Cynical

It’s easy to laugh at the medias predilection for hysteria mongering.. I mean, I get it – it sells papers and gets people to tune in, to newspapers who sales are in death spirals and television stations and networks who’s ratings are in free fall.

And laugh, we certainly are.

But there is a very, very dark side to the squandering of trust that happens every time the media over blows a snowstorm, or a dossier, or an attorney generals report. 

Famine is one of the key markers, and sources for the legends, in human history. It’s been the sabertooth tiger outside the campfire light for most of humanities history.

But never in that history has there been a famine in a society that had two things:

  1. A relatively free market
  2. A relatively free media – Defined as a media that is free to ask questions and report on the answers it gets without government interference.

Those two advances have combined – and I do mean combined, because you don’t get the benefits of the one without the other – To illuminate famine, at least on a widespread, society destroying basis, so every time they have ever been combined. No society with a free market and a Free Press, even relatively speaking, has ever had a famine. Those two factors also combined it to bring other, perhaps even in calculable, blessings to humanity – but let’s stick with famine for right now, since it’s appropriate to today’s situation.

So what happens when you have a Media that is Free – but nobody trusts it?

Who do you trust, these days?

Its’ not an idle question.   One is completely justified in thinking the media is whipping up a certain amount of hysteria to sell papers and to smear the President – which isn’t to say Trump’s been covering himself with glory in this particular crisis, but the “elite” media made it very well known they were in the bag against Trump to the point changing the rules of the trade to “denormalize” the President; in that context, a pandemic is just another crisis not to waste.

Self-government depends on institutions we can trust – not just the  media, but the courts, law enforcement, the bureaucracy, everything.

And we just can’t anymore.  Not when the issue is more political than a car crash or soybean futures.

73 thoughts on “Cynical

  1. If you invested wisely, you have nothing to fear.
    If you were counting on an annual return of 25% on your 401k, year after year, you were not a wise investor.
    Trying to predict the level the market will stabilize at is fool’s game. No one knows what the economic effects of covid-19 will be, or what economic effects of measures taken to contain the virus will be.
    However, to date the economic effects of the virus are entirely due to the measures taken to contain the virus, and not the deaths due to the virus.

  2. I’m having trouble deciding which dip is better — last Thursday or next weeks.

    Seriously—I’m very fortunate to with having gotten out in January and booked all of 2019’s gains.

    My existing exposure consists of Municipal Bonds and two REIT funds. I’m setup for retirement.

    Will the market be higher in five years — I would say that is nearly a certainty.

    For the time being — the questions are what that deflated equity value actually is, how soon we will reach that level, and the damage (recession?) Covid-19 will do before humans reach a critical level of immunity, which could take 3 months to another year.

  3. I’m having trouble deciding which dip is the worse liar; Teh little Peevee, or Low IQ Emery.

    Both are transparent as glass, and both exhibit a level of shamelessness rarely seen outside a mental ward.

    Can someone help me out here?

  4. Woolly: One of the more interesting statistics in the Vanguard webinar: ‘if you missed the top 20 best days in the stock market, your overall return was cut in half.’

    Which goes to your point regarding ‘buy and hold’ as opposed to ‘market timing’.

  5. Yet more proof that Emery does not understand the concept of “shorting.” If he knew what it meant, rather than lying about cashing out In January, he would have lied that he began shorting a DJIA index fund in January and made TONS OF MONEY on the recent DJIA drop.

    “‘if you missed the top 20 best days in the stock market, your overall return was cut in half.’”
    This is like saying “If you played one dollar rather than two dollars on the winning slot machine YOUR RETURN WOULD HAVE BEEN CUT IN HALF.”
    I suppose the ranks of the “webinar” was heavily attended by people who read The Economist. The people who run those things probably bought their subscriber list.

  6. Yesterday’s rise didn’t make up for Thursday’s drop. This is the proper response to this nonsense.

  7. Hey Emery, you ignorant ass;
    Since you (through your left wing media masters) keep criticizing Trump for his response to the Covid-19 politically related hoax, please regale us with your medical expertise and tell us how you would have responded. Then, if this is not politically motivated, please prove it. This might help you realize what a f-ing hypocrite you are.
    https://issuesinsights.com/2020/03/13/a-tale-of-two-pandemics-media-downplayed-the-massive-swine-flu-outbreak-under-obama/

  8. MP, there is nothing wrong with that finding presented by Vanguard, the little weasel did take away a reasonable lesson from listening in, and even a blind squirrel will find an acorn now and again.

  9. It’s a shame that Theranos has imploded. An alliance between Trump and former CEO Elizabeth Holmes for testing would have been a match made in heaven.

  10. bosshoss429: I wish the Trump administration hadn’t shut down the NSC pandemic team two years ago.

    I wish the Trump administration had taken Covid-19 more seriously in late 2019 and been less concerned with Trump’s personal political fortunes.

    I wish Trump was not 2 months behind he curve. But I understand he is in the middle of a re-election campaign.

    Trump has pumped so much misinformation onto the public regarding this virus — how he ever regains the trust (as if he had any) of the public is beyond me.

    This is the week when Trump lost the general election. The economy may recover by the end of the year, and the markets may bounce, but the damage from his performance over the last few weeks means only the 40% base will vote for him. Even with the electoral college favoring him, he is unlikely to beat Biden.

    But then I also believe there is still plenty of opportunity for Biden and the Democrats to crash and burn. If and I repeat IF Biden can keep it together— I imagine the blue wave will be noteworthy.

    How’s that for hedging a bet….

  11. If Low IQ Emery *really* cares, he’ll be out on the street, virtue hugging marginalized populations of brown people to show solidarity. Si Si Puede!! That will show Drumpf.

