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
When Meta-Analysis Goes Meta
What does it mean when it becomes common knowledge that other investors are focused on evaluating common knowledge?
I’ve Got a Secret
Is there a bubble in passive investing? Honestly, I’m not even sure what that question is asking.
I DO think there’s a bubble in markets today – a behavioral bubble I’ll call ABB.
Always. Be. Buying.
And the Common Knowledge around passive investing is what blows this bubble. That’s MY secret.
The Industrially Necessary Egg
In modern farming and in modern investing, we have become prisoners of the monoculture. It’s efficient. It’s necessary for a mass society of ever-increasing Desire.
But here’s the thing …
In the investment monoculture, you’re not the farmer.
Gell-Mann Gravity
It’s the Monday Zeitgeist, including all known lanthanides and actinides.
Notes from the Diamond #8: Room For Doubt
In both baseball and in investing, we need an all-purpose test of excellence, not just for identifying MVPs like Mike Trout, but for seeing how all of us mere mortals stack up.
ET contributor David Salem makes the case for an investing corollary to baseball’s Wins Above Replacement (WAR). It’s a defense of value investing, but with a twist.
LEEROY JENKINS!!!
There are four non-exclusive Occam’s-razorish explanations for Bill Dudley’s recent article inciting the Fed to get involved in the 2020 election:
A) Bill Dudley is a technocratic fascist.
B) Bill Dudley has lost his mind. In a sad clinical sense.
C) Bill Dudley is a MAGA sleeper agent.
D) Bill Dudley is Leeroy Jenkins.
When Non-News Becomes Fiat News
IT’S A DISASTER. IT’S A CATASTROPHE. IT’S A PERFECT STORM. It’s today’s Zeitgeist.
Office Hours – 8.27.2019
It’s the August 27th edition of Office Hours! In which political, economic and markets nihilism are the order of the day.
You Can’t Take It Back
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)…
My Dinner with Neel
I haven’t been very nice to Neel Kashkari.
But he was nice enough to engage in a twitter exchange with me the other day. Well, sort of.
Here’s a record of that exchange. I’ll leave it to you to decide who’s the prisoner and who’s the guard.
Nuke ‘Em From Orbit. It’s the Only Way To Be Sure.
Nuke the site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
It’s the best line from a movie full of them.
I couldn’t help but think about nuking inhuman monsters from orbit, when I read the PR releases from Prince Andrew and Les Wexner about their “relationship” with Jeffrey Epstein.
License to Kill Gophers
The desire of central banks to forestall recession at all costs reminds us of the war that groundskeeper Carl Spackler had with the gopher in Caddyshack.
Sure, you can defeat the gopher. But you’ve gotta blow up the golf course with dynamite to do it.
Food Innovation Meets Financial Innovation
Markets are boring. Hey, what if we securitized wokeness?
The World ‘Twixt Ought To and Is
Honest investing means finding a balance between approaches which imply we know everything and those which imply we can’t know anything. It means humility.
We think there are three – and only three – paths to finding this balance. One is the heart of what we are trying to achieve with Epsilon Theory.
Frauds and Traitors
Throwing words like “Fraud!” and “Traitor!” around so casually … it doesn’t reveal the true frauds and the true traitors.
It makes it easier for them to hide.
When Potato Salad Goes Bad
On Tuesday, the Macy’s narrative was “I think they can make their comps.”
On Wednesday, the Macy’s narrative was “I think they can cover their dividend.”
This is what it means for a narrative to go bad. This is what it means for a story to break.
And when a story breaks, so does the stock. Not just for a little while, but for a loooong time.
Just ask GE.
ET Election Index: July 31, 2019
This is the fourth installment of Epsilon Theory’s Election Index. Our aim with the feature is to lay as bare as possible the popular narratives…
Does It Make a Sound?
Wherever self-determination and resistance to the encroaching power of the state and oligarchical institutions find expression, there should our Full Hearts be also.
And our full voices.
I’m a Superstitious Man
“I’m a superstitious man, and if some unlucky accident should befall him — if he should get shot in the head by a police officer, or if he should hang himself in his jail cell, or if he’s struck by a bolt of lightning — then I’m going to blame some of the people in this room.” – Vito Corleone
Same.
The Nudging State and the Nudging Oligarchy cannot be defeated on a single point of failure like Jeffrey Epstein’s testimony at trial. Or like the bankruptcy of AIG.
But a million effin’ points of failure? A refusal to vote for ridiculous candidates and buy ridiculous securities? A refusal AT SCALE?
Yeah, that can work.
The Country HOA and other Control Stories
There are some stories that we will want to believe no matter how much contrary evidence we find, and no matter how much we know that the story is bogus. And when these stories convey a sense of control? All bets are off.