The Road to Serfdom is not an endless road, but its path and duration, what I call the Great Ravine, is not up to us to choose. While we walk this road the only thing we can save is our souls, and we do it with one simple sentence: It was never going to be me.
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
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.
Exigent Circumstances
ET contributor Peter Cecchini makes a strong case that the Fed is playing a dangerous game with its constant use of the “exigent circumstances” exception to Section 14 of the Federal Reserve Act.
Does the alphabet soup of new facilities and SPVs established by the Fed in recent weeks amount to an illegal taking of assets? It’s a reasonable question.
Even more reasonable: if not here, where do you draw the line?
Inception
We’re going to change the world, you know … you and me. We’re going to create points of failure for the system of sociopathic oligarchy AT SCALE.
First the People
This is not a chronicle of errors and mistakes made during COVID-19.
This is the story about the inevitable, simultaneous failure of each of the institutions designed to operate in our interest.
It is the story of how we respond to fragility with resilience.
Frenemies
The oil narrative is not as it seems.
The White House and others assume the Saudis and Russians are at odds. Don’t be so sure. Their interests are aligned around disabling U.S. production. Period.
Our Finest Hour
There is no country in the world that mobilizes for war more effectively than the United States. And I know you won’t believe me, but I tell you it is true:
This will be #OurFinestHour.
Until Further Notice
We have been asked to discuss our views about the CARES Act. In order to facilitate future such requests, we have provided what we hope to be a helpful rubric.
The Miracle Max of MBS
Sometimes investors and corporate executives will beg for a miracle to bring mostly dead assets back to life. That’s OK. But we don’t have to give it to them. And we don’t have to treat their requests as news in themselves.
Once in a Lifetime
We are led by high-functioning sociopaths, in our politics and our economy, and nowhere is this more apparent than in our war against COVID-19.
How do we protect ourselves? Not by allying with the sociopaths, but by finding our pack.
When the Story Bends
Saying that “America needs to reopen for business” isn’t the same thing as doing what we need to reopen America for business. Words matter, but actions matter more.
Let’s do the right things. Now.
Getting PPE to Healthcare Workers and First Responders
This is our personal effort to help identify *need*, *sources*, and *money* for personal protective equipment distributions to healthcare workers and first responders.
Do The Right Thing
Bailout the airlines and their rank-and-file employees? You bet.
Bailout the CEOs? Not a chance.
But that’s what we’re gonna do.
The Non-Linearity of Need, Pt. 2
Let’s make this Our Finest Hour. From the bottom up.
Our Escape Story
When people stop asking “How much worse is this going to get” and start asking “How much longer is this going to last”, things really start changing.
But we can change that, too.
Recent major media stories that feel to us like they’re part of a larger narrative campaign.