“Ce n’est pas le moment de se faire de nouveaux ennemis”
— Voltaire (our title rendered in what I presume to be the language in which it was spoken)”
Can y’all stand any more chatter about Voltaire? Believe me — I know – he’s sucking all the oxygen out of the room, blotting out the suns of our awareness of other matters. He’s the top trender on Twitter. The Infinite Instagram Influencer. His presence is ubiquitous, inescapable – not only on social media – but on cable news outlets of every political denomination.
And, yet, here I am, yammering on my keyboard, and adding perhaps but a drop to the oceans of digital wisdom issuing forth about the omnipresent 18th Century French philosopher.
But attend to my purpose my loves. I write, principally, not about his life and published works, but rather about his demise. Voltaire kicked up such a fuss during his lifetime — in virtually every realm of human endeavor – religion, politics, human rights, etc. upended so many constituencies, that even his friends didn’t know how he’d check out. But in the end, he accepted Christ and received his final sacraments. Having done so, though, when the attending priest asked him to renounce Satan, he gasped out, with his final breaths, our titular phrase.
“This is no time to make new enemies” he said. And then he died.
Nothing for nothing, but I think the man had a point — one that extends forward to the present day. It doesn’t strike me, as 2021 winds down, that adversaries are in particularly short supply.
Voltaire is often looked upon as the philosophical father of the French Revolution. Which he didn’t live to see, having died eleven years before the storming of the Bastille. What followed was rivers of blood, and a multitude of object lessons for modern society.
But perhaps, for now, we can leave that all aside. And it wasn’t all buzzkill with Monsieur V; he is perhaps best known for his novella: “Candide”, which contains his most-remembered phrase: “all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds”. The quote is assigned to a professorial character named Pangloss, a believer in utopias — the existence of which it becomes the book’s primary business to attack. On balance, it succeeds in doing so, but Pangloss himself has achieved Panglossian immortality in our lexicon — as a descriptor of Edens manufactured by the human mind.
But it falls to our lot — hip denizens of Century 21 – to resolve the legacy gifted to us by these partially incongruent phrases. My own view is as follows. The making of new enemies is as untimely as ever. Upon this we can perhaps all agree. But is it truly “the best of all possible worlds”?
With respect to the latter, each of us must judge for ourselves, but the first principal evidence is hardly encouraging.
There’s that pesky pandemic, for one thing. It simply won’t take the hint and bounce. Beyond this, we have inflation problems, supply chain problems, labor problems, problematic race relations, immigration issues, and an atmosphere which is either heating up like a furnace, or it isn’t.
The capital markets, fattened and sloppy drunk from years of over-indulgence at the federal buffet bar, are beginning to experience “morning-after” effects”, which, if we dare to extrapolate from recent experience, are less than pleasant.
It is indeed a bad time to make new enemies, in a world that certainly could be improved.
This is certainly a mixed resolution to our Voltairean Paradox. But the messages, medium and metaphysics are messing with the markets, which, in consequence, are all over the map.
The past week’s action is beyond illustrative of the above. After investors attempted, on Monday, to gather themselves after the post-Turkey (half) Day pounding, darker forces again took hold. Chair Pow chose Tuesday, as the world managed to conjure up images of Omicron lockdown, to inform us that, a) transitory is an imperfect modifier for current inflation conditions; and b) in consideration of a), he might just accelerate the taper.
And how did investors react to the double whammy news — that the Fed believes inflation might be hanging around with covid-like peskiness, and (in result) they may quit buying Treasuries sooner than previously expected? They bought bonds. Like banshees. So much so that Grandma XXX (United States Thirty Year Bond and Madame X’s mother’s mother) dropped her yield shawl to an astounding 1.67%. To put matters in perspective, other than the lockdown blip, these are the lowest level witnessed since the Treasury began issuing this long-duration paper — in 1977:
Our equity indices are being battered about, slapped back down every time they try to rally themselves. And index performance hardly tells the story, which is one of a few haves vs. a pant load of have-nots. There are a handful of darlings and then there’s everything else. In eerie reminiscence to pre (and, for that matter, post) Revolutionary France, the former are living large while the latter subsist on baguettes and bad wine. And the gap is widening at an alarming pace:
Furthermore, woe betide the objects of our earlier infatuation – tech companies who have failed thus far to produce revenues that exceed expenses:
Further evidence of our inability to resolve Voltaire’s refusal to renounce Satan with the Panglossian sensibilities he laid on us in “Candide” derives from the November Jobs Report. It featured tepid news from the business survey combined with bofffo results from the household report. What’s an investor to do? Well, after the Friday morning release, the bought ‘em, then sold ‘em off hard, and then ginned up a partial recoup into the close.
Seems about right to me. A mixed bag, leaving much to be desired, but insufficiently wretched to justify the manufacture of new targets for our animosity.
And just when we thought we had the weekend to relax/recoup came the news of a 20% drop in BTC. And on Shabbos, FFS! Arguably, it all would be enough to bring tears to the Voltairean eye. But on the other hand, Voltaire was a notorious anti-Semite, so perhaps he wouldn’t have cared.
In sum, we’re in the midst of a risk-off sequence, the dynamics of which iare wormwood to the crew with which I roll. To our further dismay, these cycles don’t typically end in an orderly fashion, nor do they telegraph their impending departure. Nay, with deep, anti-Voltairean provocation, they add incremental imperfections to our sub-optimal world, and are keen to make as many enemies as they are able on their way out.
However, it’s always a bad time to make enemies, and no, it’s not the best of all possible worlds. If you doubt the former, consider the reality that tomorrow marks the 80th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, an enemy-making cycle that caused a great deal of subsequent trouble to all concerned.
But take heart, my fellow Voltaireans, because we can still look to our obsessively followed idol for a way forward.
At the end of “Candide”, the title character, after rejecting much of his Panglossian sensibilities, arrives at the the following conclusion.
“We must cultivate our own garden. When man was put in the garden of Eden, he was put there so that he should work, which proves that man was not born to rest.”
And so it goes, not only in life, but in portfolio management. We must cultivate our gardens, which are quite weedy at present. And there’s not much we can do — other than pull the parasitic plants, till the divine soil from which we draw our essence and place the rest in the hands of God. Who Voltaire embraced at the end, albeit in qualified fashion.
My guess is that the current difficulties will remain with us – through year end and perhaps in the immediate months that follow. But with diligence and perseverance, we stand every chance of not only enduring an arduous winter, but of enjoying the fruits of a bountiful printemps.
TIMSHEL