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by chepurko
2294 days ago
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Sure, but markets since 2009 mostly look at how much the Fed is buying (printing, whatever). Yes printing money bad, yes inflation some time in 20 years, yes unwinding their balance sheet will kill us all. None of it matters in the now, which is what markets are, now - with some looking ahead. So the volatility in the fundamentals is accompanied by a forceful response with QE. Nothing like we’ve ever seen. The QE the Fed is doing today trounces 2008’s QE. So that’s where we are now. Unemployment numbers come out, market goes up. Why? Same reason it has for the last 10 years - bad data good because Fed will just juice the market at any sign of trouble. In the end though the stock market doesn’t matter for 90% of people but what it is doing is amplifying inequality. I see this crisis amping up inequality to levels we’ve never seen before. We’ll see the same story eventually with unemployment creeping down from the 20 or 30% high it’ll reach but behind it there’ll be even more people dropping out of the workforce and wages will stay stagnant. There has been some commentary studying past pandemics where a silver lining could come from worker rights making a comeback so who knows, perhaps the lucky ones keeping/returning to their jobs get a raise in benefits (healthcare, leave) or pay. |
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I'm talking about violent protests in the streets. About your cousin graduating and not being able to find a job even at McDonalds, for years. Overthrown governments. People stealing and going on rampages because they have no money to feed their children. People drinking themselves to death because it's the n-th year without a job, or any other social purpose.
On the political front - every day this goes on we're getting higher and higher probability of super redistributive policies (I don't want to use the S word or the C word).
On the geopolitical front - have you seen that China has kicked out most western reporters in the middle of all of this? Or that Japan wants to "repatriate" factories, and their government has already secured funding for that? Or do you still remember the Trump trade war, and perhaps know what happened last time the world was engaged in a serious trade war in the 1930s ?