“I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of Admin. The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid ‘dens of crime’ that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result.
But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices.
Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern.”
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, Preface
The CEO types who make up the managerial elite do not have enough substance to be called ‘evil.’ We live in an age of greedy, morally ambivalent Eichmanns, and so fraud and lies and a carelessness of character are the fashion at the top.
The big drivers of the market right now are the geopolitical issues, especially the Nato-Ukraine-Russia unrest, the individual earnings of companies, and for the longer term the median wage and the growth and stability of aggregate demand.
And underlying all this is a pool of liquidity that the Fed is handing out at virtually no cost to their friends in the financial sector.
That pretty much states the outlines of the field, and the line markers.
I see quite a few risks to the markets, and to the economy of the world overall. We seem to be reaching the extremes of the longer trend in crony capitalism that obtained traction during the 1980’s, in the US and in England in particular.
This is the big ‘ebb and flow’ underlying current events. The turning point is a long time coming, but once it comes it may happen more quickly than we might otherwise expect, given the long, slow lead time to change. This is why it will catch so many unawares, like the tsunami that never seems to actually come despite warnings, but when it does, surprises many.
Have a pleasant evening.
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