Rabobank: The Market Has Become “Springtime For Hitler”
Buy-all-the-stocks and Boom?
Readers will know my view that we are living in a black comedy. There is plenty of evidence of this, but US President Biden saying it is the Taliban who are in the midst of “an existential crisis” takes the biscuit today given the US is charging $2,000 for its citizens to be evacuated from Kabul while refugees go free, and the Wall Street Journal both reports the White House *was* told Afghanistan would likely collapse back in July, and op-eds “How Biden Broke NATO”.
Black comedy dates back to antiquity, but was defined academically by Sigmund Freud’s 1925 essay ‘Humour’ as when: “The ego refuses to be distressed by the provocations of reality, to let itself be compelled to suffer. It insists that it cannot be affected by the traumas of the external world; it shows, in fact, that such traumas are no more than occasions for it to gain pleasure.”
Which brings me to markets. There is always slapstick comedy on Wall Street: e.g., banks opening wealth management shops in China just as China launches a “wealth redistribution” campaign (and shares of European luxury brands slump, showing it is real), or buying shares in Chinese firms that are IOUs in the Caymans. There is surreal comedy: e.g., NFTs –literally infinite digital flatulence– becoming an ‘asset class’ as a hedge against fiat inflation. There are (illegal!) inside jokes: e.g., when certain names tell us to buy something they actually want to get out of. And there are bad jokes: e.g., central-bank inflation and growth forecasts. Yet right now, the most important dynamic is black comedy, in that traumas are no more than occasions to gain pleasure.
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