All Epsilon Theory Content
Everything we have published at Epsilon Theory since 2013, an archive of more than 1,000 evergreen notes.
Join us at 2PM ET on December 19th for the last 2019 edition of Office Hours for a lively – and live – discussion of the Narrative intersection of politics and financial markets.
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.
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 unaccountable political power that accrues to the very rich in both big social ways and in small personal ways … well, you’re just not paying attention.
It is our second time now to turn the lens we apply to other news sources to our own creative output. Here is a Very Epsilon Theory retrospective on 2019.
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 interest.
We’ve gotten a lot of responses and thoughts on By Our Own Petard, so we thought we would talk about some of them in another Mailbag feature.
Regardless of your personal views pro or con, if you don’t see that a powerful narrative backlash is forming against corporate management enrichment, you’re just not paying attention.
ET contributor Demonetized creates his own koan in this very personal note.
Is morality socially constructed through a process where biological systems are socially conditioned to respond in particular ways to particular stimuli, or is morality an innate moral compass manifested in Kantian ethics?
Yes.
Sometimes you really have to wonder how on earth an article makes its way into the Zeitgeist. Sometimes it’s best not to know.
Negative rates create a cycle of addiction to even more negative rates in the future.
Why? Because captive buyers like pension funds require capital appreciation to make up for negative yield, so central banks must guarantee a commitment to still more negative yields.
New from ET contributor Pete Cecchini!
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.
“Yay, crumbs!”
Fiduciary standards, prudent man rules and client sensibilities compel us toward fervent pursuit of “alignment.” There’s just one little problem: we can never be aligned with our agents.
It’s the November 19th, 2019 edition of Office Hours! Be sure to join Ben and Rusty for a discussion of all things narrative in the world of politics and markets.
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 from Fred Smith and his fellow billionaires on trickle-down tax cuts and the “benefits to the United States economy, especially lower and middle class wage earners”, I’m going to lose it.
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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 conference in the Trump Tower lobby to trumpet the FIFTY THOUSAND JOBS and FIFTY BILLION DOLLAR INVESTMENT that Softbank would be bringing to the US.
All based on a powerpoint deck.
I think it’s impossible to separate management self-enrichment through stock-based comp from the practice of stock buybacks.
The missionaries are out, and guess what? They want you to do a lot of trading and portfolio repositioning. How thoughtful!
Today’s Zeitgeist brought back a blast from the past, an early encounter with the distinction between narrative and other, more common, measures of what the crowd thinks.