Today is Earth Day of course. However, to most people it's just another day to take the blue planet for granted. So I thought I would dedicate this post to discussing my views of the environment and the great reset that began last year, from an economic standpoint. One of my recurring topics prior to the pandemic was my uncontrolled rage at the denial of global climate change by people who are in denial about everything. Climate change being the least of their worries. My opinion is that if this deep reset via COVID - which is orders of magnitude beyond anything imagined at any climate conference - doesn't work, then nothing will.
First off, tonight I went to dinner at one of these new Chipotle style healthy fast food restaurants. There were two disposal containers on the way out of the store - one for recyclables and the other for trash. The sign made it clear that almost everything could be recycled. So one would think that the recycle bin would be full and the trash bin empty. It was the exact opposite way around. The trash bin was full of recyclables and the recycling bin was completely empty. To me this epitomizes a society of entitled assholes who take far too much for granted. They're zombies on auto-pilot oblivious to their descent into squalor.
My entire hypothesis is that in 2020 the "great reset" commenced - not by today's "elites", but by Mother Nature by way of a fairly innocuous virus in the grand scheme of things. In the event, we all know what happened. Mass pandemonium and stay at home gambling. A make-believe recovery based upon unprecedented stimulus. And a lethal belief that this is the beginning of a whole new cycle.
In other words, full Japanification.
What took place over the past year was a climate activist's wet dream: An entire populace was locked down and commuting to work was entirely replaced by telework. International air travel was halted. Major pension funds and endowments divested themselves of the fossil fuel sector and poured their wealth into the green energy sector. Oil demand dropped to a one decade low. Exxon was kicked out of the Dow after over 100 years. At one point last year, Tesla's market cap exceeded that of the entire Energy industry. COVID massively accelerated the changeover to green energy, by years if not an entire decade.
In addition, many sectors of the economy were blighted by the virus and the ensuing pandemonium - Energy, airlines, restaurants, hotels, small businesses, conferences/caterers etc. However, the distortions created by central banks have put a massive bid even under the most blighted sectors of the economy to the extent that the most shorted sectors have substantially outperformed the market. These false signals of recovery are luring investors into a cyclical dead end recovery. A mega boom and a mega bust. Except in this case, financial markets will lead the economy in both directions.
We are to believe that the post-pandemic debt-riddled economy will be far better than the pre-pandemic economy which had no restrictions. This is the next bubble to pop.
Of all of the fake recoveries, this is the fakest one so far...
In summary, today's gamblers have bought hook, line, and sinker into a falsehood of recovery spun by central banks aided and abetted by the financial services crime syndicate and the profoundly failed economics establishment.
Their love of all things fake has caused them to mistake the virtual simulation of prosperity for the real thing, this time on a biblical scale:
Some would say that it was a coincidence that oil prices went negative last year on the day before Earth Day. However, in my opinion it was all part of the widely ignored wake up call. The type of which this denialistic society specializes in ignoring.
For my part, I'm not worried anymore. Because it's not my turn. The denialists will be doing the worrying from now on. They are now an endangered species and central banks can't save them from natural selection.
