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Crescendo 2020: ‘There’s No Reason Whatsoever To Expect Anything Resembling Calm’
Things may have changed -- forever.
That's one takeaway from the latest note by Deutsche Bank's Aleksandar Kocic, who, earlier this week, suggested that markets may be forced to cope with a "prolonged period of uncertainty and disorder" following the election.
"Uncertainty is now the only certainty", Kocic said Tuesday, in the course of flagging various manifestations of fear and anxiety in options.
Read more: ‘Fear Of Massive Risk-Off Trade’ Amid Unprecedented Political Entropy
In a new
The other thing to note is that we seem to be going through another “red scare” period in our history. An increasing number of people believe the government is infiltrated by child sex traffickers and that antifa is waiting around the corner ready to burn everyone’s town to the ground and loot the remains. When Jacob Blake was shot, rumors appeared in my hometown that protestors were coming. Never mind that my hometown likely hasn’t had 100 black people in total visit the town in the past decade (not an exaggeration). The same rumors spread in my current suburban locale. In Oregon, you have people more worried about looters than giant walls of flames on their doorstep. As if looters are willing to risk their own lives to steal whatever Joe Blow has in his garage.
I assume this was what the folks in medieval Europe went through when Ghengis Khan was running rampant except they legitimately had something to fear.
Genghis Khan never ran rampant in Europe. He died in 1227. The furthest the Mongols got into Europe was Poland, where they won the Battle Liegnitz in 1241. After that they withdrew, never to return to Western or Central Europe, although they did take over Russia.
Great post.
Yeah, things may have changed – forever.
I think even his supporters know the antifa scare is a hoax and that socialism exists in Europe without a large problem. What I find is that people to do not understand american style socialism benefits those most opposed to the word socialism(farmers, wealthy). Which points to the observation that people like socialism as long as they get it and others do not. I do not ascribe to the thought that people are buying into all the political Cons or that these nuts are in anyway populists. No I think Trump has not thought of the ‘end game’ but David Duke, Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, and others have. No they are not telling us what they think the end game is.
Really knocked it outa the park this time, Mr. H.
I’m grateful it is one person, one vote
Here’s a typical excerpt from an elite political thinker. Directly excerpted from a Marketwatch opinion column: Americans feel they left to their own devices to cope with the health threat and manage their disrupted lives. While a heavy burden, these demands are manageable as long as people have the cognitive capacity required. The problem is that most people do not.
This thinking pervades the political elites. They think Joe Blow goes to the President for medical advice? They can allocate joe blows capital better than joe?
Resentment……..An Autocrats Rhetoric allows it to find some “higher” ground. Roy Cohn would be so proud.
Remember, they were “buds.” Trump got to learn from a master manipulator.
ENDO#
article is spot on
Would recommend How Democracies Die by Levitsky and Ziblatt
finger on nose, nail on the head, etc … The US is on the brink of becoming an autocracy, and American society is so collectively undereducated and oblivious to the most basic of tenets of their own form of government, that many voters don’t even know what’s happening to them.
I would argue that it has already happened, we are just awaiting the final confirmations. The past four years, if not the past 20, have been a drawn out constitutional crisis. In essentially every theory of democratic political legitimacy I have studied, legitimacy is derived, however mediated by layers of representation, from a social contract ratified by the will of the governed.
In 2000, Rehnquist said the constitution didn’t require Florida to count the actual votes. Let’s pretend for a moment that the Voting Rights Act has not been under full frontal assault since then, that we aren’t in the middle of a pandemic that requires more voting flexibility, that the sitting President hasn’t already been impeached for interference in the upcoming election, and that this final constitutional fail-safe process hadn’t already tragically broken culminating in the “no witnesses necessary” vote by the Senate. All that seemingly stands between here and the abyss is one man, John Roberts. Even he would need to ignore the jurisprudential doctrine of stare decicis and the 2000 precedent, and take a rather non-conservative approach to interpret the law differently. Does this setup instill confidence in the robustness of the system, or point to the system already having proven its fragility? Regardless of the ultimate outcome, I think we already know that at least 30%, if not substantially more, of the citizenry will believe it to be illegitimate.
We could also mention that the Republicans in Congress have not “legislated” in any semblance of good faith since at least the inauguration in 2009, when party elders met and decided their strategy going forward would be to perfect the art of stonewalling the other party at all costs, including the cost of total self-destruction. We could mention myriad lawless officials like John Yoo, Dick Cheney, Roger Stone, and others ultimately not held to account. We could mention the NSA being authorized by Obama to extendedly spy, domestically, on over a million citizens without warrant, violating their most basic constitutionally protected civil rights, the very revelation of which was not made by the courts supposedly vested with this authority, but by a whistleblower risking his life to break very serious laws. We could point to issues with broad overall public appeal (2/3 for stricter gun control, 7/10 for Medicare for All, etc.) that are somehow “impossible” for the political system to effectuate. We could perhaps throw in the economy becoming largely centrally planned by 5 unelected officials.
One can think of different phrases to describe all of this, but “democracy” and “the rule of law” seem hopelessly naive, if not outright disingenuous at this point. “Authoritarianism” is as accurate as any label.
Frog (i.e., us), meet pot of water.
There is one other group not heard from that could enforce a return to a democratic state. The US military. Would they decide to enter the fray if it became blatantly clear that Trump and his band of A’holes were trying to hijack the government?
One could argue that corporate-centric authoritarianism combined with an accommodative Central Bank is supportive of equities.
The risk off mood would be a buying opportunity regardless of who wins/takes the power, no?
I think you’re missing he larger point. In an increasingly authoritarian state, how would you know the “rules” would remain as you know them allowing you to invest with confidence? How would you know that the companies you invest in would remain in the good grace of the authoritarian? The whim of the authoritarian could change things quickly. They may be “corporate-centric” but would they be YOUR corporate-centric?
A concluding comment to the above: the US is investable because of the rule of law, particularly with regard to property. In an authoritarian state, that kinda goes out the window, doesn’t it?
Yep.
Praise be…how long after a Trump re-election before we start living in a Hand Maid’s Tale type of reality? Salvagings and hangings at Fenway Park may mark just the beginning, liberals accused of drinking children’s blood will be executed first along with the entire staff at CNN, under his eye…
And no one will be brave enough to stop him.
All fair points. To be clear, I’m not rooting for this to happen. But I wouldn’t want to be blind to the fact that authoritarianism has been a boost, at least in the short term, to markets, and that’s partly why authoritarians receive support from capitalists: low wages, reduced worker rights, government spending for loyalists, support for loyalists’ monopolies and accrual of influence.
Believe me, I’m spending to support civil rights and democracy groups. But we can’t be oblivious to the fact that big tech is acquiescing to the government. CEOs of all stripes have kissed the ring. Those who haven’t become the news and don’t receive government grants.
The rules for investment under authoritarianism, one could argue, become extremely clear: stick to loyalists’, short dissenters. Again, I don’t like the game, but we must play it.
The Crux of the issue here is: will you divest fully if Congress removes from the Constitution presidential term limits in 2023? Where would your money go?