US Markets - Five Points
US markets are mildly lower as oil prices appear to lose their resonance.
What matters this week? Scattered US economic data and lots of Fed speakers, but no JPow. Spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank. US earnings kick off with the banks and Netflix.
While I didn’t understand at the time that he was paraphrasing Søren Kierkegaard, a friend pointed out in the middle of a deep conversation that life must be lived forward, but you can only understand it backward. I thought about that all weekend.
When I speak to people in New Zealand, I am inevitably asked about whatever outrageous thing Trump has said, and I inevitably reply that I didn’t pay attention to it. Just about everything he says on social media can be replaced with “Back off. Do you really want to escalate this?” Mostly the answer is no (the Ayatollah said yes). With the recent Pope fracas, for example, the Vatican has a zero-tolerance policy for illegal immigration on its own property but criticizes a much milder policy in the US. Hypocritical; back off. As to Iran, what do you think happens to Iranians who convert to Catholicism? [neck-slicing gesture] Trump is an oaf, but the people who voted for him were reacting to frustration rather than acting irrationally or maliciously. The entirety of the media and almost all of our professional class mostly dismissed their concerns about immigration and economic change, instead labeling his followers as ignorant or morally suspect. His supporters aren’t saints, none of us are, but political persuasion rarely works through condemnation.
Seen elsewhere: For those who don’t speak Woke Retard, I looked it up, and apparently MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+ means “Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, and Asexual.” So murdered is now a queer identity. This is the kind of innovation we get from Canada.