    Just keep your hands off the niños, cabron.

  12. You need to look deep into yourself, Emery, and consider why anyone would listen to a person with a credibility deficit as large as yours.
    You predicted a Hillary landslide just before the 2016 election. You were wrong.
    You believed that the Mueller report would show that Trump colluded with the Russians to defeat Hillary in the 2016 election. You were not just wrong, but way wrong.
    You have been predicting economic collapse since November 2016, based on nothing other than Orange Man Bad. Instead the market climbed, in fits and starts, until it reached its current record in January of this year, 40% higher than it was when you began your doom-preaching.
    The current downturn is not due to any Trump policy. It is due to global uncertainty due to a virus which originated in an obscure industrial city in China.
    Yet you blame the Orange Man for this.
    And of course, after preaching imminent financial doom for years, you now claim that were vesting heavily in the market, but somehow managed have the foresight to go into cash at the height of market you said, again and again, was over valued and bound for collapse at any time.
    You have been wrong about things about which you know nothing, but nevertheless have a strong opinion. This is the older (and more precise) definition of a bigot.

  13. There is no greater gap in the world than the one between Woolly’s self regard and his actual abilities.

    Trump finally got into a situation that he can’t lie himself out of. This is serious business and should have been treated that way from the beginning.

  14. “Fed cuts rates to zero” ~ WSJ

    The futures market didn‘t take it well at all, CME is already limit down 15 minutes into the open…

    ‘Note to self: Money doesn‘t cure coronavirus‘ – Jerome Powel 2020

  15. Woolly: Am I correct in thinking it’s pretty unusual to hit the downward circuit breakers 3 times in a week?

  16. Unlike yourself, Emery, I do not claim to know anything about how monetary policy affects the economy. Nor do I care what markets do in fifteen minute intervals. You are driving yourself mad because you do believe that you know how monetary policy affects the economy, and you do care what markets do in fifteen minute intervals.
    You have the classic profile of a “day trader,” an unfortunate soul similar to the people who watch the play at slot machines in casinos, using a calculus of their own invention to determine which slots are “hot.”
    Day traders convince themselves that they have an edge, but they don’t. The people with the edge are their brokers. They make money on every transaction. The day traders don’t.
    Day traders are quick to talk up and exaggerate their profits during a market upturn, and quick to dismiss or minimize talk of their losses during a market downturn. When they talk to each other, they do that even more.
    Day traders are like the guy I knew back in the 80s, who had system for gambling on horses at Canterbury Downs. He had pocket TRS 80. He put his “system” on the TRS 80 (I believe it had something like spreadsheeting capabilities). When I told him that paramutual betting didn’t really allow for a “system,” he said that couldn’t be true, because whenever he was at the races, he saw people walking away from the window fanning stacks of twenty dollar bills.
    You see the problem? That is not math. It is not rigorous. You need to measure the failures as well as the successes.
    That guy was always fiddling with his “system”. He was a sharp dude, an electronics tech with a good command of software & math. I think he thought that his skills gave him an edge over the average bettor. They might have, but his advantage couldn’t scale. It should be obvious why — his tech skills at handicapping the handicap may have given him a slight advantage when he was betting ten or twenty dollars a race, but vanished when he bet larger amounts.
    In an efficient market, where risk is a measurable and known quantity, your investment scales only with GDP. We do not have an efficient market, but it tends towards efficiency in the long term.
    You should read an actual economics textbook some time, Emery.

  17. But Friday was all sunshine and rainbows. all of a sudden, almost every business is closed now until April. The country might as well go on a 2 week shut down.

  18. “Watching Trump’s address on Fox. They have the DJIA ticker superimposed. It is rocketing”.
    Watching Trump’s address on Fox. They have the DJIA ticker superimposed. It is rocketing. I can almost hear the wailing of the degenerates whose plans are being dashed in real time.” ~ Swiftee

    Swiftee, DJIA is now +1900 and up 1300 points since POTUS’s presser started. It looks like stability may have returned to the market ~ POD
    Market just closed.
    +1,985.00 9.36%
    jfc…a smart fellow who is tapped into the market might just have made a fortune.
    If he continues in this way, Trump has just sealed his re-election.” ~ Swiftee

    This is the Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin straight up gaslighting the American people.

    U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says he doesn’t expect the coronavirus pandemic to tip the economy into recession. ~ Bloomberg News

  19. Degenerate leftists spent the entire weekend convincing the low IQ midwits (such as our own resident) that the world is gonna end. Degenerate governors of leftist sh1thole states immediately jumped on the bandwagon, increasing the panic.

    Meanwhile, states being led by common sense leaders are remaining calm, as is the leadership of world class manufacturers….

    “BMW plant, SC Inland Port not seeing any operational impacts from coronavirus”
    “S.C. Ports has seen strong volumes in the first two months of 2020. Our February volumes should be up about 12% year-over-year and significantly over plan. While we have not seen a slowdown from the coronavirus and our operations are not impacted, we do anticipate that our container volumes will be down about 15-20% in March and April versus our business plan. The impact is largely dependent on when workers can return to the factories after being quarantined. It is being reported that the China supply chain and port network are slowly returning to normalcy. We anticipate a rebound in volumes in May and June to finish the year above plan, barring any unforeseen worsening of the situation.”

    Investors are smart people, they don’t believe the BS, but they are smart enough to know it’s bad when panic effectively shuts down the consumer economy.

    I remain convinced this thing is going to end with a thud, and when it does, I’ll be leading the charge to hold the people responsible for the financial chaos they created.

  20. ‘Dow Plummets Nearly 3,000 pts (12%) As Virus Fears Spread’

    The market clearly has ZERO confidence in his administration’s ability to manage this mess.

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