This Weekend Edition is a bit of a downer, but the Zeitgeist is what it is. And the non-financial markets Zeitgeist right now? It’s all about poverty, the spirit of poverty and how people transform our concerns about both into political power.
We know what Fiat News is: the presentation of opinion as fact. We also know what fiat news looks like: pop on over to Vox and skim a few stories.
But how does fiat news WORK?
New from ET contributor Demonetized, a clear-eyed look at wolf traps and sales funnels.
What Herman Cain would bring to the Fed, what Socrates brings to the MMT debate, what Pinterest and Zoom bring to the IPO market, and what work European PMs bring home when the markets are closed.
All in a day’s work for a Good Friday Zeitgeist.
Turns out that we may not be on the precipice of a global recession after all, that AOC may be pretty good at this politics game, and that parasitic companies enjoy Insane Clown Posse more than most. Also, Bob Pisani reveals CNBC’s noble mission.
Capitalist productivity has become capitalist financialization.
Wall Street gets something to sell, management gets stock-based comp, and the White House gets re-election.
What do YOU get out of financialization? You get to hold up a card that says “Yay, capitalism!”.
It’s the Wednesday Zeitgeist, chock full of belied recessions, a little bit of humility, a little bit of YOLO, an expensive investment sold on yield, a less expensive investment sold on yield, slow maybes and a peek into the Widening Gyre.
It’s not even a wall of worry any more. More like tiny little speed hurdles that we set up to clear by a mile. Just another day’s work for the Fiat News machine.
They’re not even pretending anymore.
Disney is making a play to return to Neverland, a land where valuations are based on establishing market share and dominance of an emerging industry, where the moment you start worrying about how much money you’re making is the moment the Narrative breaks. For students of markets and narratives alike, it will be worth watching.
It’s the Monday Zeitgeist, where we keep the Star Wars image streak alive at 2, celebrate the return of a beloved phrase, laud the arrival of a very dumb phrase, listen to political predictions from economists, and hear a political proposal from a journalist.
It’s the Weekend Zeitgeist, where we try to forget about markets for a day or two to see what matters in the rest of the world. This week, it’s robots, the 1980s, self-made men, Star Wars (more than an ACTUAL black hole), Moroccan exceptionalism and the Power of Google.