The Donald: Finally, an Asset-Class Candidate for President

It is still not as easy to stay in touch on the road as the puff from high-tech peddlers would have you believe. After all, even if quick access to high-speed connectivity were available everywhere -- which it is not yet -- one travels for reasons other than to watch the screen. So I got only the highlights of market reaction to the September employment report, in which a flat job growth number was muddied by confusion about the effects both of Hurricane Floyd and of the lack of growth over the past year in the supply of available labor. With average hourly earnings up 0.5%, or 6% annualized, a quick conjuring of an Econ. 101 set of coordinate axes suggests that job growth is held back not by lack of demand for labor, but by scarcity of supply.

Bonds adopted a cautious stance in response, but the stock market has the Oct. 5 Fed meeting behind it and a vibrant third-quarter earnings season right in its face, so it was not immediately intimidated. Nor was it disturbed to see the official version, in FOMC minutes, of the warning Chairman Greenspan had issued when he objected to a characterization of Fed policy as asymmetric. "We are not asymmetric, the market is." And he went on to explain that the Fed would react to an outsized move in either direction by the market.

What is the symmetrical equivalent of a safety net? ...