By: K(en(neth Louis) G(rant)

With apologies to Dr. Sigmund Freud

Don’t get me wrong; I’m big into Freud. For one thing, his middle name was Schlomo. Which you have to admit is way cool. And being the father of modern psychology, particularly in these mad, psychotic times, is pretty impressive to boot.

But on this topic, and for reasons about which I am not particularly proud, I happen to be credentialed to go toe-to-toe with him. He may have invented psychoanalysis, but I highly doubt he burned as many stogies as have I.

Most people, and rightly so, think of a cigar as an offensive, combustible obelisk of processed tobacco, wrapped in a tobacco casing which served as the trademark appendage of perhaps the two most towering figures of the Twentieth Century (Winston Churchill and Groucho Marx).

Well, yes. All true. But you should trust me when I tell you that a cigar can be anything else you wish it to be. A daydream. A cantaloupe. The bridge section of the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life”. The knockout trigger of a wonky derivatives contract.

The remotest star in the farthest off galaxy in the universe.

Moreover, if you accept my assertion that a cigar can indeed be anything into which our imagination and whimsy transforms it, it devolves to us mere mortals to determine what, in our field of observation and experience, is a cigar, and, what, alternatively, ain’t.

And, as Sigmund, Groucho and my other co-religionists join me in bidding “good riddance” to the troubling year of 5780 (and in hoping for better tidings in ’81), now is as good a time as any to see where matters stand on the ol’ cigar-ometer.

I reckon we should start with the just-departed RBG. My verdict: definitely a cigar. I tend to play for the other team philosophically, but let’s give credit where credit is due. She was one of a kind. Courageous, Authentic. Courageously authentic. Authentically courageous.

So, I hope everyone understands that when I say light her up and smoke her, I do so with the utmost respect.

But just when the last thing we needed was another psychodrama to add to our depressingly long list of them, the specter of her replacement now changes the already-mind-numbing calculus of our politics. For the record, I’m against the concept of trying to fill her seat before the election, because this will guarantee that when the Dems take over (if not 2021/5781, then sometime thereafter), they will pack the court.

Plus, it is, at best, jump ball as to whether the Senate will confirm any nominee under heaven, and I feel sorry for those running for re-election (Ernst, Collins, others) who might find the air getting hotter (and smokier) around them as the saga unfolds.

But Orange is as Orange does. He will certainly take a shot, and we’ll just have to live with the results.

Let’s now move on to last Wednesday’s Federal Open Market Committee Meeting, during which Chair Pow pretty much froze the Fed Funds rate for the next three years.

A glance at the “Fed Effective” rate over the past three trips around the sun illustrates the incongruity of the statement.

A little over a year ago, the rate was as high as 2.50% but hit zero in the immediate wake of the crisis, only to rise again to the usurious level of 0.09% as of Friday.

And at this point, we’re in completely uncharted territory. In terms of economic conditions and monetary policy, we’re beyond the remotest star in the remotest galaxy. I thus don’t put much stock in Chair Pow’s prognostications, however clairvoyant they may prove to be, about rates three years out.

To me, it was a “no cigar” move; not even close (sorry, but I had to bust that out and maybe sooner is better than later), and I think the markets pretty much ignored it. But investors did indeed take heed of his dire short-term outlook for the economy, and then hit the sell button (not hard, but conspicuously).

Which begs the question: is the three-week pullback a cigar? With respect to its response to the FOMC, I say the answer is no. To me, the sequence falls into the oft-repeated paradigm of a dovish Fed action, to which the immediate response was “holy sh!t, the Fed thinks things are really bad”, only to follow on with the revelation that “holy sh!t, rates are gonna be suppressed, like, forever”.

Whereupon investors go out and do some shopping.

But there are other reasons for the market selloff, as there always are. Even under the most cigar-like lens one can conjure, the late August valuation altitudes were perhaps a little bit oxygen-bereft. Nobody, at least with RBG-level authenticity, could have confidently been piling cash into risk assets at those levels. And in fact, they’ve gone in the opposite direction; selling, not aggressively but noticeably.

And, as we lurch towards November 3rd, the markets will feel the increasingly compelling pull of the political vortex. Is this election cycle a cigar? Decidedly not, and this should be a cause for concern for investors of every stripe. The two sides are at long daggers, the process sets up for mad disruption, the media reports unilaterally according to its affiliations and agendas (as do, in my opinion, the pollsters).

I’ll ditch my cigar to offer one example. Though you may not be aware of this, over the past month, Israel has signed astonishing normalization deals with two Arab nations: The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Other such arrangements are in the pipeline, including those with Oman, The Sudan, and Morocco. My theory is that the trend is owing to the growing threat imposed by Iran on its neighbors. The Ayatollahs in Tehran are feeling the heat from America’s re-imposition of sanctions and are sidling up to China. The sheiks that run the other countries are terrified and are taking action.

End result? Israel has more allies in the region than it has boasted in the seventy-two years of its existences.

It is, arguably (or perhaps inarguably) the greatest sequence of regional diplomacy since the founding of Israel in 1948.

And the press has barely taken note. Now, I’m gonna tread lightly down this rabbit hole, but I think it’s fair to opine that had such events transpired under, say, the previous administration, there would be galaxies of press plaudits and grown men (and women) weeping with joy in the streets.

Now? Not so much. Barely an “oh yeah, a couple of countries which, for seven decades, have sworn the destruction of Israel are now setting up diplomatic and trade relations with them”. My guess, though, is that on this Rosh Hashanah in Jerusalem, there is more joyful recognition of the progress.

For these and other reasons to numerous to inventory, I can confidently asset that our current political cycle is anything but a cigar.

But come what may, on November 4th (which happens to be my birthday), whatever oblong object that is thrust in our faces is what we will be compelled to consume. We can smoke it, chomp on it or… (I will leave other options to your imagination), but will be forced, inexorably, to address its presence, and, ultimately, to dispose of it.

In the meantime, we’ve got the rest of September and the always-docile month of October to endure. Lots of big events are pending, so stay tuned. And please, please please, keep jamming, and stay on your toes (note: in risk management parlance, this is referred to as The Toe-Jam. Fair Warning: It is a topic to which I may revert in coming editions).

Your world, my world, our world could look dramatically different over this period, and here’s hoping that it assumes contours that matches our wishes and dreams.

For now, though, we’d do well to bear in mind that while things aren’t always what they seem, sometimes they are. Sig-Schlomo was right in this sense. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

But sometimes it ain’t; sometimes it never is. And the key to our fortunes lies in discerning the difference and making our moves in accordance.

Not gonna lie, though. The whole thing kind of wears me out. And I know what I have to do. It’s just a matter of getting to it is all.

At the moment, though, there’s no need to guess what my next step is. I’m going into my backyard to burn one. I’d love for you to join me, and more than that, to think of my cigar as the key to whatever your soul desires.

Even though the breeze routinely changes courses, I’ll do my best to sit downwind from you.

And, in closing, I ask you to acknowledge neither Captain Jeffery Spaulding nor Rufus T. Firefly ever extended you a better offer.

TIMSHEL

By: K(en(neth Louis) G(rant)

The morning’s dead, and the day is too,

I’ve got nothing left to greet me, but the velvet moon,

All my loneliness, I have felt today,

It’s a little, more than enough, to make a man, blow himself away,

But I continue, to burn the midnight lamp… …alone

— Jimi Hendrix

Fifty years ago, this Wednesday, Jimi played an impromptu set with Eric Burdon and the fabulous L.A. band WAR at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in Soho, London. Twenty-four hours later (+/-), he left us.

But in a very real sense, he’s still here. Millions of people (including your faithful scribbling wannabe shredder) listen to him, think about him, channel him, every day. Untold numbers of guitar hackers try – and fail – to replicate his sound. I suspect they always will. Try and fail that is.

Occasionally, my sister-in-law (who I love but sometimes loves to push my buttons) tries – and fails — to raise my hackles, by randomly (and out of context) blurting out: “Jimi Hendrix is a dead drug addict”.

If you say so, Cass, but on the other hand, whom among us isn’t? A dead drug addict that is.

Dirt-napping junkie or otherwise, his story is a compelling one. To begin with, he was part African/part Native American. His given first name at birth was Johnny; his dad renamed him Jimmy when he was about four. He came up with the Jimi thing on his own, and no one since has dared to use this handle. He trained Army paratrooper. They bounced him. He carried the burden of being a left-handed guitarist, forced by poverty to play his Stratocaster upside down. He was a side man to Little Richard, the Isley Brothers, others. He emerged in London and took the place over, leaving other guitarists in tears.

Came to New York and took this town over too. Built Electric Ladyland Studios in the West 50s, where he recorded our title track. Word is that he injudiciously financed this dream through some hard guys, which may be the reason he checked out early (more about this below). By the time of his death, he was a huge star. Was the headliner (and the highest paid artist) at friggin’ Woodstock.

He became a bigger star after he died.

