Moynihan on facts and motives

“Hannah Arendt had it right,” declares Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan to New Yorker correspondent Jeffrey Toobin in the February 8 (1999) issue. “She said one of the great advantages of the totalitarian elites of the Twenties and Thirties was to turn any statement of fact into a question of motive.”

In The New Yorker, Toobin writes “To [Moynihan] character is based on intellectual integrity, on describing the world as it is, regardless of the political consequences.”

Too often the discussion of facts is assaulted as political. The fact is that we have a deficit problem. The fact is that the size is large and cannot be controlled through simple increases in taxes on households above $250,000.  The facts are that we have growth and underemployment problem. Monetary policy is not going to be the solution.

Why is this relevant for the investor? The truth and facts will prevail, so investment decisions should be based on what is real and not what is hoped for. Politics do matter because it can change timing and direction, but without a change in politics the assumption should be that facts will prevail.