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My SmartMoney.com column today:I'm already starting to see some very disturbing signs about what the new Democrat-controlled Congress might mean for stocks, and the economy.

Already the gigantic merger between AT&T and BellSouth has been held up by a Federal Communications Commission official because he fears retaliation by powerful Democrats. Oil companies are scrambling to volunteer billions of dollars in government contract adjustments, because they fear Democrats will slap them with massive taxes if they don't. And our Treasury secretary and Federal Reserve chairman have gone to China to plead for a revaluation of the Chinese currency — thus raising the prices of all Chinese goods American consumers buy at Wal-Mart — to forestall dangerous protectionist legislation from the new Democratic Congress.

Maybe you hate big telephone companies. Maybe you hate big oil companies. Maybe you hate Wal-Mart. Then this new Congress is for you!

But if you own stocks, and expect them to keep their value, you'd better think again.

Don't ignore this by telling me about the war in Iraq, or runaway government spending, or Republican corruption, or any of that stuff. Those issues are important, but they have nothing to do with the risks I'm talking about.

Don't blow this off by telling me about some "study" that "found" that the stock market performed better historically under Democratic presidents. I'm not talking about presidents, and I'm not talking about history. I'm talking about this Congress, right here, right now.

And don't tell me about how great the 1990s were for stocks under Bill Clinton, a Democrat. He was the president, not the Congress. And the great 1990s bull market for stocks got going after Republicans took control of Congress in the 1994 election.

The biggest threat from the new Democratic Congress is protectionism — legislation designed to protect American jobs by restricting imports from other countries. Here's a perfect case to see the difference between a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress.

In the 1990s, Democrat Bill Clinton was a powerful advocate of NAFTA — the North American Free Trade Agreement — that opened up unrestricted commerce between the U.S. and Mexico. Democrats in Congress — beholden to their supporters in organized labor who were worried about competition from Mexican labor — voted against NAFTA. The landmark free-trade law was only enacted because Republicans in Congress supported it. The result has been faster growth and more jobs both north of the border.

Today it's China that the unions are worried about, not Mexico. Democrats (and a few Republicans, too) would love nothing more than to slap huge taxes — 27.5%, according to one piece of proposed legislation — on goods imported from China, so they'll be less competitive with the same goods made here. How brilliant — a gigantic price increase for everything we buy at Wal-Mart. Like that will help the economy.

To prevent the utter lunacy of an outright tax on Chinese imports, the Bush administration has been trying to get China to revalue its currency, the yuan, in relation to the dollar. At a stroke, that would make all Chinese goods more expensive in dollar terms. The administration is hoping that a small yuan revaluation will be better than a huge tax.

We call that appeasement. It didn't work against the Nazis, and it won't work against the protectionists. But no less distinguished authorities as Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke were in China last week trying to talk the Chinese into it.

Last week it was announced that five major global oil companies — including ConocoPhillips and Marathon Oil — agreed to pay billions of dollars in increased royalties on oil leases with the U.S. government now that oil prices are so high. Their contracts, made in the late 1990s, don't mention any such royalties. But the Department of Energy, which negotiated the contracts, claims that the omission was an error.

Hey, a deal's a deal. The Department of Energy wrote contracts like this with 59 different companies — all the big boys — and we're supposed to believe they screwed up every single deal? Apparently so — and Nancy Pelosi, the new Democratic Speaker of the House, has vowed to pass new laws to collect the royalties that no one ever heard of as part of her first 100 hours of legislative action.

I don't call that "royalties." I call that a windfall-profits tax. And the energy industry is so scared of it, they're starting to line up to appease Pelosi with "settlements" before the new Congress convenes. Look for Chevron and Exxon Mobil to cave next.

And how about telecommunications policy? The Department of Justice has already cleared the proposed AT&T merger with BellSouth as having no antitrust implications. But for months it's been held up at the FCC, pending that agency's clearance.

The FCC's Republican chairman, Kevin Martin, is for the merger, as is another Republican commissioner. The two Democratic commissioners are opposed, insisting that the two companies agree to onerous "net neutrality" regulations on pricing and access as a condition of approval — even though none of their competitors will be similarly burdened.

A fifth commissioner — a Republican — could break the tie. But he refuses to because he's afraid that the Democratic senators and congressmen who will control telecom policy next year will haul him up on ethics charges. Yes, even though the FCC's general counsel has already officially ruled that no ethics issues exist for him. More appeasement.

So will this merger ever go through? Will billions of dollars of new shareholder and customer value be created? Or not? Well, with the Democratic Congress coming in, it's not going to happen without blackmail — either of FCC commissioners, or of the two companies that want to merge.

As I wrote here right after the election, I doubt that any really big, bad antibusiness legislation is going to come out the new Democratic Congress. But small, bad things will happen. And some good things that might have happened now won't happen.

We'll survive. But it doesn't help America to have its currency devalued, forcing up the prices we pay for foreign goods. It doesn't help America to take money from oil companies who should be exploring for new sources of energy. It doesn't help America to prevent two companies from merging and creating a more efficient broadband environment.

It doesn't help shareholders of Wal-Mart, ConocoPhillips, Marathon Oil, Chevron, Exxon Mobil, AT&T or BellSouth.

Who does it help? You figure that part out...

But if you're an investor, watch your wallet.

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