But during his brief, magnificent run, he was an outsider: a black man playing to mostly Caucasian audiences. African American listeners didn’t know what to make of him. Their radio stations shunned him. He is known to have felt a form of obsequious patronization by all those white hippies that idolized him. For these reasons and others, as is the case with virtually all of the great ones, he carried crippling doubts about his own artistic validity. But hey, even Shakespeare must’ve felt this way sometimes.

And my rebuttal comes from another one-of-a-kind achiever of galactic proportions. “When your good at something, you tell people about it. When you’re great, people tell you”.

This statement comes from the late Walter Payton. And it certainly applies to Hendrix.

I’m wondering how we have endured 50 years without Jimi. But like I stated above, he’s in many ways still with us. His existence wasn’t an easy one, and even his death is shrouded in pathetic mystery. Choked on his own vomit, but was alive when he arrived at the hospital? How does this happen? How did it happen? Maybe it was the mob, but I like to think that Nixon got him. And I’m not alone.

Meanwhile, our own trip, on what Hendrix called the Third Stone from the Sun, continues. Been a little weird lately, no? Well, I suspect it may get even weirder as the year winds down.

The summer season is over, and it passed like a rainy day/dream (away). The ADHD public’s attention now naturally turns to preparations for what promises to be a passing-strange Halloween. New York City has cancelled most of the cool events, but somehow, the Bronx Haunted House show escaped the meat axe. However, in the interest of Public Health, this year, the zombies will not be spitting (faux) blood.

I thought y’all would want to know this.

But the late Oct axe did fall on the L.A. Unified School District, which announced on Friday that schools will not re-open until after Election Day. Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer was very clear on this. The next check point comes after we vote. Pardon me for wondering how she fixed upon this date. And for crying a few tears for those poor kids in Englewood, turned political footballs, who will be required to fend for themselves until the partisan hacks of the region decide which elections to steal, and which, alternatively, to sanctimoniously claim were stolen from them.

Know this: I am going to be relentless in sharing my fears that the election/vote counting cycle is setting up to be an historic disaster. And I fear for what happens in the markets if (when) this happens.

These and other market risks continue to present themselves, a number of which are beginning to enter the valuation calculus. As a result, the fearfully joyous rally of late August/early September appears to have run its course. Will it gather itself and re-emerge with renewed vigor in the coming weeks? My sense is probably. But: a) it may not transpire at all; and b) if it does, it will be difficult to capture.

We could capture a measure of clarity this coming week, as Wednesday (50 years less one day from Jimi’s passing) Fed Chair Powell takes to the FOMC podium to utter his next policy statement. It should be interesting. Even though these rituals can be dry as chalk, this one may be worth our attention. Because last round, Chair Pow issued some vague guidance suggesting that he and his crew were gonna allow the inflation dogs a longer leash than had been the longstanding official policy protocol (2%). And wouldn’t ya know it? This past week the PPI/CPI data suggested that they got the memo. Officially, inflation, being the first derivative of prices (with respect to time), appears to be on the rise.

So now Powell’s some ‘splainin’ to do. Not a lotm but some. I will be very interested in what he has to say. But then again, I have idiosyncratic obsessions about such matters. So, don’t worry if you blow it off. I’ll be taking notes and sharing them. After all, it’s what you pay me for (except that a lot of you don’t).

I suspect that he will be gentle as a lamb and cooing like mourning dove, but I could be wrong. After all, this has happened before. Me being wrong that is.

But my guess is that he knows, with enough out there to freak us out to fill a dozen or more blood-spitting zombie-infested haunted houses, he’s of no mind to add to our agita.

And, in general, as we focus on the serious business of trying to figure out how to monetize what is without question the strangest tape of our lifetimes, my key observations are as follows:

• We can anticipate a number of cycles of unpleasant and potentially crippling volatility the entire rest of the year.

• They will come without advance warning and may not, on face value, make sense.
• Because of this, risk models (including the impeccable ones that I run) may very well be understating forward-looking performance hazard (i.e. your book may have more risk than you think it does at the moment).

• For all of this, I think that there remains a robust bid for risk assets – particularly at points below prevailing valuation levels.

• Thus, while markets may not have huge upside potential, their visible downside is more constrained, and because of this, the always hazardous short side is particularly risky now.

• Stocks, corporate bonds and other risk assets, cannot, in my judgment, fall much without taking yields down with them, so long Treasuries remains an elegant hedge against these exposures.

And if I failed to mention this before, the election is going to be a hot mess. Almost doesn’t matter what the outcome is. Armies of vote harvesters and lawyers are teed up to disrupt and dispute the outcome. I don’t wish to travel deep down this rabbit hole, but when, I ask you, has a losing candidate in a previous presidential election publicly advised their successor not to concede the next election under any outcomes, as Hillary Clinton just did (and she’s not alone)?

It all brings to mind that debacle of 1876, when New York Governor Sam Tilden legitimately won the election, only to witness the army forcibly overturning the electoral vote in three southern states, and in the process, swinging the victory over to the forgettably unforgettable Rutheford B. Hayes. Of course, I was much younger when this sh!t went down, and don’t remember all that much about the episode. And what I do remember doesn’t pass the test for inclusion in this family publication.

I do think it sets up for a whale of market disruption this time ‘round, and may even eclipse the plagues of pandemic, spectral socialism and social unrest – with which we might have to contend, come what may.

And as for 2020 as a whole, its morning is indeed dead, and its day is fading fast. Soon enough, we’ll have nothing left to greet us but its velvet moon. But all the loneliness we have felt today is mere illusion — a little less than enough, in my judgment, to make us blow ourselves away.

Because we have each other, and that’s not gonna change. We may continue, like Hendrix, to burn the midnight lamp. But unlike him, we will not be doing so alone. We will do it together. Always and forever.

And Jimi will be with us, because he never really left. He’s Stone Free now, but let’s be glad that he came when he did, because the world would have been a decidedly poorer place without him.

Rest well, Jimi; we’ll continue to leave out midnight lamps on for you.

Here’s hoping and expecting that it will provide divine illumination, in the lonely, velvet moon nights that await us.

TIMSHEL

By: K(en(neth Louis) G(rant)

DATELINE: (CONNECTICUT) PANHANDLE. Yes, I’m coming at you, as is often the case, from the wilds of the Connecticut Panhandle.

Of course, no such place officially exists. And I’ve had a longstanding, stated beef, with whoever decides these things, that the portion of Constitution State in which I dwell has never achieved the panhandle status it so richly deserves. I figure it’s time for me to bust out my bitch again, because: a) maps don’t lie; and b) you can decide for yourself:

Do mine eyes deceive, me or does the southwest corner of this layout indeed constitute a panhandle? It sure seems like it does, but the Panhandle Commission continues to show us no love.

It may in be that they are busy the with more important, panhandle-related matters (such as the racism embedded in the panhandle concept itself). Meanwhile, us CT Panhandlers languish, forsaken. I suspect, however, that the Panhandle Commission is chock-full of political appointees, and maybe, if the vote goes our way, we can sneak one or two rabbis into the ranks. Hope, if nothing else, springs eternal.

Now, please don’t misapprehend me. I am not suggesting that our little strip of partially contiguous real estate rises to the panhandle glory of, say, the three states whose PH status is not only acknowledged, but, indeed, celebrated (Oklahoma, Texas and Florida):

And while we’re on the subject, let’s take this opportunity to give a shout out to the OK Panhandle, shall we? Because that is a panhandle to which all other states should aspire. A panhandle for the ages. Pleasingly long. Divinely rectangular. Barren. By contrast, the Texas Panhandle is just too stubby for my tastes. I mean, it’s too wide to grip, and there’s not enough length there to lift the rest of the state’s (largest in the Lower 48) pan. Florida doesn’t suffer from the last of these problems, but I think we can all agree that its handle is just too lumpy to offer much comfort or utility to the holder (and that’s even without all of those oranges, flags and other stuff contained in the image).

But one way or another, there’s a whole lot of panhandling going on at the moment. It’s bad. It’s nationwide. And I suspect it will get worse before it improves.

What, after all, are the markets in recent times but one giant financial panhandle?

Investment panhandling had been a unilaterally joyous exercise — for months – until, that is, last Thursday, when all of the gold diggers turned ignominious tail and started to sell off shares like the Joads in “The Grapes of Wrath”. The puke continued through much of Friday (as spaced between a couple of heroic but largely futile attempts to stem/reverse the carnage), all of which put a big buzz kill on the already historically depressing interval of Labor Day Weekend. Probably, this is a good thing, because the odds on probability is that sh!t gets real this coming Tuesday. Why not get a head start on the drama?

And, notably, the declines came on the heels of weekly and monthly jobs numbers that one had to believe were objectively encouraging. From the Payrolls, Base Rate and Labor Participation metrics, it would appear that the month of August featured an encouraging number of eligible souls who had discarded their pans and successfully re-entered the workforce.

Maybe, investors just like panhandlers more than they should.

