If you’re like me, you’ve been put off from digging deeper into DeFi by the terrible signal-to-noise ratio of anything crypto-related on the interwebs. That’s why I found this DeFi primer (using Maker DAO as a specific example) by ET contributor and banking analyst Marc Rubinstein to be so fantastic.
Recent major media stories that feel to us like they’re part of a larger narrative campaign.
Recent major media stories that feel to us like they’re part of a larger narrative campaign.
Recent major media stories that feel to us like they’re part of a larger narrative campaign.
Modeling Common Knowledge by analyzing Missionary statements and their reverberations works. Except when it doesn’t.
What do you get when you give a Raccoon billions of dollars AND invisibility from regulators? Collusion and insider trading.
Most of us are under the impression that a protracted conflict within China will increase national unity. Not this time.
Recent Notes
Election Rewind: June 2015
What if there was a way to spot who would jump in the GOP primary polls back in June 2015? What if we could spot something in the way that the crowd watched the crowd talk about the candidates. What if we could imagine what that meant for this election and how we process information about it?
Warren in June: Back in an Unflattering Spotlight
Elizabeth Warren is among the front-runners in polls, but in media, a cohesive, connected Narrative has yet to form. More importantly, even as attention to her campaign has grown, the sentiment attached to her ideas in media has declined sharply. It is a problem shared by other women candidates that we think should guide readers to consume news cautiously.
The Not-So-Much War
A tug-of-war is only a tug-of-war if both sides, y’know, are capable of pulling on the rope.
Zeitgeist Narrative Map – 6.14.2019
Every morning, we run The Narrative Machine on the past 24 hours worth of financial media to find the most on-narrative (i.e. interconnected and central)…
Victims of Success
If you’re going to trade on story and sentiment, more power to you. But over time, the mind naturally searches for justification and credibility for continued ownership of something. Take care when you start to feel that pull.
Live from Potemkin
Sometimes a news article that’s all over the map is just a badly written article. Sometimes it’s like a glitch in the matrix. I think the changing narratives and weakening common knowledge around Big Tech are causing the latter.
The Most Valuable Commodity I Know
What’s the most valuable commodity Gordon Gekko knows? Information.
How valuable is Wall Street research? How much information does Wall Street research have? LOL.
MIFID II is making the jump from Europe to the US. Time to polish those sell-side research resumes. As if you weren’t already.
Sanders in June: Polarizing…Except in Media
Bernie Sanders isn’t leading in the polls. He may also be the most polarizing candidate – again. But don’t tell the political media, whose Sanders content thus far in the primary process has the strongest, most positive narrative of any candidate. And it’s not close.
The Crossover Point
There’s a point in any human activity – investing, politics, religion, or business – where a thing we do together becomes a thing in-itself. It’s a point that changes our thinking and the moral questions we are forced to answer. Knowing where this point lies is in all our activities is important.
Americans Rely on Public Restrooms
The need to control and influence common knowledge knows no boundaries. And I mean literally no boundaries.
Big Tech Has Lost Control of Its Cartoon
There are two narrative structures that have grown to a size and a level of cohesion that makes them impossible to be politically ignored.
One is the student loan “crisis”. The other is the Big Tech “monopoly”.
And yes, I’m putting those words in air-quotes, because the first isn’t really a crisis and the second isn’t really a monopoly. But since when did that matter in narrative-world?
Vanguard Doesn’t Care About Your Trade War
Vanguard just announced a joint venture with Ant Financial in Shanghai. They’re not waiting around for a trade “deal”, and they’re not clutching their pearls about Chinese IP “theft”.
No, Vanguard is going to do what they always do … they’re going to obliterate their competition with the pricing power that comes from government collaboration.
Biden in June: Popular but Disconnected
Some few months into primary season, Joe Biden is the Democratic front-runner. But his narrative isn’t – it remains distinct from the issues that appear to be defining the written and spoken dialogue about the election. Above all, it remains distinctly negative. Will the left-pivot gambit pay off?
Are You Now, or Have You Ever Been Pro-China?
Bannon and the rest of the America First brigade (which includes a LOT of bedfellows you see all the time on CNBC, like Kyle Bass) are going full-McCarthy. They’re going to have a “list”. They’re going to accuse anyone and everyone of “treason”.
It’s part and parcel of the China narrative transformation that Rusty and I have been talking about for a month now: the US-China narrative is now a national security narrative, not an economic trade narrative, and you can’t walk that narrative back until after the 2020 election.
Sucker.
Certificate programs like “Impact Investing for the Next Generation”, a course offered by Harvard’s Kennedy School and the World Economic Forum (yes, the Davos guys), are a great way to fleece the suckers. And by suckers I mean rich Asians.
I know of which I speak. Because I used to do the fleecing.
The Weekend Zeitgeist – 6.9.2019
It’s the Weekend Zeitgeist, in which a lovely sentiment is enough to convince us to include a soccer piece, a thoughtful observation on symbols is enough to convince us to include a Gawker piece, and language colors what we treat as acceptable political views.
The Existential Narrative
Any shift in the Trade narrative away from economic issues and toward national security issues is highly problematic for a market-friendly resolution in US-China negotiations. Why? Because the political stakes are much higher for both Trump and Xi in a national security game of Chicken than they are in an economic game of Chicken. It is much easier to be “the chicken” in an economic game and claim some sort of face-saving feature than in an national security game, so the latter is almost always a protracted affair of brinksmanship and high stress.
It’s happening.
Send Lawyers, Guns and Money
Nancy Pelosi’s chief of staff is now Facebook’s chief lobbyist. Big Tech just gave the Internet Freedom Award to Ivanka Trump. The head of the antitrust division of the Justice Dept. is a former Google lobbyist.
They’re. Not. Even. Pretending. Anymore.
truth and Truth
Great Truths can be important engines for social unity and shared identity. In the hands of some, however, they can become tools for obscuring actual truth – facts – in service of cynical use of the emotional memes attached to those Truths.
Superstorm Powell
The narratives of Central Bank Omnipotence and Trade & Tariffs have merged into a superstorm.
We are tracking its movement across the map of narrative-world, and as you might expect … it packs a punch.