The Nudging State and Nudging Oligarchy believe they are giving us a gift: Freedom from Choice.
Except that it is neither a gift nor freedom in any sense. Rejecting it isn’t always easy and it isn’t always costless. But it’s the only choice for anyone who would be free.
Today’s Zeitgeist is about crashes on crashes, Nplpalooza 2019 and hunger-striking ruined property tycoons.
But mostly we celebrate the hedge fund industry’s effort to shake off last year’s challenges. From all of us, thank you for this gift of what we will just assume is uncorrelated alpha.
Where are we in March, 2019? We’re seeing a resurgence in the Narrative and policies associated with a good old fashioned beggar-thy-neighbor currency competition.
Also, here’s our summary of where we think we are in each of the five evergreen macro issues of markets – inflation, central banks, trade and tariffs, US fiscal policy, and the credit cycle.
A Weekend Edition of the Zeitgeist, where we turn from financial markets to find the narratives and stories from the last week or so that were most connected to common narratives in culture and politics.
Climate change! Secretive boards! A gazillion dollars! Boat Race Bank!
Wait…Boat Race Bank?
It’s the Zeitgeist on Epsilon Theory, where we all knew we were living in a world of Fiat News. We just needed to refocus on fundamentals.
We are immersed 24/7 in a Fiat World, where we are TOLD that inflation does not exist, where we are TOLD that wealth inequality and meager productivity and negative savings rates just “happen”, where we are TOLD we must vote for ridiculous candidates and buy ridiculous securities and borrow ridiculous sums.
We’re not Flat Earthers. Ha Ha! Those guys are idiots! Can you imagine believing that stuff?
No, we’re not Flat Earthers. We are Fiat Earthers.
For fund managers and asset management executives, the fundraising question is often the most important and most inscrutable. Understanding how narratives and career risk factors interact with decision-making processes is critically important.
Ladies and gentlemen, your narrative-world assault words du jour … “sponsored content”, “democratic justifications”, “fishing expeditions”, “diversification”, “value investing”, and “growth of $1”.
The ET Zeitgeist, because if you don’t know who the sucker is at the poker table … it’s you.
Kashkari on Brexit, Cramer on Tesla, Breitbart on China, and “shorting unethical stocks” … all in a day’s work for The Zeitgeist!
Every morning, we run The Narrative Machine on the past 24 hours worth of financial media to find the articles that are representative of some sort of chord that has been struck in Narrative-world. They’re not the best articles – often far from it – but they will arm you for the Narrative wars of the day ahead.
ET contributor Neville Crawley is simply one of the wisest people I know, and he outdoes himself in this killer Rabbit Hole note.
Come for the Amazon anecdote. Stay for the book recommendations.