Leading into the selloff, the scene was bizarre beyond easy description. I read last week that Apple sported a higher market cap than the entire FTSE 100. I had to check this, and it was true; still is. Now, please understand: I’m typing this here note on an Mac-book, never go anywhere without my I-Pad, and yes, I’m rocking an I-11 phone. Plus, I love the ear buds. But in general, I don’t even like Apple that much. They just sort of suck you in is all.

So, good on them, but as a purely hypothetical, would I trade full ownership of the company for the same status with the 100 biggest corporations in the UK? Which include a couple of baller pharmaceuticals, some important energy names, and Lloyd’s of London? I would not. And neither should you.

The abrupt, (I’ll say it) indecorous selloff got everyone analyzing catalysts, and, in order to do so, one must examine root causes of what took us to those improbable highs we so recently achieved. The wires suggest that a great deal of the last leg up is owing to some aggressive technology stock options buying on the part of both whales and guppies.

The data indeed indicate that weekly equity options purchases are surging. And don’t even get me started here (too late). This. Is. A. Bad. Idea. My risk reports are slathered with a never-ending stream of losses on these quickie options. Please, don’t even think about making decisions of this nature, week-to-week. Given all of the complexities, it’s simply not enough time to accomplish much of anything. Dream big, by all means, but know that it is likely going to take a month or more to turn these dreams into realities. This is as heartbreaking to me, as I know it is to you (maybe more so to me; I’m getting to be a real old bastard after all), but it is true nonetheless. So, let’s look out a little further, and save ourselves both the annoyance and (yes) the heartbreak of living week to week.

Let’s call this Plan A.

Because what weekly options giveth, they also take away, and I do suspect that some of this played into both the long rally and the end-of-week, tragic selloff. Big dogs are said to have made a killing on the quickies, but let’s face facts: none of us are big dogs, now, are we?

But here’s the good news, brothers and sisters: I don’t think the rally is over. The game is indeed on come Tuesday, but what really causes investors to reverse course, and decide that all that buying over the spring and summer was the stuff of irrational dreams? Nothing at the moment that I can think of. Yes, there are enormous risks out there, but they are trending better than they were, say, six weeks ago. With notable exceptions, schools are actually opening and staying open around the country. The political rhetoric seems to be a tad less oriented towards destroying our evil capitalist empire. They ran the Kentucky Derby on Saturday, and on the same day, a passel of brave institutions of higher learning actually sent their football teams onto the field.

Absent unthinkable disaster, the NFL kicks off this Thursday, and that, my friends, may be the most bullish news of all.

But perhaps most importantly, we got the Fed in our hip pockets. Willing to let inflation (that is, if any actually materializes) run a little wild. They’re begging us to stay invested, nay, to increase our investments, and acting in accordance with this desperate desire. One of my wiser compatriots (who is not happy about the development) pointed out to me recently that while he understood the need to support impaired credits during those dark days of April, the Fed Balance Sheet now proudly features debt holdings in Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, and (yes) Apple.

Why are they doing this? Because they are hell-bent on keeping impossibly elevated valuations in the stratosphere. Why? Because otherwise the credit bubble might immediately explode in our faces, and that, my loves, would be a disaster for all of us.

This is their party, and it’s clear to me that they intend to keep it going – even if it means driving a couple of counties over to the single gas station/stop and go market willing to sell kegs at this late hour.

So, unless Public Health takes a turn for the worse (it might) and/or the political forces who want to dismantle what has been a pretty good gig for nine-plus generations score an unambiguous win, I think risk assets do nothing but get scarcer – even beyond the November election. Speaking of the latter, I will again state that I am terrified that the voting itself will be a disaster, with many important races too close to call, an unprecedented level of contested outcomes, and other overwrought sagas which, on the lonely, last weekend of this strange summer, I just don’t wish to contemplate.

But it is indeed time to get focused and stay that way. I’m ready (I hope). Are you? Great hazard but also great opportunity beckons in this last trimester of ’20, now just barely begun.

And, in fairness on the whole panhandle thing, it just may be the case that other states have an equal claim to the status as does CT. Mississippi, Alabama, New Mexico, Massachusetts (if you disregard the Cape) and even New York (if you count Long Island). But with the last two of these, you have to cross a body of water to enter the handle, and as for the first three, well, they can fight their own battles.

And I’ll fight mine, from the Connecticut Panhandle, and other points where my journey might well take me.

With that, I’ll sign off, hoping you enjoy your holiday, and urging you to get ready for the rocky ride to come. I’ll always remember this summer, though, with photographs on dashboards, taken years ago, turned around backwards so the windshield showed every streetlight in reverse. Remember the night. And the things that go away. Replaced by every day.

TIMSHEL

By: K(en(neth Louis) G(rant)

“Jones brings the ball up, dishes to Havlicek on the wing, Russell on the high post, checked by Baylor…. clock running down…”

I’m going really old school here (because that’s how I roll – especially lately), back all the way to my earliest NBA watching days. When Jones, Havlicek and Russell were locking horns with Elgin Baylor, the 24-second shot clock was still a relatively new concept. Moreover, in those years, the clock itself was not above the backboard, as it now, but rather affixed on the floor, at the four corners just beyond the base and end-lines. True story: long ago, my parents had access to floor seats at the old Chicago Stadium for (pre-Jordan era) Bulls games, and several times I was invited to accompany them. On one occasion, I actually had a copy of Pink Floyd’s “Meddle” with me, and, mischievous teenager that I was, I placed it on top of the nearest 24-second clock available. That is, until a ref forced me to remove it.

During another of these outings, I got to slap Mr. T on the back, as he paraded through a wall of fans.

These are my brushes with immortality. They may not seem like much to you, but they’re mine, and I reckon I’ll keep them.

In general, though, I’ve been worried about how much time we/I have left on the shot clock. I’m sure it’s not a great deal. And yes: a) it’s scary; and b) there’s a risk that if we don’t overcome our fears, it may expire before we even hoist one up.

In which case, it’s game over. A tragic, avoidable loss.

And I won’t lie: this whole boycott stunt by the NBA really hacked me off. It may hack you off that it hacked me off, but that’s for you to decide. The stunt passed quicker than my pique; I’m still traumatized by the experience. It felt to me like a bunch of inordinately successful guys got together and decided that maybe, despite all of the ruination which we have faced in 2020, things weren’t ruined enough. So, another cop plugs another minority dude, a teenage loser ups the action (in Kenosha, WI of all places) and what happens in the NBA? The multi-millionaires players decide they won’t participate as required under contracts to which they affixed their signatures – adjacent to those of their billionaire employers, in the process tweaking the trillionaire sponsors of the entertainment package that has enriched them all.

Was the intent to further the cause of social justice? If so, it was doomed to fail from the outset. It did not, could not, advance any cause of any kind. And my guess is that it ended as abruptly as it did because the lawyers for the Player’s Union, that righteous inheritor agency of the Mother Jones/Ludlow Mines labor crusade legacy, convinced the hoopsters that they had not a leg upon which to stand (much less to demonstrate their rad hops). That they must either suit up or risk losing both salary and (shudder the thought) endorsement revenues.

So, suit up they did. Before the clock expired. Didn’t cost them a penny.

So, the shot clock is back running. Not only for those baller ballers, but in fact for us all. Including investors. This month has only one trading day remaining to it (the rough equivalent of 1.2 seconds on the NBA counter), but nobody can accuse market participants of not attacking the rim; in fact, our equity indices, unless they bitch up Monday, will have recorded their strongest August in two decades. This past week, they were ballin’ like ‘Bron. Took their posterizing, elbow-flying talents to previously unreachable realms. As a result, The Gallant 500, since late March (remember late March?), has been annualizing at an eye-popping 57% rate. Other benchmarks are following suit, but there is no room for debate as to who the GOAT is. It’s Captain Naz, who went straight from the McDonalds All-American team to the bigs, and is currently throwing off an annualized return, over the same time, period, of nearly 250% (yes, you read that right). Which, if sustained, would render, by comparison, even Wilt Chamberlain’s (validity questioned) 100-point performance just another night at the office for the Big Dipper.

I can’t help but worry, though, that the shot clock is running out for these high-fliers.

I would also be concerned about that relentless “tic tock” sound emanating out of the Fed, but seeing as how they control the League Office, I’m hardly surprised that they changed the rules to their own liking. The announcement came from Powell (the unanimous MVP of the 2020 season – no matter what transpires from here) at Jackson Hole conference, wherein he unveiled a new policy the apparent gist of which is that, instead of establishing a 2% ceiling for inflation, they are fixing it at an equivalent average. Apparently, this enables them to overshoot the mark as they deem appropriate. Moreover, given the latest inflation trends (as presented below, in a nod to their infinite power and wisdom, through their preferred metric of the GDP Price Deflator), they seem now to be in a position to hold the ball indefinitely:

The equity markets were deeply impressed by the news, but that, in and of itself, is a low bar this summer, as they seem to be reacting to virtually anything and everything with an unmixed delight.

