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Audacious Epigone – The Unz Review May 31, 2020

UK’s COTW:

Woman in wheelchair attacked and sprayed with fire extinguisher after she tried to stop looters in Minneapolis. Click to enlarge

Yes, it is fundamentally immoral (a word I do not use ever) that the S&P 500 should be so fully secured by the state that it can be at its record high from equity super-boom October of just last year.
It really is a case of playing at the casino, keeping your winnings and the government paying for your losses.
Those stocks include companies that are currently barely operating (airlines, hotels, restaurant chains), and almost none that are even close to being in the same financial shape as they were. But then why sell? After all, every time the price drops, the US state steps in to keep prices pegged to ever increasing expectations.
Just as when a state fixes their currency, the stock market will go up as long as confidence remains in the state’s will and ability to maintain their pegging.
This is very sad as the stock market is actually, at root, a wonderful mechanism for democratising ownership and helping with the efficient distribution of capital. It is not meant to be a way for the state to funnel money to big corps and increase the asset values of the richest people.
The problem is that the state won’t allow it fall and stay fallen. It is too scared of knock-on consequences, but the knock-on consequences will never be rolled out without either a fall or a 10, maybe 20 year period of zero growth in prices. And because yields are so low, a long period of stock market stagnation would inevitably turn into a rout anyway…so ever upwards it is…until they run out of ammunition or people think they really have.
We live in the negative interest rate society. It is ADHD and self-destructive, even as it enjoys watching itself burn. Ironic that all those people who decry “usury” never got how positive interest rates are fundamentally both a reflection and a cause of key values like frugality, long-term planning and productivity.
This temporary market recovery is entirely Fed-induced. If Jerome Powell announced tomorrow the federal funds rate is going up a measly 25 basis points, the Dow Jones would plummet 3,000. The Fed will NEVER be able to raise rates without crashing the market. Negative nominal rates are not sustainable. Maybe -0.25% is manageable for a time, but to goose the market, rates will have to keep going down. Rather than lender of last resort, the Fed will become the buyer of only resort. It will become obvious to everyone, everywhere that default or aggressive monetization is the only way out, and the dollar will fall.
Financial catastrophe is just one aspect of the crisis of the third decade. A few reactions to America on fire:
– Gun rights are secure for the foreseeable future. The police won’t even protect themselves. They’re sure as hell not going to protect you:

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– Several videos of blacks brutalizing whites have emerged over the last few days. This is visceral footage. Were the races reversed in any of these incidents, they’d get corporate media coverage comparable to the video that putatively launched these riots in the first place:

– When someone as reflexively anti-white as Matt Walsh is losing his composure, it’s an indication that even with all the pop culture and educational propaganda layered on thick, middle Americans are still capable of Noticing:

It may also be an indication that we are reaching an inflection point. I suspect we will see an increase in white consciousness at the expense of white color blindness. The effect will be polarizing. White leftists will become more ashamed of and apologetic for their pallor; white centrists and white rightists will become more assertive in and more conscious of attacks upon their identity.

 

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