Every so often, things fall apart.
In the words of those who lived it, here are the vibes and the semantic signatures of the twentieth century’s most devastating social collapses.
From the meaning in their words, wisdom for our future emerges.
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.
The cure for the cancer of gun culture and police culture is not to be found in reform laws around guns and police, but in reform ideas around culture, ideas that create a new dimension of American society that rejects LARPing and LARPers alike.
Inflation
What made Bitcoin special is nearly lost, and what remains is a false and constructed Narrative that exists in service to Wall Street and Washington rather than in resistance.
The Bitcoin narrative must be renewed. And that will change everything.
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Crypto
Recent Notes
The Best Way to Rob a Bank
I think that the collapse of Greensill Capital has a lot of systemic risk embedded within it, particularly as the fraudulent deals between Greensill and its major sponsors – Softbank and Credit Suisse – come to light.
This is the first Big Fraud I’ve seen in 13 years with the sheer heft and star power to ripple through markets in a systemic way. Not since Madoff.
A Freaky Circle
Excessive complexity in a deal or structure isn’t necessarily nefarious, but it also isn’t a good sign. The distraction and confusion you and I feel reading about these deals is usually not the problem.
It is the point.
The Fed’s Kryptonite
An in-depth look at the interdependence of inflation, Treasury supply, and the Fed reaction function.
Bottom line: inflation is the Fed’s kryptonite.
A Change in the Water
Increasingly, the common knowledge of our investment world – what everyone knows that everyone knows – is that inflation is a problem and you should be focused on it.
The Opposite of 2008
In 2008, the US housing market – together with a Fed that thought the subprime crisis was “contained” – delivered the mother of all deflationary shocks to the global economy.
In 2021, the US housing market – together with a Fed that thinks inflationary pressures are “transitory” – risks delivering the mother of all inflationary shocks.
The ET Pack is going to figure this out … together.
ET Podcast #6 – The Business of Wall Street
Very little investing today is buying and selling shares of common stock in individual companies. Instead, we buy and sell what Wall Street calls “products” – mutual funds, ETFs, options, REITs, SPACs, etc.
Dave Nadig, who literally wrote the book on ETFs, helps us understand the history and future of the business of Wall Street.
The Third Rail Switch
In the same way that narrative shaped a conversation about the role of police going forward in 2020, narrative can shape a conversation about the role of teacher unions and public sector unions more broadly. My money is still on the status quo, but I’ve been wrong before.
Office Hours – 2.16.2021
Check out our February 2021 Office Hours!
ET Podcast #5 – Gnostic Nationalism
Every political movement has a political philosophy, and for Trumpism and MAGA it’s the Dominion theology of the charismatic/Pentecostal church.
Neither the rise of Donald Trump nor the attack on our Capitol can be understood without an examination of this faith and its constructed political narratives.
Believe it or not.
Danish Food-Safety Expertise for the Win
WHO beclowns itself with its “fact-finding mission” to Wuhan.
Hammers and Nails
When we talk about bias, we usually think about a political bias. But the world of 2021 now supports persistent idiosyncratic biases and frames through which information is passed. How do we ensure that our information consumption habits account for this?
ET Podcast #4 – Hunger Games
What’s happening with Reddit and Gamestop and Robinhood is a revolution, but not the revolution you think.
This isn’t a “democratization” of Wall Street. You were played. Again.
It’s a revolution in Common Knowledge. And that changes everything. Again.
Hunger Games
You have been told that the odds are ever in your favor. You have been told this for your entire life. More and more, you suspect this is a lie.
You have been told a new story. A brave story. That by banding together and acting as one, you can “democratize” the stock market. Today, as you see the collapsing stock prices of the companies you supported, you suspect that this was a lie, as well.
When Does the Game Stop?
What’s happening now in equity markets isn’t the product of some paradigmatic democratization of finance. It’s just another bubble that will end badly.
Portrait of a Very Serious Investor
The Very Serious Investor is quite disturbed by recent goings-on in illiquid, small cap stocks with high short interests. These happenings represent an assault not only on the Very Serious Investor’s livelihood, but his entire cosmology. People placing profitable discretionary trades in the financial markets when they lack even a single Ivy League degree. Imagine!
The Invulnerable Hero*
No, the real story here probably isn’t about a revolution against Wall Street. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t an opportunity to build a movement – right now – to transform it toward fair, free and open markets.
The Zimbabwe Event
The South African variant virus (501.V2) is not the immediate threat to the United States as the UK variant virus (B117). But 501.V2 has the potential to create a far more powerful narrative – vaccine resistance – that can have a greater market impact than the more pressing issues of B117.
More and more, I think the variant viruses create a tradeable event for markets.
For Leon Black is an Honorable Man
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with the American dream that once was,
And I must pause till it come back to me.
Off Wall Street and Off-Off Wall Street
Everything you always wanted to know about r/Wallstreetbets and Gamestop*
*but were afraid to ask
A Different Game
The light research poured into sentiment analysis misses one rather important fact: that’s the game we used to play. Today’s Fiat News is a different game altogether.