But somehow, Treasuries sold off on the tidings that the Fed can goose the monetary economy until it sickens of the tactic. Here, I throw the challenge flag, or (given that we’re talking hoops in this piece) ask the refs to take another look. Because the statement itself, by all logic, should have been accretive to Treasuries – across the entire curve.

And I’m back to thinking that long the 10-year note presents an ideal hedge against a downdraft in the equity markets– a call I made earlier this year which worked until it didn’t. Yes, Treasuries could continue to sell off, but only against a rising equity tape. Similarly, I just don’t see how the equity markets can suffer a slide without it redounding to the benefit of govies. Investors should naturally move capital there if this happens, and if they don’t the Fed will simply have to step in.

Because remaining among the dwindling inventory of certainties in my bag of prognosticative tricks is a strong conviction that the U.S. and global economies cannot abide higher interest rates at the moment. Wanna kill off that improbably red-hot housing market? Raise rates. Tired of increased value of corporate bonds and other instruments of devilish credit? Same thing.

And in a similar vein, anyone watching the doings of the U.S. dollar should be forgiven for wondering if the sands are running out in terms of its status as the world’s reserve currency. Equities are rising, bonds are selling off – implying higher yields, all of which should be accretive to the Dead Prez. Instead, it’s in free fall, and, again, this is not only against other fiat currencies, but also as measured in terms of most risk assets. Probably, you can fill in your own blanks as to why.

And I cannot continue without tipping my hat (which I don’t own and wouldn’t wear if I did) to Charlie Parker, who would’ve turned 100 yesterday. He was born three days after the passage of the 19th Amendment, and a week after Elvis made his TV debut on an obscure outlet in Shreveport, LA. Bird’s personal shot clock was short, spanning only 35 years. Man oh man, did he make the most of them.

But winding the clock forward, as we must, to the present day, I suppose we should get a word or two in about the election. Because it’s an important election, or so I am informed by several Facebook Warriors with whom I am connected.

It is also important from an investment return perspective, but I won’t elaborate too much on that score.

I will state, however, that I am delighted that the clock has expired on those infomercials that pass for national party conventions in these troubled times. Truly, I miss the balloons. The sashes with state names affixed to them. And the funny hats. Maybe they’ll return some day.

It does appear that in terms of milking the clock, the Dems own most of this tactic. Can they really get to November without their boy debating 45? I think they’ll try. I hope they don’t succeed. Moreover, if the polls turn, you would certainly see their offense in motion, looking to take their shot.

And elsewhere, the clock has officially expired on Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who took a knee this past week due to the increasingly debilitating toll that ulcerative colitis has taken on his person. Not sure what happens next over there, but my view is that Japan could and might do a lot worse with his replacement. At the point of this correspondence, Hideki Kuroda remains in control of the BOJ, so at least we can be thankful for that. Because the world needs more JPY, and Kuroda is our guy to deliver it.

But my time is running short, and, in moving towards my close, I will reiterate my call that vol has to increase as the seconds until the election begin to dwindle to a precious few. I don’t expect much action next week, as we finally reach the suckiest holiday of the year: Labor Day. I’ve mentioned this before. I hate Labor Day. Labor Day sucks. Mostly because it is followed by a long slog during which All God’s Children must confront many unpleasant tasks that await us, and for which we used the summer as an excuse to ignore. Gotta get my driver’s license renewed (among other things). Wish me luck on that.

Similarly, I say the clock is running out on this season of one-way rallies and a volatility tape as benign and docile as what passes for defense in the NBA All-Star Game.

Which means we should think about getting our asses in gear. I’m not suggesting that we fire away indiscriminately, at will. But the time has come for everyone to focus, draw a play up on the chalkboard, and, for the love of God, execute it. We don’t have all that much time (as the ringleaders at the County Seat once warned Bob Dylan, after he disclosed that the girl with him behind the shades was not his property).

True, we could throw up a a brick; but I think it might just tickle the twine. Or, if it bounces off the rim, maybe Russell will be there for the rebound, bestowing upon us, in the process, the gift of a fresh 24. Nothing would be sadder, one way or another, than allowing the ticker to expire with the ball still resting in our sweating, sweaty palms. After all, the shot clock is there for a reason: to ensure we don’t dawdle away our precious time with little or nothing to show for the effort.

We’re better than this, right? So let’s show it. It’s (almost) time.

TIMSHEL

By: Ken(neth Louis) Grant

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result”

— Falsely attributed to Albert Einstein

I would be remiss if I didn’t begin by enthusiastically acknowledging the 100th Anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, which bestowed, nearly six generations after the nation’s founding, the right to vote upon American women. It’s this coming Tuesday, and it would do none of us any harm to spend a moment (or two) honoring the occasion.

Progress of this sort (as one can hardly fail to notice in these troubled times) is: a) often glacial; and b) occasionally comes in spurts. Better late than never, I reckon. And now, a century after we corrected our priginal, unfortunate suffrage oversight, we’re on the possible threshold (Biden win/Dems keep the House) of two of the top three elected offices in the country being occupied by women. Moreover, modest extrapolation (Biden bounces – or is bounced — early, Harris appoints a woman VP – highly likely – and Pelosi still lords (ladies?) over the House) places women in all three.

It will be different, but will it yield altered result? No clue.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

So, let’s revert to our main theme: the dubious definition of insanity, falsely attributed to Einstein. The phrase is beyond trite, and (perhaps more importantly) patently incorrect. For one thing, doing the same thing over and over often leads to different results. Happens all the time (consider, for instance a roll of a single die), so expecting a different outcome from a repetitive action is often entirely rational.

And then what about the concept of practice? Like me playing the opening riff of “Brown Eyed Girl” to my brown-eyed girl? I still bitch it up sometimes, but a lot less than I did before I went through the sequence, in endless repetition — all those years ago.

I’m delighted to point out that Einstein never uttered such foolishness. Never would have. Because Einstein was cool. He came up with The Theory of General Relativity, don’t you know? And he also could shred on violin. If you doubt this, take a listen to the attached sampling of his riffing on Mozart:

I say he shreds, but you can decide for yourself.

And in these crazy times, I thought I’d take a moment to measure our activities against that glib insanity trope, which may be the definition, not of insane, but rather of inane,

For months, investors have engaged in the recurring operation of buying up risk assets. Have been doing so since late March. Since before the lockdowns. The results have been quantitatively different, with the Gallant 500 galloping to new highs: >50% above the depths it reached on March 23rd. You remember late March, don’t you? A time when we still thought that shutting down major portions of the economy might be, er, dilutive to equity valuations?

Most of the recent surge is attributable to Apple, which during this past week Eve-like investors pushed past the Eden-like level of $2T — dearth of new product pipeline and mortal supply chain issues in China notwithstanding. Still and all, it was impressive to observe the Big A cut through the double tril mark like a knife through butter. I remember those much-pined for days in the Autumn of 2019, when it lurched and lunged its way past the quaint-by-comparison $1T mark, being the first enterprise of its kind to have done so. But it is often said (at least in the rarified circles in which I roll) that the first trillion is always the hardest to cop. After that, it’s Duck Soup. I have not had this experience myself, so I guess I’ll just have to take Apple’s word for it. But as the biggest corporation in the world, it is now trading at nearly 40x earnings, and one can perhaps be forgiven for fearing that it’s a tad rich up here.

Same is true of corporate debt, the levels of which continue to rise, serenely and unabatedly, and which is becoming alarmingly expensive to own (though not, of course, to issue). I do suspect, though, that at some point, borrowers and lenders will indeed experience a different result.

We are doing some things different, though. We’re saving more. Individuals (in direct contrast to governments and corporations) are actually paying down debt. There’s something holy in this, and here’s hoping it continues.

We’re also buying up houses to beat the band. This is different. And I wonder if it can last. Mortgage and rent delinquency rates, after a recent surge appear to have levelled off:

Apparently, this data takes some time to compile, and in the meanwhile, I’m gonna go out on a limb and suggest that the July and even August data will show continued improvement. But I do wonder if it’s sustainable. When this strangest of summers ends (as it is doing so rapidly, and in such a bittersweet fashion), we may face a different set of circumstances.

Because as I’ve pointed out in the past, most the recipients of rent and mortgage flows are not in the happy position of just banking the proceeds. Nay, they owe this bread to the man. Who expects to get paid, and is capable of all kinds of nasties when these payments are not forthcoming.

And in case you were wondering, when the rent and mortgage music stops, properties go on sale. Further, as an exemplar of insanity in action, when property listings rise, buyers disappear, and prices drop.

The housing data suggests a surge in purchases among Millennials, and all I can say is it’s about time. They’ve been lollygagging too long in grabbing a piece of the rock. While some of this reluctance is said to be generational/cultural; a major portion of it is certainly fear of the future. Which is surely understandable. I myself am terrified. And I own two houses outright and am 60 years old.

All of which begs the question: will this new/different activity on the part of the young bloods lead to the same result as it has for us geriatrics? Will the investment provide lifelong shelter, succor, financial return? I pray for this to be the case, but I won’t lie. I’m worried that it won’t. Particularly over the next little while. If the going gets tough as the weather turns cold, some recent home purchasers may find (as may also be the case with newly minted owners of AAPL and corporate debt) that they overpaid for the privilege/face myriad problems harvesting its rewards.

