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 Portnoy Top
Written during last week’s sell-off, ET Contributor Peter Cecchini coins a phrase – The Portnoy Top.
What do you get when you combine Barstool Sports and Printer Goes Brrr?
No Country for Old Men
We all know someone who is in urgent-but-not-emergency need of some medical procedure that can’t be scheduled while Covid-19 is storming the hospital ramparts.
I’m one of them.
Misfortune vs. Carelessness
What’s happening with the Bureau of Labor Statistics with recent employment data reports is an intentional, political carelessness that supports status quo cartoons of control.
It’s not a Democrat thing and it’s not a Republican thing.
It’s a power thing.
Never Forget
Since June 4th 1989, the Chinese government has tried to erase any record of the Tiananmen Square massacre from history.
Can a Tiananmen Square massacre happen in the United States? I doubt it.
Can a Tiananmen Square rewriting of history happen in the United States? Absolutely. It already is.
No Accident
Our bi-modal political environment doesn’t just impact our politics. It shapes our social and cultural narratives and channels our responses to every event.
Yet Americans are large. They contain multitudes. And they can reject the political archetypes into which narratives seek to channel them. If this is to be our finest hour, then they must.
Office Hours – 6.2.2020
In this Office Hours, Ben and Rusty discuss all things pandemic recovery, markets and the narratives of protests surrounding the death of George Floyd.
Self Assured Destruction
Our leaders have botched the Covid-19 war, and we are defenseless against a now endemic disease.
15,000 to 20,000 Americans officially sick. 500 to 1,000 Americans officially dead.
Every day.
The free world does not easily survive a globally endemic Covid-19.
The Hertz Story Isn’t What You Think
The Hertz bankruptcy is not a story of financialization by an entrenched, self-dealing management team.
It’s a story of financialization by an entrenched, self-dealing minority ownership.
A New Gilded Age
A Gilded Age isn’t an age of prosperity. It is an age of the narrative of prosperity, and narratives of prosperity are always top-down political narratives.
There is but one way to tear down top-down political narratives: action.
The End of the Beginning
ET contributor Demonetized is back, grappling with some investment themes here at the end of the beginning.
The skinny: deep value is at best a tactical trade. At best.
No Free Lunches
ET Contributor Pete Cecchini looks at the monetary and fiscal policy stimulus coming out of Washington and sees a staggering price to pay in lost real growth and massive institutional corruption.
A Truth That’s Told With Bad Intent
A truth that’s told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.
– William Blake
Our narratives of COVID-19 are all lies.
They are lies of a particular sort, political narratives that have a nugget of truth within them, but are told with bad intent. They are told this way because it works. Because the nugget of truth hides a deeper, unpleasant truth. And a Big Lie.
Hateful Memes and Election Season
There’s light at the end of the pandemic tunnel, and there’s light at the end of the pandemic narrative tunnel. No, on second thought I think that’s an oncoming train called “election season.”
American Idol
Take away a great performer’s live audience, and you take away their source of narrative power.
That’s true for American Idol. That’s true for Warren Buffett.
It’s also true for Donald Trump.
Too Connected to Fail
We have written that one of the major social changes occurring at present is the transformation of capital markets into public utilities.
The COVID-19 pandemic and policy response have accelerated that transformation. It is now the water in which we swim.
Office Hours – 4.28.2020
Join us this afternoon for the Pandemic Edition of Office Hours! As usual, we start promptly, so if you don’t have video within a short…
That Old Canard
We are now in the Flooz.com phase of the “how is COVID-19 going to change the world forever” process. Be careful out there.
Bear Stearns and the Narratives of Systemic Risk
The systemic risk question you need to ask yourself today is the same question you needed to ask in 2008.
What is the micro-level truth of the potential real-world shock, and does that micro-level truth threaten the common knowledge surrounding a levered business model and securitized asset class of enormous size?
Through No Fault of Their Own
I, for one, am delighted to learn of the “Through No Fault of Their Own” exemption to stock market risk.
One day, and soon, there will be a reckoning. Time to choose a side.
One for the Road
There was no greater sin between 2009 and 2020 than enduring a ‘constant drag on returns’. This is the Meme of Yay, Efficiency!, and it permeates every layer of our economy and markets.