A Banquet of Consequences

"Sooner or later everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences"

Denial has officially moved past the "This is not happening" phase to the "We never saved for reality" phase.

Watching L.A. burn to the ground has put me in an apocalyptic mood this week. That and the fact that Trump will be re-confirmed on the MLK holiday next week, at the very site of rioting he himself commissioned four years ago in January. The naked emperor returns.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles is the largest bastion of ultra-liberal ideology and yet that didn't stop the city from spontaneously exploding due to a TOTAL lack of preparation. The irony can't be overlooked. We are beset by denialists on the right who think that 8 billion human beings have had no environmental impact, as the wildlife population was reduced by half in the past 50 years. An inability to master third grade math. Versus the left that thinks EVs can fix climate change while supporting mass immigration from the Third World which is the sole source of population growth and incremental carbon footprint. The consumption oriented lifestyle scales about as well as Bitcoin. It doesn't.

Meanwhile, Trudeau stepped down as Prime Minister of Canada this week largely due to a carbon tax that will have literally zero effect on the environment. He left the country leaderless at a time when Trump is planning a hostile takeover and the Canadian dollar is at the brink of collapse. As I showed on Twitter, the pandemic collapsed oil demand to a three decade low and held it there for almost two years, but the cost was exorbitant and the effect on climate change was non-existent. Therefore the consequences of that experiment are spreading like wildfire through the global economy fittingly starting in China which was the locus of the pandemic. And will now be the locus of global meltdown.

China is in a classic depressionary liquidity trap. Meaning when they lower interest rates, demand still falls. Asset prices continue falling. The same fate is about to befall the rest of the world.

So what to do about the largest of global collapsing dominoes? Start a trade war.

"Stocks have started 2025 on a weak note as investors brace for higher tariffs that may prolong China’s economic slowdown"

Fittingly, we are now returning to the scene of pandemonium circa Q1 2020, however this time today's gambler class will come to realize that not all bailouts have a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Especially the type that entail mass deleveraging due to excessive rate hikes caused by pandemic stimulus bailout.

This was Momentum Tech's worst week since March 2020:

I call this phase of denial, Darwinian Democracy.

Everyone gets to pay for their own beliefs.

And if they can't afford the cost, the carbon footprint goes down. The old fashioned way.

Believe it or not.