Finally, and in terms of matters of state, it’s actually difficult for me to render an assessment as to whether we’re repeating the same patterns over again and expecting a different result. It certainly feels different, but maybe it always has. Felt different, that is. There’s a lot of anger out there, and when this is the vibe, politicians always feed it. They’re feeding on it now. It’s arguably why we give them so much money – voluntarily and otherwise. So, I anticipate increased anger, and, with it, expanded transfers of funds from private citizens to politicians.

One thing we can certainly expect is an unusually overwrought election cycle, and I suspect it will begin to filter into market sentiment once Labor Day comes and goes. I’m not sure it will remove the undying bid for securities, but it should lead to some interesting volatility paradigms. I’d highly suggest that we prepare ourselves for these doings.

My best hope is that the outcomes are split down the middle, as I suspect they will be. The sides are just so far apart – and so angry about it – that I just don’t see much upside in a lurch in either political direction. But we may not know the outcome of the election – in fact MANY elections – for several weeks after the voting window ends. Several Senate seats, dozens in the House, and even the Presidency may be hanging like Dade County chads circa 2000, for an indeterminate period. And won’t THAT be a barrel of laughs – for investors and the electorate in general?

One last point about the election, wearisome though the topic certainly is. Biden’s VP choice may carry significance beyond her gender, her racial characteristics and the material probability that she could become president without actually winning a presidential election. Specifically, if my instincts are correct and we are indeed facing a too-close-to-call outcome across all the important races, then it is entirely feasible that Biden could win, and the Senate end up being a 50/50 proposition. If so, VP Harris would be the deciding vote in the Upper Chamber. Would the Dems dare to eliminate the filibuster under these circumstances? Well, I wouldn’t put it past them.

On the other hand, it probably doesn’t matter much. Because under the scenario presented above, pretty much anyone who Biden selected would likely follow the same script: the script of his handlers.

So, I’m expecting a lot of hijinks once the calendar turns, come what may. We’re in for a rocky ride, and I will need you every step of the way. But this may be hard on you, harder than you can endure.

But we gotta press ahead. Like Einstein. Who always kept his cool and banged away on his chalkboard and fiddle as best as he was able. The rest of us would do well to follow his example.

And, at the moment, the tightest definition of insanity that I can come up with is anyone doing anything and expecting any result.

I wish I could do better, but I’m not Einstein. None of us are. And he didn’t even come up with the phrase to which he is so notoriously, so nefariously, attributed. Let’s give him a rest on that bit of slander anyway, shall we? It’s the least we can do. Maybe we can go further and kill the phrase altogether.

Because repeating his unspoken words is insane, right? It is what it is, and, in the meantime, I’m out.

TIMSHEL

By: Ken(neth Louis) Grant

Just don’t do it! I shouldn’t have to keep reminding you of this, but, in the name of sacred duty, I find that I must continue the thread. And, this time, y’all best listen up. Because the stakes have never been higher.

So, for the umpteenth time: The Electric Fence is a barrier that is chockful of dangerous current, for which your “whiz” (which emanates from your anatomy) is a powerful conductor. So, bad things happen when you whiz on the Electric Fence,

But you guys keep doing it. And fellas, trust me, it’s a bad move on your part.

And as for the ladies? Well, never mind. But, then again, on balance, ladies tend to have a more sensible approach to Electric Fence-whizzing (and other matters) than do their male counterparts.

In any event, I find myself annoyingly compelled, in this week’s note, to yet again lecture you on this topic. Because (as you know) I am watching you, and my observation is that your Electric Fence whizzing activities are running rampant.

However, beyond this, there are a number of reasons why the topic is timely.

Most specifically, it originates from the magnificent animated, Nick at Nite series “Ren and Stimpy”, which blew the minds of Viacom viewers (including yours truly) in the early ‘90s. Viacom (owner of N@N) was the brainchild of Sumner Redstone, who died this week, at the age of 97. There is a new documentary about the making of “Ren and Stimpy” that dropped into streaming-land a couple of days ago, and one of the 2nd tier cable networks (forget which) just announced an R/S reboot, to be released later this year.

But let’s talk about the episode in question for a bit (why? My blog/my rules). The plotline involves a visit of Ren’s cousin Sven, from an unnamed Scandinavian country; probably Sweden. Sven is a lot more like Stimpy than Ren. While Ren is lean, jumpy and perpetually irritable, Sven is fat, lethargic, affable and patently stupid.

Much to Ren’s rage, Sven and Stimpy form an immediate and profound “bromance”.

In one memorable scene, Stimpy tilts his head and out pops a pink globule about the size of a marble.

“What’s that?” asks Sven.

“Oh it’s just my brain” responds Stimpy, as he stuffs it back into the space between his ears.

“So big?” Sven inquires back.

He then, by way of comparison, pulls out a pair of tweezers, sticks it into his cranial cavity and removes his own grey matter, which turns out to be smaller than a single pellet of birdseed.

But the moment of pure magic arrives when they both realize that they share a favorite board game — you guessed it – DWotEF. And one can’t hardly blame them for their enthusiasm.

Just look at the box (along with the accompanying image of Sven and Stimpy), and tell me it doesn’t give you the urge to belt out a robust chorus of that Stinky Weezleteats classic: “Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy”:

Yup, it’s all fun and games. Until somebody whizzes on the Electric Fence.

And yet we’re all doing it, the ample mass, volume and functionality of our brains notwithstanding.

I suppose I’m gonna have to cite a few examples. Well, how about the Gallant 500’s Electric Fence whizzing charge to within 10 handles of an all-time high? It’s up over 3% halfway through this happygo- lucky month of August, and 4.2% across all the magic, fence-whizzing madness of 2020.

Let me ask you: does this feel like sound safety or hygiene?

From my point of observation, though nothing untoward has yet transpired, it does strike me that buyers up here are, at minimum, running considerable risk of having their bits burned by electric juice.

But of course, in terms of fence-whizzing, the G5 is entirely eclipsed by Captain Naz, whizzing his way to an approximate 40% year-to-date gain. His liquid waste has yet, by all appearance, to have even come close to an interaction with electric current. But perhaps that’s because he’s a tech whiz who knows his way around circuitry of all kinds.

But a quick look at the leader board reveals that our own Federal Reserve is the entity most poised to take top fence-whizzing honors. It has dumped trillions of liquidity volts into the financial power grid, and has indicated that, if necessary and as appropriate, there’s more of the oozy yellow/green stuff available for the asking. I reckon that we can take comfort that it is the Fed that controls the on/off switch, the diverters, capacitors – all of the critical components of the Electric Fence.

Thus far, they have avoided unfortunate accidents, in fact, have managed the uber enhanced grid with great aplomb, for more than a decade.

Here’s hoping they stay on their game, because: a) where would we be without their engineering wizardry? and b) one false move on their part, and…

But navigating the board may become significantly more challenging in the days to come, for reasons over which they had no explicit role.

In recent years, us Yanks have been swilling our bellies and filling our bladders with beer, sending selfies on our smartphones, and generally laying the groundwork for an Electric Fence whiz of epic proportions.

Contemporaneously, our opposite numbers in China were cranking up their production control of much of what makes life worth living in these parts. They manufacture over 90% of the world’s computers/smart phones, and control 95% of the rare earth minerals that are essential inputs into these wondrous machines.

Heck, they even produce >80% of its frigging air conditioners.

The list goes on. They pump out over 90% of our medicines, an even greater share of our antibiotics, and an unknown but certainly significant majority of our opioids. In this sense, even setting aside our hurt feelings over covid, they’ve got our delicate parts in a pretty precarious position. Should they choose to switch on the electricity in the fencing around these vital areas of manufacturing (located, I’m told, somewhere near the Great Wall), well, we’re gonna feel the jolt, starting from in our Johnsons, and extending out to our other extremities and vital organs.

And meanwhile, all I want to do is be with you. All the time. It’s all I can think of.

But when I look at the nexus between our enabling, monetary road to immediate, Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy gratification, and their extended, more somber, empowering journey to manufacturing hegemony, it looks to me like American whiz is on a collision course with Sino AC/DC-charged trellis.

Thus, if I was running the show (I thank God every day that I’m not), my path towards fixing a crippled domestic economy would involve a fiscal stimulus focused upon repurchasing rare earth minerals, and repatriating vital parts of critical technology and biotech supply chains. If this required further juice from the Fed, so be it. But we gotta get most of this sh!t produced back home. Particularly the opioids. Because it is the opioids that get many of us through these often-miserable hours, and, one day, China may simply cut off our supply.

My plan might even create some good jobs along the way, and lord knows we can use them.

