Cheney mum, but his money talks

I guess this is a bit like insider-trading. If you know where your administration has screwed up, you know how to avoid the big losses.

Cheney mum, but his money talks:

"Vice President Dick Cheney's investment portfolio got a little attention among bloggers recently. Nobody really jumped on it. The rules are different for Republicans.

In theory, you can tell what a person expects from how he invests. The theory hasn't been applied to important public officials much before. Kiplinger's Personal Finance applied it to the Cheneys' financial disclosure statement and printed the analysis under the provocative headline, 'Cheneys betting on bad news?'

The bad news would be of two kinds: A higher rate of inflation and a lower value for the dollar.

Kiplinger's got the inflation hint from the Cheneys' stakes in a fund that specializes in short-term municipal bonds, a tax-exempt money market fund and an inflation-protected securities fund. The first two hold up if interest rates rise with inflation. The third is protected against inflation. The disclosure statement provides ranges for the investments, so Kiplinger's could tell only that the Cheneys have between $10 million and $25 million in the municipal bonds, between $1 million and $5 million in the money market and between $2 million and $10 million in the inflation-protected securities.

The hint about a loss of value of the dollar comes from their $10 million to $25 million in a foreign, mainly European, bond fund. Of course, a weak dollar - which no government ever admits to encouraging - would help exports. That would help to cut the trade deficit. Not all 'bad news' is bad news for everybody in all respects."