The Zeitgeist
What Do We Need To Be True?
Modeling common knowledge by analyzing missionary statements and their reverberations works. Except when it doesn’t.
Understanding changes in the big, zeitgeist-defining narratives, in the water in which we swim, means developing a way of thinking about the barriers that make it harder for the crowd to change its mind.
A Tiger Can’t Change Its Stripes
What do you get when you give a raccoon like Bill Hwang tens of billions of dollars AND invisibility from regulators so that he can run his collusion and insider trading schemes to his heart’s content? You get a rolling series of squeezes and corners. You get a market that is completely disconnected from reality. You get ridiculous Chinese companies pumped and dumped through US listings. You get a Tesla that’s valued at a trillion dollars. You get Gamestop.
I’m not saying that Hwang is responsible for all of this. I think he’s responsible for some of this. And I think there are a lot more Bill Hwangs out there.
Hunger Games Saga
Covid Variants
The Opposite of 2008
In 2008, the US housing market – together with a Fed that thought the subprime crisis was “contained” – delivered the mother of all deflationary shocks to the global economy.
In 2021, the US housing market – together with a Fed that thinks inflationary pressures are “transitory” – risks delivering the mother of all inflationary shocks.
The ET Pack is going to figure this out … together.
Hunger Games
You have been told that the odds are ever in your favor. You have been told this for your entire life.
More and more, you suspect this is a lie.
Over the past few weeks you have been told a new story. A brave story. You have been told that by banding together and acting as one, you can “democratize” the stock market.
Today, as you see the collapsing stock prices of the companies you supported, you suspect that this was a lie, as well.
What now?
AMA? BITFD!
The American Medical Association is not a charitable organization.
The American Medical Association is not an educational organization.
The American Medical Association is a tax-exempt hedge fund and licensing corporation, designed from the ground up to enrich its executives and serve its own bureaucratic interests.
Burn. It. The. Fuck. Down.
The Grifters, Chapter 3 – Election Prediction
Polls create the plays. Election models create the score. Fivey Fox and “Nate Silver” announce the game. All to create engagement with a diversified media corporation.
No one understands how to create and sell a spectator sport better than Disney.
Harper's Corner
Time to cancel all my weekend plans! Fearless (Taylor's Version) is out and I have to listen to this a few hundred times before Monday.
Email Newsletter
Subscribe to our Newsletter to get Ben’s notes, the latest insights from the Narrative Machine and information about upcoming events delivered directly to your inbox.
Shop The ET Store
Check out our ET merch and special gift subscriptions!
Search and Discovery
Archive Spotlight
Do The Right Thing
I’m angry that I have to write this note about the airline industry and how to structure the bail-out of United, Delta, American and Southwest. But I must, because the raccoons and the high-functioning sociopaths are looking to get their private losses socialized and their private gains locked in.
Bailout the airlines and their rank-and-file employees? You bet.
Bailout the CEOs and Warren Buffett? Not a chance.