But all of that would cost a great deal of money, for all of us. Our medicines and handhelds, occupying, as they do, such a disproportionate share of our daily existences, would undoubtedly be rendered more expensive by repatriation. And this is to say nothing of the looming higher prices on the way for such concepts food, travel, leisure and hospitality. The term of art for all of this, my loves, is inflation. Which is one thing we probably don’t need right now.

However, as the observers of Stimpy and Sven might observe: “play stupid games, win stupid prizes”.

And I’d like to be the very first on the planet to point out that our leaders have done nothing to address these problems, but I have a hunch someone beat me to the punch. It’s election season, an overwrought one at that, and, somehow, the topic barely comes up. Instead, virtually all that passes for current political debate amounts to little more than a big fat whizzing contest. Meanwhile, that buzzing fence looms ever closer on the horizon….

But I don’t want to accuse everyone of setting up permanent camp at the DWotEF game table. The historically heroic American consumer has actually acted with an encouraging show of intelligence and rationality of late. Savings rates have surged since Corona, and, last month, statistics show that borrowers paid down an historic >$100B of credit card debt. Good on all of you. But as I’ve stated in the past, shame on that subset of the population that is fixated on day trading, while carrying crippling credit card balances (and yes, I’m pointing at YOU: Robin Hooders).

As a risk manager I am able to state with certainty that the 27% after-tax rates you are paying imply the need for a >50% annualized return in the markets to achieve the same economic results as would derive from simply paying down your Visa balances and cutting that $@^% card into bits and pieces.

So if you’re gonna trade your own money, please pay down your credit balances before you do. And if you can do this right, the timing might be advantageous, at least insofar as in terms of visible short-term market risks, I don’t see a whole lot that vexes me. The data flows slow to a crawl in the back half of August, and I suspect that not much of high significance will come our way in the sessions leading up to Labor Day. Before which so many out there should both chill and gird their loins for what is almost certain to be a tense and rocky last trimester of 2020.

You’ve all earned some down time, and, as always, I suggest you use it wisely. Maybe check out the Manhattan apartment listings. Rents are dropping and there are now some lovely places we might actually be able to afford. Or take a walk along the river.

Say prayers of honor and remembrance to those that have left us too soon, and then look joyfully at the possibilities, which, if we can just somehow manage through the hardships that confront us, beckon us on the other side.

But in the name of all that’s holy, don’t whiz on the %$!!&# Electric Fence! And though I hate to do it, I now must leave you with a Spoiler Alert. SPOILER: in the R/S episode referenced above, Ren returns from a hard day at the office, finds Sven and Stimpy immersed in a game of DWotEF, and flies into a cycle of his trademark, blinding fury.

So, what does he do? Well of course he whips out his member and micturates on the Electric Fence.

Whereupon the screen explodes, and the episode concludes.

I’m here to inform you, in taking my leave, that, with commitment, diligence, sobriety and judgment, a better fate awaits you and me.

We’ve only to keep our trousers up, and take the righteous path, to get there.

TIMSHEL

By: Ken(neth Louis) Grant

There were days, and there were days,

And there were days between,

Summer flies and August dies,

The world grows dark and mean….

….The singing man is at his song,

The holy on their knees,

The reckless are out wrecking,

The timid plea their pleas

— “The Days Between” Jerry Garcia (and Robert Hunter)

Can’t believe he’s been gone 25 years. But he has. This one goes out to you, Jerry, on the 25th anniversary of your passing.

Say what you will about him, but this much is certain: he traveled his own road. Must’ve been lonely at times, being after all on a path with nobody to guide him if he stood, and knowing that if he fell, he would most certainly fall alone.

He took up the mantle of the great American songbook, and not only extended and improved upon it, but transformed it. Turned folk, country, R&B, etc. idioms in to extended, wondrous instrumental journeys. No one had been there before. Probably, it scared him, summoned out his internal demons, which, in the end, proved to be to many for him (as, ultimately, they are for all of us).

He turned 53 just a week before his death, and in a way it’s remarkable that he made it to that far. He was, after all, a Type 1 Diabetic who perpetually travelled the world, chain-smoked, maintained a horrible diet, and, yes, was a full-on junkie. OD’d many times. Probably died for a while — more than once. Tried, repeatedly, to kick the habit, and was in fact in rehab, when, on August 9, 1995, he gathered for a final time to the dust of the ages.

There are those out there that obsess about him (I am not one of them; my obsessions are fixed upon YOU – and Bob Dylan) – so much so that we are just completing what passes for a religious holiday for Dead Heads – the ~weeklong period between his Aug 1 birth and his Aug 9 death. To the faithful, these are called The Days Between.

Of course, the festival’s nomenclature derives from a Garcia song title – one of the few where (in my opinion) Hunter’s lyrics (purloined above) excel Jerry’s hooks. Give it a listen anyway. After all, it’s Aug 9th: the end of the Days Between.

As I am fond of stating, it’ll do you no harm.

But I wonder what Jerry would’ve thought about all of this (latter) Days Between moonshine. My guess is that he would’ve neither understood nor approved. He was a musician, a minstrel, and yes, he changed the world. But I strongly believe that the ritualizing of those two points on the calendar would have unilaterally creeped him out. I further suspect that he might advise those immersed in this foolishness to expand their horizons. For what it’s worth, I’m with him on this one. I’d even go so far as to state that this sort of thing acts more to diminish than enhance the astonishing contribution he did make.

But, hey, that’s just me.

I also sort of wonder what he’d make of the current scene. About all I can come up with is that he’d think if there was ever a period that could aptly be described as The Days Between, we’re in it. Right. Now.

All of which begs the question: between what and what?

Well, it is August 9th: the 75th anniversary of the dropping of Fat Man on Nagasaki, 72 hours after the blast on Hiroshima. Jerry (who was a fat man himself) died exactly 50 years after this event, which occurred 3 days beyond when Little Boy destroyed Hiroshima. Those indeed were Days Between.

And, at the moment, it sure feels like, we’re between something. But what? A rock and a hard place? Maybe. However, I sort of prefer a reference that I copped from Kurt Vonnegut, as the first chapter title of his best book: “The Sirens of Titan”. Which you should read (oh that’s right, you already have, and at my suggestion). The titular phrase is: “Between Timbuktu and Timid”, a hook that derives from the fact that the only word in Noah Webster’s Arc (dictionary) between these two is Time.

Which is what we’re between. Between Timbuktu and Timid. Between Time. I think.

Summer is flying and August will soon be dying. The world has changed more than we care to notice or discuss. This is true for all of us. It hit me in a unique way this week, when, on a magically nostalgic trip back to what once was New York City, I passed by B.B. King’s music club, at 42nd and 8th, where I witnessed many a great show (including B.B. himself a couple of times). Not only is it shuttered, the frigging building looks like it’s about to collapse. Someday, it may again become something. And if so, it is resting in rat-invested repose, on days between its glory as a premier NYC music venue, and whatever the future holds. I know it will be better than it is, but I doubt it will surpass what it was.

Last Tuesday, on my grandson James’s 5th birthday, a tornado hit in Ridgefield, CT – 5 miles from my house. I checked the records and the last documented event of this kind transpired in 1799. Stated another way, there were more than 80,000 days between twister touchdowns in this quaint corner of Fairfield County. We were without power/connectivity until Friday. When the lights finally came on, my neighbors set off fireworks, proving indisputably that there are many ways to celebrate the days between.

Meanwhile the Grateful 500 lurches upward and is on the threshold of reaching its previous apex of valuation glory. Captain (Trips) Naz continues its climb to the heavens. Government and Corporate Bonds, Precious Metals, EUR, JPY, GBP, heck, even the long-forsaken cryptocurrency complex — are all ascendant, inviting you to join them beside the rising tide.

And this is why what I want to talk about if you come with me there. I see a common thread in the form of a loss of economic power attributable to the U.S. dollar, which, over the days between the big viral outbreak and the point of this correspondence, is incrementally less effective as a unit of exchange against virtually anything for which one might wish to swap it. This sort of thing ebbs and flows routinely, and I don’t think it’s the end of dollar days by any means. Moreover, I will admit this: I have a more difficult time unpacking FX markets than I do even tying my shoes (which I rarely do).

But as a unifying theme for this multifront assault on our heretofore-much-sought-after unit of account, I see two patterns emerge:

• Despite the galactic amount that is already out there, the market is anticipating incremental oversupply of the Dead Prez.

• All of this monetary pumping has re-energized my long-held belief that there is an acute and growing shortage of supply of investible securities.

So, everything that’s not a dollar is getting hoovered up with abandon, even as the former is being shunned and ghosted at levels that no one can fail to notice.

I think this all continues for a spell. From a data flows perspective, we’re about to enter one of the quietest periods of the year. Earnings are substantially in the books. As are introductory Q2 GDP estimates. The July Jobs Report dropped on Friday, and it was, on balance, encouraging. There’s lots of political nitpicking in these realms, and we are light years away from what, in days gone by, passed for a fully functional economy. But 1.8M new gigs and a ~1% drop in the base rate are tidings for which, though not dead, I am nonetheless grateful.

