Looming Disaster, or Same Shit, Different Day?

The Grateful Dead - Casey Jones (Studio Version)
Dead937

I don't understand what is going on. Is there a cabal of evil motherfuckers conspiring to ruin the economy and our country, or is the government run by idiots? As I've said before, the COVID-19 inspired lockdowns are bullshit. I thought about digging into the numbers, but I can't compete against the tsunami of bullshit emanating from the main stream media. The innumerate masses are thoroughly convinced that they should be well and truly terrified and nothing I say is going to sway them. I will give you one word if you are harboring doubts: Sweden.

Political leaders are the most amorphous of creatures. They really do get pushed around by the prevailing winds, and sometimes those winds blow them away. You can't really fault them for whatever happens, it's all the huffing and puffing of the masses of people who like to argue about politics. (I suspect it is less than 10% of the population. The rest of us have better things to do.)

Business leaders are no better, profit is their standard. If they are making money they must be doing something right, if they are not making money they are doing something wrong.

The extremely stupid lockdowns are having a bad effect on some portions of the economy. Oh, the stock market is booming, but that is just the natural reaction to the inflation caused by dumping trillions of dollars into the economy. Compare the S&P 500 to the price of gold and I suspect you will find it hasn't changed one whit. A pound of steel is still a pound of steel and a pound of bread is still a pound of bread.

But retail and restaurants in particular are getting hit extremely hard by the lockdowns. Not only have umpteen zillion people been put of out work, but many of these businesses aren't paying the rent on their place of business. Landlords who are not collecting rent and don't already own the buildings outright are not going to be able to pay their mortgage. Lenders who aren't getting their due are liable to evict the tenants, but then who are they going to sell the building to? The homeless? This smells like the housing bubble that burst when, 12 years ago? Oh yeah, don't forget all the people who are out of work and are not going to be able to pay the rent on their homes. The same thing is going to happen there.

You can't really blame the media either. They are first and foremost a business. Yes, they like to dress themselves up as providing us with information, but unless they make money they aren't going to do diddly squat. Their business is providing eyeballs for the advertising that other businesses pay for, and nothing gets more eyeballs than terror and disaster. It doesn't really matter what happened today, reporters will spin it as the gawd-awfullest event of the century, and if you aren't terrified you are a fool.

Of course most of the media is now in the hands of few gazillionaires like Rupert Murdoch and Jeff Bezos, and whatever media they control is going to be spewing whatever the boss man tells them to spew. Now you might think that people with that much power might exercise some restraint, after all, with great power comes great responsibility, but they are not gods, they are just businessmen and businessmen are guided by profit. And in these days of increasing inflation, your profit needs to be even greater. If inflation is running at 10% and you are only making 5% profit you are losing money and in short order your entire empire will collapse.

There is one stinker that I am very suspicious of and that is the vaccines that are being developed to fight this virus. If this virus is like the flu, then by the time we have a vaccine, the virus will have mutated and vaccine will be useless. Useless at preventing infection that is, perfectly useful for making money for the vaccine makers. If they can get the government to make a vaccination mandatory and they can get the government to pay for it, they will have an unending fire hose of money coming their way.

The only thing I am sure of is that people are angry and angry people like to fight. Witness the riots we had all summer long. Cooler weather seems to have damped that but violent crime seems to be on the rise.

I'm not sure where we are heading, but it doesn't look good.