The Narrative is the Virus
Episode 6. The media want lockdowns forever as Wall Street worries about inflation. Meanwhile, Smartypants returns to the faculty lounge after being canceled by the sophomores at Amherst.
Sorry Double Plus fans.
I was busy with my new job, fighting China. Are you seeing all these European countries now having to face the fact that the US State Department has a point on genocide in Xinjiang, aka the Disney set of Mulan?
Welcome back to Double Plus. It’s a Chinese saying. It means something that is really good. I hope this is really good. It’s in beta mode. And it’s free. Oh, and I love Chinese people. I just don’t like the CCP because they are just too damn good at modeling to the Party of Davos how to run a nation. They want to bring that to the world.
You can bet on that.
Poor ex-Googler Eric Schmidt is literally worried that China is getting out ahead of us on facial recognition surveillance…er, um, I mean software. Software!
Double Plus is a big picture newsletter, with some China spin. I’ll give you some investment advice as it relates to what’s happening from 10,000 feet up from people who work on the Street.
In today’s issue – the media are admen for Big Pharma…and China-style lockdowns. Their narrative is the virus. I’m shorting the narrative.
Anyway, come on in. We are a group of grumpy American China investors jawboning and cracking ourselves up. Maybe you’ll learn something and get an investing idea. Thanks for sticking with me as I build this out in my free time. I appreciate it!
Every blue checkmark reporter I follow in Brazil is cheerleading for vaccines. Reporters are the biggest unpaid sales staff for Pfizer.
At this point, the only people I know who are bemoaning the reopening of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Texas, and elsewhere are journalists (and actors). It’s like they are upset that the pandemic isn’t going to last forever.
They wish it would. They have nothing else to write about or talk about, honestly, except what their peers are all writing about and talking about. They need drama. Now that Trump is gone, the biggest story in the world is the pandemic. What will they do with themselves when it is over?
Shouldn’t they be happy that Texas’ governor Abbott says we don’t need mask mandates anymore and can open restaurants at full capacity? Why is everything the worst-case scenario with them? It’s weird, right?
Five years from now, their science will have been proven to be faulty, maybe even disastrous. Some of the people yelling “trust the science” at you are the same ones writing about how math is racist. If 2+2=5, I’d like to see that scientist land a rocket ship on Mars with those numbers.
This is beautiful.
Let me guess, they are racists who don’t believe in science.
Lockdown restrictions are coming to an end. The “Neanderthals” in Texas are going maskless, except in Austin, where they are all Californians anyway, so that doesn’t count.
Speaking of California, Gavin Newsom, that failed state’s governor with movie star good looks, is *this close* to being the first governor in the US to be ousted because of the way he handled the pandemic.
In New York, the first failed state of the pandemic, and home to the big media empires whose staffers are still promoting failed policies, governor Andrew Cuomo is in trouble for sexual harassment allegations.
Both of these guys were leaders of the biggest pandemic disasters in the US, yet were hailed as heroes by the news and entertainment media. Cuomo won an Emmy.
Can we all just call these big awards Boobie Prizes now? I know, I am.
The Rock did a video call with Newsom where he praised Newsom for his leadership. Actor? Political hack/Influencer? What’s the difference?
Meanwhile, if the cheerleaders in the media are wrong and I am betting that they are, then the pandemic is winding down. We should be glad for this, not upset and trying to prove our point about how deadly SARS2 is due to its easy spread. Life is not a Netflix movie.
Vaccines are working. Pent-up demand will drive inflation. Yields are rising in response. This is one reason why the stock market is down. But remember my earlier posts about China-style stimulus. It was approved in the Senate along party lines and will head to the House. I suspect the Blue State Bailout Bill will be approved.
The Wall Street Watercooler:
Want Yield? Buy This.
Over the last two weeks, when I was busy fighting the CCP, I thought the market was down because Jerome Powell had said something stupid. He didn’t. Rates were going to stay low. That’s all the market really cared about.
Treasury yields rose, but the most boring ETFs in the world, the iShares 3-7 Year Treasury (IEI) and the iShares 10 Year (IEF) fell half a percent and one percent, respectively last week. These are safe havens? The S&P 500 fell 1.5%. Oh no, I’m as terrified as a journalist seeing a person without two masks.
You want yield that bad? Buy the Global X Super Dividend ETF (DIV). I’ve owned it since March. I buy below $17. Its dividend yield is over 7%. You can hold this forever.
Here are your rate moves, from Barclays. Markets are forward-looking, remember.
Developments around vaccines and the pace of vaccinations among those in the US over the age of 65 have many on Wall Street predicting the US reaches herd immunity this year.
“Increasing numbers of vaccinations and declining case counts have led to an easing in restrictions in many states. Mobility has risen and is at its highest level since the pandemic began. Out of the 50 states, 45 reported increases in mobility in late February versus a similar period in January. The easing in restrictions and greater mobility are consistent with our outlook for acceleration in US activity in the coming months, but it remains to be seen whether restrictions are being eased too soon. Mind the tail risks. The main risk to the outlook revolves around challenges posed by more transmissible variants of Covid. If these variants take hold in the US, it would raise the bar for the minimum percentage of the population that must be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity.
Oh, a new variant! News at 11! Where’s my makeup? Where’s my Twitter?
On Surveillance Capitalism, by Smartypants
Smartypants recommends “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power” by Shoshana Zuboff. I recommend Barnes & Noble over Daddy Warbucks’ website.
“Surveillance capitalism is an economic logic. The way it makes money is that it claims our private experience as its source of raw materials. It translates that material into behavioral data that it gets through your phone, through your social media accounts, and uses it as their private property. They turn it into machine learning. If you are a Battlestar Galactica fan…this is how they build the humanoid Cylons. There is no industry that is exempt. Every product that begins with the word ‘smart’ is a tool for surveillance capitalism. The Googles, the Microsofts, the Amazons….this is the power coup no one is talking about.”
Closing Credits:
Weird Science
From my heart and from my hands/why don’t people understand/my intentions