by Jim Malone

I have been waiting patiently for 10 years for the markets to make sense again. In fact, things that once made sense to me no longer do. Democrats used to be against wars. Wikileaks was a liberal’s wetdream. Men and women seemed to generally like each other. America needed to get out of the Middle East. The Cold War was dead. People should socialise and not watch so much tv.

Let’s look at what has happened in those 10 years and while I feel so out of touch with the world around me, clueless as to what seems logical and in dire need of going back to school to ensure nothing has happened to my IQ levels:

• It is considered socially acceptable and perfectly normal to walk down the street in a major city while watching a tv show or movie on your iphone
• In some circles (increasingly so) it is considered sexual assault to pursue a woman of your liking for a date ; it is much more acceptable to just harass them and shower them with attention on a dating app of your choice with your phone
• There are racists everywhere now…..there is so much focus on race now it makes my head spin; when I last checked we didn’t judge anyone based on their colour or creed, at least that’s how I was raised by liberals…now it appears, it is perfectly acceptable to do so for liberals
• Just this week I saw a video where someone called a farmer raising turkeys a psychopath….there is a war on everything and I hear of women choosing to go back to the 1800 norms of natural childbirth…putting their lives at risk….all in the name of being natural and healthy….yet despite all this, as they spout everything on health, they make all these bold statements using technology, which ironically makes me think of this:

Now I know I was eating crap in the 80s and people were before so it can’t all be our food supply, and I’m not a scientist, but there is one thing that has taken off like cancer rates since 1990: our use of technology

• Everyone is working in a startup and you are only unique if you do so as well
• Everyone is the next Facebook; crowdfunding platforms are everywhere and it seems semi-to-un-sophisticated, and inexperienced millennials (along with Gen Xers and boomers trying to be hip) are throwing all of their minimal savings into risky startups with names like ibackpack
• Everyone is trying to be fit now, but what were once crazy short term fads (e.g. remember jazzercise?) are now full-fledged business models offering $20 a class offerings; it appears going to the a fancy gym is the new nightclub
• The stock market continues to go up, despite the mountains of debt around the world; FAANG stocks make up an unhealthy portion of the entire market
• This chart is scary:

• This is pervasive globally:

• Tesla, a company not making a lot of electric cars or seemingly with the ability to is now worth more than GM
• Don’t even get me started on every asset valuation on earth right now…it’s scary
• Even more so than 10 years ago, fossil fuels are evil, something we can live without and nobody wants to invest in them anymore…here’s another chart that makes me ponder that logic

How do we get there? I guess you can overlay the previous charts with this one and see why government’s push for taxing carbon can seem so attractive

• Movies are either all based on comic book characters; or they are based on some theme along the lines of an identity group (that isn’t white, heterosexual male) being persecuted (based on sex, creed or colour)
• Movies today make Everybody Loves Raymond seem fair and balanced towards white heterosexual men like myself
• Did I mention movies are bad now? I mean 2018 was probably the worst year of my life for movies; I think I went to three movies this year and they were all pretty unremarkable (Mission Impossible, Bohemian Rhapsody and The Favourite); two of these movies made straight men appear to be either buffoons or evil, while all of the female characters were either strong or righteous
• Politics is being injected into everything, it hurts my head to follow sports now
• Netflix seems to be the only place to watch movies and tv now…so that means everyone just stays on their devices more and more and nobody goes to anything anymore
• You can literally achieve everything on your phone or iPad now…you can spend weeks at home – and people are
• Everything that doesn’t agree with the consensus in the media is far-right
• Nothing is far-left, it seems
• I worked in a media company for a couple of years….everyone seemed very insecure and bitter towards anyone not working in media….then 2016 happened and the media lost their collective mind; their response to everything going on around them did not surprise me
• You can’t really make jokes anymore, not about people anyways (unless you are a “privileged individual” of a particular identify group)
• Everything Russia is bad; I recall Obama making a reference to the Cold War being over in 2011 and everyone laughed at Republican candidate Mitt Romney…suddenly Russia is on the side of the Republicans and public enemy number 1 of the Democrats…funny that
• China is ok, they want to save the environment; the US doesn’t…except……

• Climate change was discussed pretty frequently before, but now it sounds like a religion
• Statues are coming down and now this generation has to right the wrongs of the past….maybe one day someone will put the statues back up to right the wrongs of the past in reverse….hard to know who is wrong now huh? The moral busy bodies of today are the despots of tomorrow
• Democrats used to be against meddling in the Middle East, now I’m not so sure
• Wikileaks used to be good, now they are bad
• Remember Kony 2012? My god social media…what a disaster that is; it appears those on the extremes now have a microphone and they are all we hear from; never mind all the other predictable problems that are beginning to surface with social media (namely, addiction!)

The list is not exhaustive, but it is exhausting. I don’t know, call it a hunch but it just appears like we are entering a dangerous period. Social, economic and political factors are flashing red. People are right to be pessimistic and in despair. Things have dragged on slowly, but not in a positive direction and this all links back to the financial crisis in 2008 (although many things link back to factors before then, as nothing is ever that simple). Carpe diem?