And I suspect that risk assets will retain a fairly robust bid for, say, the rest of dying August. So, come with me or go alone; there’s nothing I see to stop the rising tide.

However, I strongly suspect that the markets will alter themselves dramatically by Labor Day and beyond. I don’t know what form they assume; too many unknowable path dependencies (Public Health Conditions, Domestic Politics, our simmering throw-down with China, etc.) block the view. So, I ain’t gonna make a call one way or the other.

I will, however, freely characterize the current moment as being The Days Between. And I hope we can all make the best of them. Some in my acquaintance will wallow in Jerry-land, and you have my permission to pay whatever homage to him that you see fit.

Just don’t overdo it is all. Maybe try someone else. You could, for instance, dial up a little Adele, and, who knows? She may surprise you. Go to NYC and show it some love. Avoid B.B. King’s; maybe instead have dinner on a rooftop overlooking the riverside with someone you really dig. We’ve got some things to talk about.

But as is my responsibility, I will ask, whether you come with me or go alone, to proceed with caution.

Because there are days, and there are days, and there are days between.

And these, unmistakably, are them.

Let’s use all of them wisely, shall we?

TIMSHEL

By: Ken(neth Louis) Grant

Turning and turning in the widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

— “The Second Coming” William Butler Yeats

Please join me in offering a shout out to my man W.B. Yeats, for writing maybe the best damned poem in the history of the English language. It’s a dystopian vision of a New Nativity which (one must allow) captures certain aspects of the current ambiance with eerie precision. And I don’t want to freak y’all out, but the hundredth anniversary of the piece’s original publication transpires early this November. A point at which we will obtain actionable evidence as to whether indeed the center cannot hold, the presence/absence of conviction of the best, and the level of passionate intensity exhibited by the worst.

And believe it or not, these concepts will be tested beyond the mammoth event of the 2020 election. The weather will have turned by then, bringing with it a likely a new resurgence of the force of those viral cells everyone loves to hate. It’s not like they haven’t been partying all summer, and, if the infectious disease specialists can be trusted at all, this means that matters, on that front, are likely to turn incrementally problematic within a matter of a dozen or so weeks.

And surely this will breed more socioeconomic problems, as if we didn’t have enough of those with which to contend even now. The hard fact is that in all probability, our already treacherous economic slope is likely to steepen, challenging each and every one of us — whether or not we decide, through the election, to wallow in redistribution, re-regulation and retribution.

But we’ll get to all that. Beforehand, I have a number of notions to lay upon you regarding this week’s poem of choice, the first of which is that if you haven’t read it, you should. Clocking in at 23 lines, it will tax neither your time nor your bandwidth, particularly as compared to, say, Edmund Spenser’s “The Faerie Queene” (~35,000 lines) or even “Don Juan” by Lord Byron (15,920).

If you have encountered it, read it again. Brothers and Sisters, it will do you know harm.

Our title derives from its last line. It offers a great heading on its own (which is why I’m using it). But here, I am late to the party. The fabulous Joan Didion rode it to titular glory in a book of short stories about Haight/Ashbury in the height of its magical Mid-Sixties madness.

And, in thieving it from her, I should mention that it’s one of three book titles that have driven me, as an author, to mad jealousy.

The others? Well, first, there’s “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand: a flawed book which nonetheless also captures a terrifyingly identifiable portion of the current ethos.

Then there’s William Faulkner’s “The Sound and the Fury”. I had always thought the title was a bit over the top, until I got the joke. It derives from Macbeth’s speech in Act V, Scene 5, wherein he describes life as a “tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”.

And the first quarter of “S&F” is narrated from the perspective of the mentally disabled adult son of the family tracked in the story.

Get it? For what it’s worth, I really liked the book, which, by all accounts won Faulkner the 1949 Lit Nobel. But (trust me on this one), it falls short of the magnificence of its “prequel”: Absalom, Absalom!” which (like Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird and the posthumously released “Go Set a Watchman”) was written afterwards.

Anyway, these are the titles I envy.

And meanwhile, to me, the early returns corroborate Yeats’ admonition, at least insofar as: 1) the center is not likely to hold; 2) the best are indeed conviction-bereft; while: 3) the worst? Well you get my drift.

It’s true in a lot of realms, right? I’m going to do my best here to avoid the obvious political parallels; let’s instead focus on the markets.

Where, at the moment the center cannot hold. In any corner of the investment universe. The dollar is in free fall. As are global rates. Commodities, particularly precious metals, are being bid to the heavens.

Much of what has transpired over the last several sessions is framed by two critical data streams: U.S. (- 33%)/Euro GDP (-40%), and Q2 Earnings. The latter of course have had pockets of sheer delight, particularly the FAAGs (Facebook, Apple, Amazon and Google), whose CEOs faced a Capitol Hill Star Chamber Inquisition on Wednesday, only to, each of them, report blowout earnings on Thursday.

All of which has kept our stalwart equity indices on the march to higher ground. And I personally believe that the fix is in for the Gallant 500 to, at minimum, test, if not shatter, all-time high valuations.

Well, OK, but don’t you find it all just a little bit odd?

However, know this my lovelies. There’s a baller of a bid out there for financial assets of every stripe, as indisputably catalyzed by all of that funny money we’ve been printing over the last decade, and particularly this year. We’ve spent a great deal of it; of that there’s little doubt. But there’s more in the till, and it will get hoovered up. Consider, if you will, that the move to record low yields on the 10 year is transpiring at a point when the Treasury Funding Gap (measuring the need to float paper to meet anticipated obligations) has exploded:

Ten Year Yields:

Treasury Funding Gap:

This chasm will close, serenely, by new issuance, which inventory-starved investors will greedily gobble. And if they don’t the Fed will belly up, because it will have no other choice.

So, what to do? Maybe what we’re supposed to channel the rest of W.B. Yeats’ masterwork:

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

I do indeed wonder about the nature of the beast currently slouching towards Bethlehem, and can conjure up any number of hideous creatures, literal and figurative, that could fit the bill.

But I’m not overly fired up to either inventory or describe them.

Just know this: from a market risk perspective, they are out there. In force. My guess is that they will impact the markets in unforeseeable ways, in the not-to-distant future.

So be forewarned. And if (when) you see the shadow of indignant desert birds, my I advise you not to ignore them.

But in these dog days of summer, I further suggest that you not to over-exert yourselves in search of the Bethlehem Beast. We’re not likely to have advance warning of his arrival, because as falcons turning in a widening gyre, we are genetically rendered unable to observe the falconer.

But when he gets here, we will certainly feel his presence.

And so, maybe, just maybe, instead of Yeats, we should focus on Didion’s version of Slouching Towards Bethlehem. There are lovely, petite, hard copy versions of this short-story compilation. I know this because I recently acquired one. Alternatively, you could listen to the audio version, through your earbuds. You know, the ones that are in the new container you now carry on your keychain?

One way or another, and particularly in your new PJs, and accompanied by your best friend, it’s an experience I can highly recommend.

And as for the rest? Well, Slouching Beasts come (and go) as they will. And there ain’t much we can do about them, except mind our business and hold on tight.

TIMSHEL

By: Ken(neth Louis) Grant

Spot Check Billy got down on his hands and knees,

He said: “Hey Mama Hey, let me check your oil, alright?”

She said “No, no, honey, not tonight,

But if you come back Monday, come back Tuesday, yeah, and then I might”

— Lowell George/Little Feat

Yeah; there’s a fat man. In the bathtub. With the blues.

Do you hear him moan? If not, maybe you should check your ears. Because he’s moaning like a motherf@cker.

In fact, many fat men. Literal and metaphorical. All with the blues. All moaning.

I would gladly count myself among them, but the truth is I’m not, or at least am no longer, a fat man. Down like > 60 big ones from my high a couple of years ago. You should see me now; you really should. But under the circumstances, I reckon it’s not possible.

I moan nonetheless. In part for all of the moaning fat men. In all of the tubs. Across the entire world.

In extending out from last week’s theme, it should be noted that the world’s second ever militarized nuclear weapon, dropped on the moaning Japanese city of Nagasaki, was also named Fat Man. But the 75th anniversary of that shindig isn’t until August 9th. So, perhaps we’ll revert to the subject in a couple of weeks; perhaps not.

Meantime, midweek, at least to me, the Gallant 500 looked like nothing so much as a bunch of fat men, not moaning, but bellowing, with bodacious bluster. And why not? They had waddled their way to positive territory for the year, and within a skinny 100 handles of all-time-peak valuation. Fattened their fat @sses through Thursday’s open, but then, presumably, fatigue set in. Which will happen to fat men.

Those that bought in around the Thursday mid-morning high of 3280 took something of a bath.

One has to feel sorry for fat men these days, because in addition to the shade they routinely throw across the sunlight, mad shade is being thrown at them, from every direction. And all they can do is take it. And, maybe, jump into the tub, apply some Mr. Bubble, and start bellowing out the blues.

