A Change Is Gonna Come
It's all too easy to suggest that market participants will continue to ignore the social unrest rippling across American cities.
Outside of knee-jerk reactions to adverse headlines, durable price adjustments usually only occur when there's a clear link between political turmoil and the factors that impact the fundamentals for a given asset class.
The link between politics and prices is arguably strongest in oil markets, where supply is directly affected by the vagaries of Mideast power struggl
The elites have been masterful in controlling the messaging for decades. It’s been astounding to watch. Their control rests on this not happening: “Americans who comprise the “bottom 90%” of the economic totem pole finally come around to the reality that if they can get past racial prejudices, they have much more in common with each other than they do with the political establishment.”
Let’s hope this time is it.
Yep. I’m not hopeful, though.
As soon as the top 40-10% realise they might be put to contribution/have to give up something on their way to a better world, they’ll side with the the top 0.01% and nothing will change much.
Divide et impera!
BRAVO!
I believe that it has been Trumps rhetoric implying that police should manhandle defendants which has backfired. Middle class deniability of possible institutional brutality in law enforcement is removed when the leader of the land is a sponsor. The unintended consequence.
Riots were coming and the plan was to make it socialists.
The losers of our last civil war think they have a winning hand this time through. This is what is beginning to play out. A good part of the U.S. is waiting for Jerry Jones to make his statement. I tried to see if anyone has new numbers of the Cowboys market value. He has left himself open bigly.Along with some other owners.
Many Trump flags have come down where I live. Just maybe some bumper stickers. Love affairs often end badly.
Yes Mr. H, the perfect storm has turned into a Hurricane, the eye seemed pleasant enough and now it is coming from the other direction.
As someone living in a county that went strongly for Trump in the 2016 election, I have noticed fewer Trump signs this year but the signs that are out there are huge. I wonder if they think they just have to shout louder.
We called the police fascist pigs in 1968. Nothing has changed except the violence is more overt.
“We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed” Martin Luther King Jr. Letter from a Birmingham Jail April 16, 1963. That time has arrived.
I thought the time arrived during Watts. I was wrong then, at least, Frankly, other than sloganeering, the right voices aren’t serious yet. Where the hell are Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson? MLK would have been all over this.
What happened in Atlanta is not good for the BLM movement. What happened with George Floyd was SOO obvious and undeniable. Many people will see the Atlanta incident and consider it justifiable, then they’ll point to the burned down Wendy’s and call the movement a bunch of hoodlems and thugs. Their short attention spans and recency bias will give them reason and cover not to support the BLM movement. Fox News unfortunately is going to have a field day over this one.
I don’t disagree with your assessment of how some people will view it, but just so we’re clear: There is nothing “justifiable” about shooting a man in the back with a 9mm because he aimed a taser at you. That wouldn’t even be justifiable in a war zone, let alone in the parking lot of a Wendy’s. The whole episode was tragically absurd. They could have simply offered to drive the guy home, for example. After all, it’s not exactly like he was speeding down the freeway at 100mph. He was asleep waiting to order a burger.
Thanks H, sorry for not making it more clear, I couldn’t agree more that it was completely unjustifiable. I just know how a lot of people I grew up with and work with will view this and it’s totally unfortunate.
The cop did not want to fill out a missing property report….. Really could be that simple in the moment.
qualified immunity?
We can and should expect our government to embody values that are better than each of us individually.
We all know if a white man did the same thing he would be alive today.
BTW my skin is white as snow.
Change always come through violence, not without. Those who form the top 10% will not give up anything, they will just give “support”. It’s only fear that can force them to give up something.
You really give Trump too much credibility. He is a circus freak show on a short leash. His is not important except in his own mind and isnt even worth listening to or speaking too much about.
I’ve learned over the past three years that if I’m going to separate Heisenberg Report from all of the other places folks go to read daily content on markets, economics and politics, the best approach is to avoid bombast in favor of an approach based on real analysis and quality content. Admittedly, that comes at the expense of humor in some cases, but the problem with resorting to outright insults with no real analytical purpose is that it ostracizes even some readers who agree with the sentiment. People are bombarded all day, every day with, at best, mean-spirited sarcasm and at worst, outright vitriol. It’s not so much that I want to provide a “shelter from the storm” as much as it is that I want to make sure that when people read something here, they always feel like it was worth their time, irrespective of whether they agree with it — that goes for markets, economics and politics. It’s easy to adopt an “edgy” pseudonym and churn out provocative, somewhat witty, tabloid content all day. What’s far more difficult is to make each and every post something that readers will truly be glad they read, even if, again, they don’t agree with it. It’s also far more rewarding, which is why I took the site firmly in that direction starting two years ago.
All of that said, there are a couple of brilliant political and market satirists that I’d love to hire — who knows, maybe I will.
I am a subscriber for a reason. While I appreciate the occasional reasonable snark, I do more appreciate the analysis.
Yes! Thanks, H.
But for Republicans who care about the party and its influence on American politics, the outcome is increasingly binary, and the risk on the downside is existential for the GOP as an institution.
Trump has wrecked everything he has ever come close to; he will wreck the GOP as well. And it’ll be well-deserved.
Just a new, and even viler GOP. First came the geniuses in the Tea Party, now comes the MAGA dudes, each incrementally worse than the other..
The GOP was well on the way to being wrecked before Trump was elected.
“And assuming the masses don’t become complacent…”
I believe the great philosopher Felix Unger’s trenchant analysis of what occurs when you make operating decisions on the basis of assumptions remains relevant here.
The good news for those invested in what was until recently the status quo is, if Biden wins in November, we can expect the entire “radical left” (today’s apparent preferred parlance for the just-left-of-center-right through the just-left-of-center-left) to roll over and get complacent again.
I don’t mean to imply that I doubt the Democrats’ ability to lose a second time to the least qualified candidate in modern history, and at this point wouldn’t myself even hazard a guess as to what might happen in November, but I’m certain that if they manage to pull through, we’ll see societal repeat of 2008-2016: a bit of virtue-signaling through prominent Administration support on superficial but divisive social issues, and beyond that, an entire nation of Democrats rolling over and looking the other way on traditional neoconservative policy moves, and Republicans attacking same as if they’d never heard of anything so foul and dangerous during the 40 or 50 previous years when they espoused those same policies.
And the “winds of change” will blow over. Maybe we’ll see some incremental change linger, as we did from the Occupy movement. But overall, “we” will have “won”, and the enthusiasm will wane once the Oval Office is occupied by someone who doesn’t broadcast their repugnance quite so flagrantly. Rachel Maddow will go back to telling everybody how great everything the President does is. (Although Bill Maher may not.)
Honestly? I wonder if it wouldn’t be better in the longer run for America for Sideshow Bob to win again. Keep the outrage front and center. They haven’t been outraged long enough yet to ensure the momentum of it can survive a Democrat administration. And it needs to.
Timing is everything. A slightly more progressive democratic candidate might have been able to ride this wave had they not gotten ahead of it. Progressive meaningful change might be “breaking up the big corporations,” e.g. reversing the last 40 years of corporate consolidation (as described by Tepper) with anti-trust action and a return to serious competition.