Alpha/Beta Amnesiacs
We are emerging from the year end, so the language shared across financial media articles is performance language. How did stocks, markets, benchmarks…
Category: The Zeitgeist
Normalize This
I feel like the Billy Crystal character in Analyze This all the time. There's always some mob boss politician or central banker or CEO or asset manage…
A Perfect Meme
Every day we run The Narrative Machine on the past 24 hours of financial media to generate a list of the most linguistically-connected and narrative-central…
An End to War!
The Long Now wouldn't be complete without the Long War. And as with every other component of the Long Now, its supporting memes are intensely cynical.
It’s Not So Much …
If you don't see that there is one set of rules for the very rich and another set of rules for everyone else ... if you don't see that there is an una…
One Narrative Keeps on Trucking
Trucking is dying and truckers are suffering along with it. The fact that the latter is the framing being chosen for the issue should pique your inter…
Presented Without Comment
Regardless of your personal views pro or con, if you don't see that a powerful narrative backlash is forming against corporate management enrichment, …
Our Dumb World
Sometimes you really have to wonder how on earth an article makes its way into the Zeitgeist. Sometimes it's best not to know.
The Rent Is Too Damn Low
It's so weird that everyone who would throw an unholy temper tantrum at - gasp! - rent-controlled apartments is just fine with rent-controlled money.…
OK, Boomer
I'm a fan of FedEx the company and Fred Smith the founder. I think they are both crown jewels of Western capitalism.
But if I hear another lecture fr…
Bye, Alexa…
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The Age of the High-Functioning Sociopath
I'm old enough to remember when Donald Trump, the President-elect of the United States, and Masayoshi Son, CEO of Softbank, had an impromptu press con…
The Return of the Rotation Missionaries
The missionaries are out, and guess what? They want you to do a lot of trading and portfolio repositioning. How thoughtful!
The Road to Reykjavík
Today's Zeitgeist brought back a blast from the past, an early encounter with the distinction between narrative and other, more common, measures of wh…
Was That Wrong?
If Carl Icahn calls up the CEO of GM and asks her how the UAW talks are going, it is illegal for Mary Barra to tell him anything that she does not als…
To My Fellow Billionaires …
Marc Benioff, the billionaire CEO of Salesforce.com, says we need a New Capitalism ... a kinder and gentler capitalism to rectify our modern culture o…
The Common Knowledge of Inflation
"Until an hour before the Devil fell, God thought him beautiful in Heaven."
That's my fave Arthur Miller quote, from The Crucible.
Our Devil is infl…
In Chinese, the Emphasis is on the Second Syllable
Every US company with Chinese consumer-facing products is going to be forced to make a choice. Do you want to preserve your authenticity and your bran…
Imagine That.
They keep us sick, you know.
They keep us hooked on this framing of something-something Republicans vs. Democrats.
The cure? Take back your distance…
Fear Factor
Yeah, yeah ... I know that the Deep State is a powerful adversary. Or at least that's what my MAGA buddies on twitter keep shouting at me.
But I'll t…