Let’s first dispense with a couple of pieces of important business.
Today marks the 100th anniversary of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”, and I ask you, whether Gersh is your jam or not, to join me in celebration.
It’s also the 215th anniversary of the birth of A. Lincoln. Who was A Dude by any measuring stick.
Meantime, as we say goodbye to an exciting NFL season (albeit one with an unsatisfactory ending), I’d like to take this opportunity to shout out also to Steve (Mongo) McMichael for his long overdue induction into the Hall of Fame. It came not a moment too soon, as poor Mongo doesn’t (it must be allowed) look to be long for this world, suffering, as he is, in what appears to be in the final stages of Lou Gehrig’s Disease. With admittedly questionable taste, I offer the following before and after images:
If indeed his hours are dwindling down to nil, he will, at any rate, enter the Pearly Gates as a fully credentialed, Gold Jacketed member of the NFL Hall of Fame. And what a ride to get there. 14 seasons in the NFL; 5 as a Pro Wrestler. Alligator wrestler and rattlesnake hunter throughout, with the only black mark to his name being that he spent the last season of the former career with the Green Bay Packers.
But of course, his legacy will forever be tied to that of the magnificent ’85 Bears – almost certainly the greatest team ever. In addition to winning it all that year, they are best remembered for having created that unfortunate “Superbowl Shuffle” video – a project in which Mongo laudably refused to participate.
Those Bears at that time looked unstoppable, with multiple championships there for the asking. But they only got the one, have made it to the big game on a single other occasion (a losing effort), and have been perpetually breaking the hearts of their fan base for most of the ensuing 40 years.
There’s an important risk management lesson here, of course, which is that even the most formidable of hosts has a finite reign. We’re in the midst of an historic market run, having just completed what I am informed is the strongest rolling 15 weeks period in financial history.
It is, for lack of a better description, a Mongo Market. Its QB-stomping/rattler grabbing ways, will, at some point, have run their course, and we will be compelled to pick up the pieces in the aftermath of its grandeur.
But I don’t see nothin’ on the immediate horizon to stem the tide. Last week, in keeping with the general lethargy we NFL fans always feel in the 14-day break between Conference Championships and the Big Roman Numeral Extravaganza, there was little of consequence to report. Yes, the earnings parade marched on, but it featured none of the truly flashy companies that have so captivated us for so long. Important enterprises are many of these, but from a factor risk perspective, they are little more than useful backbenchers — akin to former ’85 Bears like Ron (Chico) Rivera.
Macro data was also back benching and decidedly a yawner.
Our equity indices nonetheless set new records, and, notably for the numerologists among us, the Gallant 500 for the first time ever eclipsed the threshold of 5,000. Back in the deuce, they used to give out baseball caps and that sort of thing to celebrate these milestones, but apparently, we now dwell in a more sober era.
Next week, in addition to the continuation of CEO podium turns, brings tidings of Inflation and Retail Sales. Not much likely, I think, to stem the tide of the rally.
Because the world is figuratively drowning in cash, and, if the Inflation Beast is truly soothed, there’s nowhere to place the (Detroit?) lion’s share of it other than the capital markets.
This I see as the Irresistible Force of the Capital Economy. The Immovable Object: excessive, unsustainable borrowing levels. There’s lotsa talk about this, both happy and concerned.
Indeed, deposit-based lending institutions (banks) are most certainly better capitalized than during the last fiasco and probably have more rigorous underwriting standards. There is, in addition, great comfort derived from the portion of the funding now being provided by Private Credit, which certainly has advantages over banks — taking such forms as locked in capital, and, maybe, smarter and better incentivized custodians at the helm.
Well, perhaps, but I find it difficult to leap to a place of comfort sufficient to offset my concerns that overall indebtedness is approaching 3x the levels it reached in those pre-GFC days of 2007. I also hasten to point out that the first prominent shoe to drop in that crisis was the collapse of two levered credit funds ensconced in the bowels of then-soon-to-be-toe-tagged Bear Stearns.
I don’t think that the world’s borrowers, all the way up the ladder to the United States Treasury Department, can reasonably be expected to pay back all they owe to The Man.
Something’s gotta give.
But probably not yet. And maybe not for a good while. Because credit bubbles take a very long time to reach bursting thresholds, and, given the bloody mess that said bursting evokes, interested, empowered parties move heaven and earth to stave off the evil hour.
And until the reckoning arrives, the rally is likely to continue.
So, y’all have my sanction – for now – to do the Superbowl Shuffle. Mongo sat that one out because at the point of production, the Bears had won nothing. They did go on to cop their rings and entered the ’86 season poised to shuffle on through. Their defense actually outperformed the ’85 crew.
But problems ensued. LT was raging in the Meadowlands. Joe Cool out in SF was reaching his Jerry Rice- aided peak. Still and all, Da Bears were cruising high heading into Thanksgiving Week, when a Packer thug named Charles Martin slammed McMahon to the turf, in what still stands out as perhaps the dirtiest play in NFL history.
It effectively ended the former’s punky career. And the Super Bowl Bears faded to black.
The intervening years have been less than kind to many of the Shuffling Crew. Sweetness died in ’99. Safety Dave Duerson offed himself in 2011, rendering him the poster boy for CTE brain damage.
McMahon suffers from the same ailment, but shoulders on.
Fridge Perry is broke, bewildered and wheelchair bound. Corner (L.A.) Mike Richardson was arrested 21 times for narcotics and now faces a murder rap.
The Bears have plowed through 8 General Managers, 10 Head Coaches and an astounding 45 starting QBs since that dazzling night in New Orleans. Their ownership remains in the hands of its founder and his progeny.
I hold greater hope for the team right now than I have for quite a while. They are gonna build a new and proper stadium. Old lady McCaskey, now 102, can’t live forever, and her 12 children will certainly sell the team to an individual or entity better equipped to operate it successfully.
And I take the dying Mongo’s enshrinement as yet another element of Good Karma. Gods be pleased, maybe he can survive to witness his induction ceremony in August.
But I can’t help looking back wistfully at that ’85 team. At what they accomplished, and, over the longer course, at what they failed to achieve.
Somewhere in there is a message to present-day toilers in these Mongo Markets, but I won’t spell it out for you. If you know, you know. And if you don’t…
TIMSHEL