Hmm… …which platitude should I begin with? That rules are made to be broken? The concept of “the exception which proves the rule”?
Well, sure, there’s not much at stake here either way. And, while we’re on the subject, not much downside to breaking the rule from which our titular theme derives. Plus, diabolical technological devices such as autocorrect and those nasty red squiggly lines in MS-Word, have, of course, significantly reduced the failure rate of the “I before E” rule.
I got to thinking about all this while writing an E-mail on my I-Phone, which rendered me unsure as to what (I know), these ubiquitous vowels even stand for. Worried that this was some sort of trick question, I was relieved to learn that the first thoughts which come to mind are, in fact, the correct ones. E denotes Electronic, while I is short for Internet.
But as the letter C never enters the equation, we are left wondering, in the world of telecommunications, which of these alphabet members – two of the five of which we can only obtain from Vanna by buying them from her, comes first?
For most of us, in chronological terms, the answer is E; we were all sending and receiving emails before the I-Phone was even a dream that Steve Jobs had one afternoon long ago. After which, he kind of used his vast wealth to establish a virtual monopoly on the branding of I. So much so that were one to try to launch a product or service named I-(insert description of product), one is likely to rapidly receive less than friendly correspondences from Apple’s I-lawyers, to which one must respond.
Of course, this may not last forever, and we’ll learn a great deal from the Supreme Court’s decision as to whether AI firms will be forced to remove the I and simply refer to their new whiz bang stuff as A.
Yet our “which comes first” quagmire continues to vex. After all, without Electricity, there is no Internet.
And more to the point, I find the whole topic weird – an ancient word that has, for eons, flagrantly violated the I before E rule. Moreover, weird is the dictionary entry that adheres to the w-e-i sequence, with the only other candidate being wein, which: a) invokes the dreaded MS-WORD red squiggly; and b) isn’t even English (it is German for wine). Being neither German nor a wine drinker, I, therefore, as self-designated arbiter of this matter, disqualify it.
But it may also bear mention that two of the most widely used Bloomberg codes — WEI (World Equity Indices) and WEIF (World Equity Index Futures) transgress in the same manner.
All of which is (let’s face it, and everyone say it with me) weird.
And I have a theory about this. While the world has always been weird, it began a new cycle of weirdness, still yet to run its course, on September 11, 2001, when George W. Bush, who everyone referred to as W, was in the White House.
Considering the above, you can feel free to call me a conspiracy theorist (c’mon, an untrained jabroni with a 25-year-old bolt action rifle fires off three rounds at a moving target 80 meters away and two of them are kill-shots to the head? Then he takes public transportation downtown, goes to a movie, offs a cop, and, 2 days later is taken out while in custody of the Dallas Police AND Texas Rangers? Please.), but if so, I come by it honestly.
And, at any rate, there are eerie similarities between the ’01 weirdness and that of the present day.
In both instances, a heretofore white-hot economy was witnessing evidence of a grinding slowdown. Each time, a paradigm-shifting new technology protocol (don’t remember what the old one was called, but I believe it began with an I and was so W-obsessed that one couldn’t even access it without invoking strange codes that all began with the sequence www) which was producing ubiquitous and contemporaneous euphoria (cool new shit to do) and terror (it’s gonna steal my job).
Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a FAFO military conflict broke out. The economy survived, but our armed forces were embarrassed in two jurisdictions, one of which we had to hang around for > 20 years, before bailing out, as the world’s cameras were rolling, like little bitches.
Food for thought vis a vis today’s world, n’est ce pas?
Twenty-five years later, our weirdnesses are a bit reversed, most notably because rather than finding ourselves victims of a surprise attack, we were the initiators, and the action itself was an open secret.
The complications adherent to the aftermath, however, appear to me to be similar. But I reckon we won’t know this for quite a spell. Meantime, though, the simultaneous signs of economic slowdown are hard to ignore. Q4 GDP clocked in at a putrid 1.3%. The BLS laid a big fat egg with the February Jobs Report:
With the summer driving season fast-approaching, Crude Oil prices have surged 40%, which is no wonder give that the Strait of Hormuz, which ~20% of the world’s supply of the sticky black stuff must traverse, is, de facto, closed. By contrast, post-9/11, Oil sold off. But few seemed to notice, because no one was much inclined, for any reason, to leave house.
This time, with energy price action rocketing upward, I expect our fearless leader to go all in to lower energy prices, and to do so quickly. And his manipulation of markets won’t stop there. He’s only a few weeks from putting his boy Warsh into the Fed Chair. Whereupon he will work hand in glove with Treasury Secretary Bessent to reduce interest rates.
It’s all so easy, isn’t it? Trump, asked this past weekend to rate the success of his military operation on a scale of 1 to 10, replied with an enthusiastic 15. And I believe that no matter what happens in the Arabian Dessert, the number can only go up from there.
So, chin up, comrades, there’s every possibility that within a few short weeks, we will be winding down the greatest military operation in the history of the world, with artificially suppressed energy prices and mortgage rates, a banger of an economic environment, and hegemony across the globe.
What could possibly go wrong? In fact, any number of things — which I’d rather not contemplate and which at any rate are too numerous to inventory in this space. And even if nothing bad happens, I doubt it will save the Party in Power in the mid-terms. After which we could realistically face a continuous loop of impeachment hearings, an unsolvable military quagmire in the Middle East, and a slowing economy.
So, all told, this is not, in my opinion, a particularly favorable environment for incremental risk taking. But apparently, not everyone agrees with me. In fact, investors are using credit to purchase stocks at record levels:
And being rather blasé about it, at that:
I’d like to see that margin debt line go down but expect the Gallant 500 to continue its gallop to nowhere – either indefinitely or until something changes. And there’s just a titch of a chance that this change will fail to please us.
Yup, it’s a weird market, with Es coming before Is and no Cs in sight. But the lack of the latter may have its benefits, because even this solemn original rule of thumb is less than perfect in its rendering. The main exception which comes to mind is the word science, which in and of itself is weird.
But for the most part, the rule holds fast. And rightfully so. And I say so without deceit. Hoping you will receive me in the way I intend to give myself to you.
So, with clear conscience, I advise you to proceed with due caution.
TIMSHEL