Crazy Cat peakin’ through a lace bandana like a one-eyed Cheshire like a diamond-eyed Jack,
A leaf of all colors plays a golden string fiddle, through a Double-E waterfall over my back
Garcia and Hunter
I had other ideas, after a breathtaking weak of data releases, about this week’s theme, but then I was reminded that today marks the 80th anniversary of the birth of Jerome John Garcia – a milestone which I feel duty-bound to honor.
I was a bit reluctant on this score, because I’ve written about Garcia before, and could probably continue to do so into eternity, while contributing a but a drop into the ocean of what has been written, said and thought about him. In truth, the subject can be a tiresome one; I am genuinely creeped out by the obsession he commands, and was thusly tempted to allow the date to go unmarked. Yes, I’m a Deadhead, own all their records, have seen the band about 25 times (all but once with Jerry manning his trusty post, stage right).
But one can carry these things to excess. After all, Jerry, great as he was, was neither Lennon nor McCartney. Nor Dylan. And I am often tempted to tell those whose admiration of him rises to worship to let the poor fellow rest in peace.
Conflicted as I was, asked Joe (who loyal readers will recall, is the only person in my acquaintance to offer even nominal respect to my cycling exploits) what he thought, throwing out a couple of alternative riffs for his consideration. Joe, though too young to have tasted the fruits of the original, Garcia-led lineup, is a stone-cold Deadhead himself, and he didn’t hesitate.
“You gotta give this one to Jerry” he said, and that’s what I have done.
So, this goes out to you, Jerry. The world has taken 80 trips around the sun since you arrived, son of an amateur jazz man with enough sensibility to name you after Jerome (“Old Man River”) Kern. You only accompanied us on 53 of them, but you showed us the way.
I have every expectation that you will continue to do so.
Lyrical themes from his catalogue abound, but only indirectly so. Because from the outset, he subcontracted the wordsmithing to Robert Hunter. If I could ask him one question it would be this: why? Hunter was a competent lyricist, whose contributions we sporadically sublime. But Jerry himself was both lyrical and articulate, and I’ve often pondered the reason he never penned a few lines of his own. Because, you see, as something of a songwriter myself, I can authentically state that it is the elusive hook, riff, or chord sequence that makes the song. It’s well-nigh impossible to come up with something original that sounds good along these lines (there are, after all, only 13 available notes to work with) and it’s all been done before.
But if you stumble onto that riff, you can say whatever you want. The lyrics, are, to me, the payoff. So, I wonder why Jerry never took the opportunity to tell us what moved him, what was really on his mind.
Whatever the reason, though, it occurs to me that even today, Jerry’s influence is felt in surprising ways. Consider, for instance if you will, the outsourcing of descriptions of our current economic situation. The key players in Washington have now gifted us two consecutive negative quarters of GDP; it is, at least for the moment, their riff, their hook. And, according to longstanding protocols, it is precisely that – two consecutive quarters of negative GDP — that signifies a recession.
Done and done, no? Apparently not. At least, not so fast. While reluctantly acknowledging that we might be in a recession (though taking pains not actually use the word itself), the Powers that Be have outsourced the final designation to an obscure outfit called the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), while helpfully adding that a formal determination cannot be made for, at minimum, a year.
Team Biden may just as well have given the job to Robert Hunter, save for the inconvenient fact that he died three years ago.
But we’ll leave aside both Hunter and the NBER and ask ourselves what Jerry – the crazy cat peeking through the lace bandana, would make of the current proceedings.
He, like the rest of us, might be taking the weekend to catch his breath to review the onslaught of data that assaulted our screens last week. The information streams, of course, came in two keys, which we will designate E(arnings) Minor and E(con) Major, and combined in crescendo to produce a jam worthy of that famous 1973 Watkins Glen show.
An ensemble attempting to riff in multiple keys it’s always an iffy proposition, somehow, but as indicated above, it worked. The investment audience verily swooned at its rendering, showing its appreciation by ginning up the biggest weekly risk asset rally in several quarters. Equities, Corporate Bonds, Sovereign Debt and Commodities (more about this below) got higher. The USD came down a bit, after, (it must be said) trippin’ balls for months.
All on the back of an earnings cycle which seems to me to have been rather mixed. Investors were grooving to the stylings of Amazon and Apple (Facebook/Meta not so much), but, on the whole, it’s hardly been a sequence for widely distributed bootleg tape glory. The overall numbers have been OK, but as anticipated, guidance not so much; it’s been dropping like a stone since reporting began:
To me, the heartening vibe of investors to react favorably to tidings such as the Big Tech Dogs performing marginally better than expected – particularly as compared to glory days of your – is analogous to all the love that the current Dead and Company lineup (featuring John Mayer in Jerry’s lead guitar spot) is currently receiving. It’s a welcome treat for a quality-starved recipients, but let’s, at all costs, not confuse it with the real thing.
Of course, while all this transpired, the E-major econ stuff folded its way in, beginning with Powell, who knocked his audience off their feet by first raising the Fed Funds rate by 75 bp and then dropping juicy hints that perhaps his crew would not need to raise this rate to previously contemplated heights.
The crowd roared its delight and showed similar enthusiasm for a -0.9% GDP print on Thursday. And why not? there’s certainly nothing in my experience that says “buy” like a -0.9% GDP.
Again, it’s all about rate relief, and maybe they’re on to something. Maybe Powell purring that he’s got inflation under control and ain’t too worried about inflation is legit. But to me, it sounds more like the ’22 Dead Shows, transpiring not only without Jerry but also with a person named Oteil Burbridge manning Phil’s bass and (perhaps even worse) the posterior of some dude called Jeff Chimenti filling out a keyboard bench once occupied by Pigpen.
But I can’t help but notice that commodity prices, particularly in the Energy Sector are ominously creeping up:
Nat Gas is knocking on the door of post-invasion highs. And that’s just stateside. In Europe, locus of the historic Grateful Dead tour 50 years ago (the album release of which set me on my own GD journey), it’s three times as expensive. And this before: a) the coming winter; and b) the distinct possibility that the Russians will make good on their threat to cut the Continent off.
Meanwhile, Congress just passed a giveaway to our poor, starving, homeless chipmakers — to the tune of > $250B and is now working on a Mississippi Half Step Uptown Toodoloo spending bill that will round out the total pork tally to $1T. It will spend > 10% of this on new IRS agents, and tons more on the suppression of fossil fuel production, the disincentivization of biotechnology innovation and other, er, righteous initiatives.
It is the handicraft of Schumer and Manchin, who I can hardly deem a modern-day Hunter/Garcia. It has been designated the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, and, as a commentary on the current practice of diverging branding from content, I deem it to be a winner.
But if you want to buy up here, you’re on your own. You’ll get no succor from me. Nor from Jerry, whose incinerated ashes are floating – half in the SF Bay, half in the Ganges River.
Meantime, our trips around the sun continue, and we’ll take from them what we can get. Forgive me, though, if, on Jerry’s 80th, I take the occasion to lament comic book colors on a violin river, crying Leonardo words from out a silk trombone. Remembering in doing so, what once was and what might have been.
TIMSHEL