Dedicated denialists are about to discover the unaffordable cost of denial.
What this era amply demonstrates is that most people are not capable of believing anything other than what they want to believe. They believe what the people around them believe, no matter how specious or lethal. That's why I call them Disney people, they have no interest in reality. So the next time you are attempting to convince someone of something that isn't true, just realize it's a waste of time. We live in Hugh Hendry's world of imagined realities, and central banks and gamblers are ALL IN at the end of the cycle.
"China is set to record its weakest growth in GDP in 25 years. Yet it seems to have entered a bull market and may be where we deploy much more of our risk capital next year. That's because the recent exuberant run up in onshore Chinese equities seems to me to amply demonstrate the power of imagined realities"
We are entering an interesting experiment. As the COVID pandemic skyrockets, blue states are implementing new lockdown protocols, whereas red states, now seeing the largest case increases, are doubling down on their strategy of ignorance and denial.
I passed through rural Trump country on my road trip last week and I can attest to the fact that they still do not take this pandemic at all seriously. To them, wearing a mask is symbolic for city slicker liberal.
Remember the annual Sturgis biker event this past August? It was attended by half a million people and it's estimated to have generated 250,000 COVID cases. No surprise, South Dakota is ground zero for the pandemic:
"A disturbing disconnect has also emerged among some patients. A South Dakota emergency room nurse's tweets went viral this month after she said she had encountered people dying of Covid-19 who didn't believe the virus was real"
It's all well and good to say that masks and social distancing are a "personal decision" in a society that makes responsible choices. However, the reign of Trump is the reign of abject irresponsibility in every direction. It's an orgy of hedonism.
McDonald Trump is nothing more than a corrupt frat boy always looking for the easy way out. Now half the country is infected with these same "values" of instant gratification at all cost.
My prediction is that soon after Thanksgiving, the red state healthcare systems will meltdown. At that point, the populace will finally demand lockdown measures, which will come far too late. By that time, the stock market will be in full blown meltdown mode. Brokers will be offline intermittently. Fear will be extant. Trump will be viewed for what he is - the Jim Jones of Presidents. Mitch McConnell will be blamed for blocking middle class stimulus and starving Americans.
It will be an extreme pressure cooker. And not everyone will survive.
We already got signs this month that manic Republican sentiment which hit a peak last February is turning back into a pumpkin:
"Sentiment among Republican consumers plunged this month after US President Donald Trump lost his bid for a second term"
So far in November with a few days left, the Dow is having it's best month since 1987, the year that featured the largest one day decline since 1929:
As I said earlier this week, BitCoin and crypto are the best indicators for global social mood.
And they are now imploding:
Here we see the year-to-date performance of this year's largest bubbles, all of which are set to explode:
What is now ending isn't just the reign of McDonald Trump, after all, he didn't get himself elected. What is ending is the reign of abject irresponsibility: towards the environment, future generations, human health, and society at large. Banana Republicans are about to face the reality that their time is over and they are no longer fit to lead. Rudy Giuliani is exhibit A of someone who was once well respected but now has turned into an abject buffoon who didn't know when it was time to quit.
These idiotic conspiracies propagated by the Idiocracy exist for one reason only, to deflect blame for the downfall of society which was caused by abject greed and gluttony on a biblical scale. COVID is merely proof of God's existence, bringing the reign of criminality to an end.
Happy Thanksgiving.
"Gratitude turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity"