I think anyone buying up here is basically making a bet that Congress will get their act together to agree to something by this Friday, July 22. An agreement that cuts the deficit meaningfully over the long term while increasing the debt ceiling in the short term needs to be made by Friday in order for legislation to be written and voted on by August when we will hit the ceiling and have to decide who not to pay.

Tim Geithner kind of usurped a lot of power from Congress in his interview with Steve Liesman on CNBC this week. He took the legislative deal making function away from Congress on the debt issue when he publicly stated that there is no option other than to raise the ceiling. I’m willing to bet the majority leaders in the House have their sights set on Geithner now. It may be more important for them to re-assert their role as the deciders of policy than for them to come to an agreement on the debt issue.

I really can’t bring myself to place my financial well being in the hands of bickering children. The Weiner tweet incident was the final straw for me. I can’t trust a group of people that has this type of moron amongst their ranks. I’m reminded of John Kenneth Galbraith’s assertion that the fall of the monarchial system was brought about by the hereditary power structure- both political and military. The power to make political and military decisions was bestowed not on merit or accomplishment in the days of the great kingdoms of Europe. By the early 1900’s and during the two world wars that ensued for the next 50 years, it was evident that there was no one in power that had the qualities of a leader. The makers of policy had no credentials in history or economics or law. Winston Churchill liked the idea of the gold standard as it had a nostalgic quality. The ensuing revaluing of sterling made British exports massively more expensive for the foreign buyers and crushed the British manufacturing base further in a time of recession after WWI. The leaders of soldiers had no demonstrations of bravery on the battlefield or knowledge of modern warfare tactics. Russian generals (that inherited their rank from their fathers who inherited it from their fathers, etc.) favored the bayonet charge because of it’s classical appeal even through out WWII. It was disastrously unsuccessful against nerve gas and machine guns.

While I don’t fear that we’ve gotten to the point where our leadership is so incompetent that the US’s fate is sealed to resemble that of the old kingdoms of Europe, there is no way I’m going to rely on these losers to come to an agreement by Friday. If I miss a couple of points of upside, so be it. It’s not worth the risk to take on new positions or add to existing ones. Now is a time to take profits and watch the power struggle in DC unfold. I hope my skepticism is unwarranted. But I prefer being in cash after a pretty good run with CRM, CRR, FFIV, BEXP, and recently PCX. Any more DE’s will undo all those gains so I prefer to sit on the sidelines expect for a few small trades like ESRX. It looks pretty good here at $52.