Byron Wien's Billionaire Cabal Bearish on U.S.

Byron Wien's annual "wienee" roast (you see what I did there?) for the lucky sperm club revealed some deep-seated insecurities on the part of the Masters of the Universe. The event hosted 50 anonymous guests, 10 of whom are reportedly billionaires, and I'm guessing all of whom failed to make the cut for the Bilderberg bash where the fate of humanity is really decided. In any case, this was no Obama fundraiser.

“They saw the United States in a long-term slow growth environment with the near-term risk of recession quite real,” said Wien, in a commentary to Blackstone clients. “The Obama administration was viewed as hostile to business and that discouraged both hiring and investment. Companies and entrepreneurs were reluctant to add workers because they didn’t know what their healthcare costs or taxes were going to be.”

All this hand wringing on the part of the über-wealthy has me a little suspicious. Sure, Obama is reportedly going to let the sun set on the Bush tax cuts, but overall he's been really good to the moneyed class during his turn as Thief in Chief. TARP wasn't his idea, but he certainly didn't do anything to stop it, and just about every giveaway and bailout issued during his administration thus far has disproportionately benefited the wealthy over the poor. Methinks they doth protest too much.

So only a few of the party guests think the S&P is going to hit 1,200 next year? That's not exactly an Earth-shaking prediction. Why would anyone expect the market to expand at a rate six times greater than the overall economy is expected to expand over the same period? (for the lit majors in the crowd, the S&P is at 1,100 now, so 1,200 would be a nine percent increase over a period of time when even the most optimistic economists are calling for about 1.5% growth in the economy).

Just because they're rich, doesn't mean they're right either.

To be sure, the folks at Wien’s lunches certainly have the most money at stake, but that hasn’t meant they were always correct. As The Financial Times chronicled in August 2007, only George Soros and one other big investor believed the economy was headed into a recession or a bear market. Now, we know those two men, not the consensus, were correct.

They do seem to agree with Michael Burry about farmland, so I guess they can't be all bad.

What do you guys think? Do you agree with the doom and gloom coming out of the upper classes? Will a Republican landslide stave off the dreaded double-dip? Or do you agree with your old Uncle Eddie that the S&P will likely be at 1,100 twenty years from now, and we're foolish to expect any deviation from Japan's results to the same stimulus?