93/share to roughly $2.50/share currently.

It's popular among politicians, particularly in an election year, to bemoan the death of various aspects of American life-whether cultural, political or economic-because it allows incumbents and candidates alike to proclaim how they'll save the day.

This week, in comments reported by China's Xinhua news agency, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao hinted at the government's economic strategy, saying China should "properly handle the relationship between maintaining stable and relatively fast growth, adjusting the economic structure and managing inflationary expectations.

I know it may seem passé in the age of iPads, eReaders and Kindles, but one of my passions is collecting books, especially investment classics. I didn’t know it at the time, but the first classic I read was in 1959 when I was 8 years old. It was my father Phil Fisher’s New York Times Best Seller Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits. I complained about it cutting into my summer vacation and didn’t really understand it, but it probably sparked my love for investing books.

When April's U.S. unemployment came out, one headline perfectly captured the news and popular reaction: "Unemployment Rate Hits Three-Year Low. Hooray? No, Boo!" Headline unemployment fell to 8.1%, but payroll gains slowed and missed expectations, fueling fears of weaker employment growth from here.

There's been much discussion lately of America's impending "fiscal cliff." And some have recently bandied about the term "taxmageddon" to describe the likely scenario if politicians don't take certain actions by the year's end.

It's simple to understand, and has a nice ring to it. It's made some investors look like geniuses recently. Say it enough and you might even believe it.

Too bad "Sell in May and go away" doesn't work.

San Francisco has decided to get patriotic.

BART, the Bay Area’s public rail line, will replace 775 trains in its aging fleet, giving preference to vendors who build the trains in America. The idea is to help create American jobs—a lofty goal.

The heretofore undefined “Buffett rule” got a bit less murky recently, as the senate introduced the “Paying a Fair Share Act of 2012" in March and the president commented on the proposal yesterday.

Stocks are having a fine year - global stocks in pounds are up nearly 10% in the first quarter. Yet, instead of cheering, folks are gloomy - a positive factor that will boost stocks higher still in 2012.

Fisher Investments in November opened a campus near the city’s lesser-known namesake, Vancouver, Washington. Residents of the town of about 161,800 enjoy the double benefit of no state income tax in Washington while living close to sales-tax free Oregon.

Is happiness more important than economic growth?

Many argue GDP is a faulty economic measure. I have my own quibbles with GDP. While the top-line number isn’t a perfect indicator of economic health, the underlying data is instructive, and it does allow for more of an apples-to-apples comparison across nations.

For the first time in 26 years, I opened my eyes this morning and could see—thanks to capitalism.

Happy birthday to the bull market, which turned three March 9. It’s been far from smooth sailing (what bull market is?) as the bull has contended near constantly with greatly exaggerated rumors of its death at the hands of some tiny European nations’ debt loads, “too-high” unemployment, a US double-dip (that never happened), contentious politics, etc.

Long-term forecasts are rarely sunny or even middling. In fact, they’re often fairly dystopian: Peak oil, peak gas, peak water, peak food, mass hysteria, zombie apocalypse.

In our view, the bull market likely continues with gusto throughout 2012, with strongly positive equity returns. Sentiment remains dour -- investors continue to fear an imminent eurozone collapse, too much debt, a deteriorating U.S. economy, political turmoil, etc.

You may remember that in my February column last year I predicted that 2011 would “frustrate bulls and bears alike—without a big directional trend” and “end up or down just by a hair.” I was right, but my stock picking could have been better.

In our view, stock returns are strongly positive in 2012 and the world overall grows, even though the eurozone is likely a weak spot and may even go into recession in aggregate.

2011 was by nearly any count a volatile year chock full of news—the majority tied to the eurozone, specifically the countries known as the PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain).

Ken Fisher and his firm’s Investment Policy Committee detail their market and macroeconomic forecast for the year ahead.

Folks often talk as if gridlock is a bad thing. Then, there’s House Resolution 29, which would immediately withdraw the US from NAFTA.

It’s an election year! At this stage, it’s impossible to handicap who wins. But one thing’s certain: Expect all candidates to keep repeating the tired “US manufacturing is dying” bromide.

Where are all the “January effect” headlines?

You know—all the “so goes January goes the year” stories”? Sometimes folks just focus on the first five days: “So goes the first five days goes the month goes the year.” Because if you believed in this “effect” you ought to be bullish. Which is perhaps why, in general, those who believe most in this myth are whistling and looking a different direction.

Did you know the US is about to raise the debt ceiling? For the 105th time?

Seems odd another increase is quietly pending since the penultimate increase (that’s right, there was one after that) in August last was preceded by a solid two months of political histrionics, name-calling and hyperbole. Then S&P downgraded the US!

With the new year comes a new round of bold predictions for financial markets.