And I suppose that now is as good a time as any to say a sad farewell to one Peter (Greenbaum) Green, Founding Member of Fleetwood Mac, and a leader in the long line of great Jew Blues guitarists. Actually, there aren’t a great deal of them, but the cupboard is, on the other hand, far from empty. There’s the great Mike Bloomfield, for instance (also dead). And I think that you can justifiably throw Mark Knopfler on the list, not to mention Mountain’s Leslie West, and of course, my all-time fave: Jorma Kaukonen, of Jefferson Airplane/Hot Tuna fame. As probably the biggest JA/HT fan you’ll ever meet, I’m here to tell you that you should check Jorma out. But you probably won’t. And as us Tuna-heads are fond of saying: “if you don’t know Jorma, you don’t know Jack”. There’s a pun in there, but you’ll have to discover it yourself.

Back to Peter Green, though, for a second, who shed his mortal coil on Saturday. First, most of you probably don’t know what he looked like, which is this:

Kind of Christ-like, no?

I was pleasantly surprised at the notices his demise received on the wires. He was, after all, the forgotten Macster. Split before all of that Buckingham/Nicks Hollywood BS catapulted their latter-day, smarmy pop to fame and fortune. Green spent those years in relative anonymity. But never disappeared altogether. He made his mark.

And, for the purposes of this publication, it should be noted that while could belt out the blues with his throat and axe like few other Jews alive, he wasn’t a fat man. In fact, in perhaps his best-known piece, a blues tune called “Oh Well” that you should definitely check out, he admits as much himself:

“Don’t know about the shape I’m in, I can’t sing, I ain’t pretty and my legs are thin.. Don’t ask me what I think of you, I might not give the answer that you want me to”

But now he’s gone, and it devolves to the rest of us to attend to the myriad problems that plague us.

As for me, I think we’re in a bubble. I’m not suggesting that it’s going to burst immediately. But eventually it will, as it must. The physics of the situation pretty much dictate that bubbles explode at their maximum achievable point of expansion, and we may not be there yet. But this bubble is filling up with a range of menacing, terrifying, gaseous risks that cannot expand it much further and still allow it to remain intact. And, as I did when this whole mess began (an unthinkable trimester ago), I am taking the liberty of summarizing them in the following table (note: all observations are intended to reflect market impacts; not the views and opinions of the recently unmasked author of this publication).

A Read ‘Em and Weep Inventory of Prevailing Risks

I could go on, but presumably you get the idea. The squeaky-clean fat man is moaning up a storm, and something in the markets has gotta give, right?

On the other hand, there’s trillions of dollars of under-deployed cash – at Treasury, the Fed, and yes, even in those institutional investment accounts and (astonishingly) personal savings accounts. Piles and piles of paper bearing the images of American fat men from days gone by. And if that’s not enough, as indicated above, borrowing is so cheap, that they’re almost begging you to do it. As one example, thirty-year mortgage rates hit an all-time low this past week:

Please Ignore the Wording in The Upper Left and Note the Path of 30-Year Mortgages:

Between this and the delicious goodies sure to come next week in the form of Stimulus 3 (in which episode Congressional members seek to outflank one another in an hysterical effort to deliver to tastiest package they can to the electorate, before exiting – stage left – to their districts, for a wheezy, tepid, victory lap) there’s cause for optimism. I’m pretty sure that the market’s gonna be happy with the bill, because, after all, what fat man worth his cellulite doesn’t like free candy?

Still and all, investing at these levels reminds me of nothing so much as taking plunges for small change, and, like Lowell George tells us in this week’s song: “don’t want nobody who won’t dive for dimes”. And I don’t. Want nobody who won’t dive for dimes, that is.

And dimes, insofar as 10 of them equate to a single unit of our fat, flabby unit of account are moaning as well. The Dollar Index, in case you hadn’t noticed, is absolutely getting bitch-slapped this last while:

DXY: Fat Benjaminz Taking the Plunge:

And it’s not just against other bloated, misogynist currencies that it is being bested. Commodities of virtually every stripe – Grains, Oils, Energy, Softs, Precious Metals, Industrial Metals, and the like, are all regaining some long-lost mojo.

Heck, even our portly, porcine pets – Live Hogs — have managed to gin up something of a bid in the last few sessions. Perhaps this is due to the new rules being put in place in certain urban jurisdictions, demanding that specific forms of food be served to every thirsty tavern patron within city limits. Chicken  wings didn’t make the cut, but it’s a fair bet that hog jowls did.

So, let’s dime-dive, shall we? It’s a little bit like day drinking. It’s not the sort of thing of which you perhaps should make a habit. But on the right day, with the right company, it can be pure magic. Let’s just make sure we contemporaneously fill our bellies with government sanctioned sustenance.

And, by Thursday morning, we may be famished anyway, as, at 8:30 Eastern, the Commerce Department is scheduled to offer up its first morsel of information on Q2 GDP. Current consensus estimates are for a drop of 35%, which I gotta guess is a significant record plunge. Better fill our bloated belies and our body basins while we still can.

I’m filling the tub right now, and ask you to please jump on in with me. The water’s a bit hot, but we’ll get used to it, and my oh my, won’t we be cozy in it together?

If you’re answer is no, I hope it is followed by a hopeful, thematic: come back Monday, come back Tuesday, yeah, and then I might. In fact, I’d like to lock down Tuesday.

Beyond this, a good deal of the dive diming this coming week will likely be driven by earnings. It ought to be interesting, given that this week’s roster of fat men at the podium include the fattest of the fat: AMZN, GOOOOOOOG, FB, AAPL, which, along with MSFT (which reported this past week), command an astonishing 22% of the heft of the Gallant 500. A single set of software, hardware, social media, e-commerce and internet search engine companies hoover up all but 78% of what comprises our benchmark index.

That’s a lot of flabby virility in the bathtub, my loves, leaving < 80% to be split across the rest of the private economy. You know? The part that feeds, shelters, heals, transports and clothes us? They’re all in wet, tight quarters.

So, if the fat men are moaning, they come to do so honestly.

Like I stated above, I’m moaning myself. And you know the reason why. Eventually, we’ll all have to get out of this damned tub, dry ourselves off, and get to where we have to go.

Though it is wrought with peril, I remain determined, and particularly look forward to walking my thin legs to our divine, final destination.

And in conclusion, as Peter Green(baum) might say about all of this: “Oh Well”

TIMSHEL

By: Ken(neth Louis) Grant

“Now we’re all sons of bitches”

— Kenneth Bainbridge (Test Director, Manhattan Project)

Yeah; I figure I’ll roll with this whole modified byline thing. At least for now.

Meantime, 75 years ago this past Thursday (7/16), Robert Oppenheimer and a team of physicists from the military and academia successfully detonated the world’s first atomic bomb. The location was tower in a forlorn, godforsaken spot in the New Mexico desert. At 5:29 a.m., Oppenheimer pressed the button. The tower vaporized in tremendous explosion. When the dust settled, all that was left was (no lie) fine green glass. Bainbridge uttered his famous phrase. Yes, we were all, from then on, sons of bitches.

And the world was changed forever that day. Less that 3 weeks later, Truman dropped “Little Boy” and “Fat Man”, respectively, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Eleven days after that, Japan surrendered to the Allies. And, son-of-a-bitch: World War II was over.

As I’ve written many times, for the next 75 years (1945 – 2020), the West – particularly America – enjoyed an historically unprecedented era of peace and prosperity. Yes, there were problems aplenty. Korea. Vietnam. Watergate. The Energy Crisis. AIDS. 9/11. The Crash. And, of course, that misguided film production of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely-Hearts Club Band, starring Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees.

But compare this experience to the preceding three generations (1870 –1945). Two World Wars and a Great Depression. The emergence of communist dictatorship in Russia and China. The Spanish Civil War. Other stuff. Or the 75 years before that (1795 – 1870). The American Civil War. The French Reign of Terror. I could go on. Or further back. But must I?

So, I hold it as resolved that virtually all of us within the ranges of these pages have lived in sweet times. And long before this newly emerging interval of (at least on a relative basis) uber buzz kill, I’d wondered if it was sustainable. History would suggest not. History suggests that we’ve been playing with house money for longer than we had a right to expect.

Have our house chips now run out? We don’t know for sure, but it’s a reasonable bet that they have. That we’re in for a much tougher slog from here on in. I’m not saying we are, but man oh man, don’t the air feel heavy in our lungs lately?

And if our fabulous innings in the sun were only meant to span 75 years, if we are indeed re-normalizing the human experience back to its long-standing protocols of folly (which we never lost), disease, disaster and the like, then the ironies of comparison between the end of our golden era and our re-entry into grim, historical reality, are notable The Manhattan Project was the “writ large” manifestation of the tremendous impact of the universe of particles and sub-particles, interacting with one another, in close proximity. Then, as now, they can, and beneath our eyes, wreak unspeakable havoc on the masses. And as it goes with atomic (and subatomic) particles, so it goes with viral cells. In 2020, as in 1945, the core of the destruction cannot be seen by the naked eye. Perhaps it was ever thus, as, to lift a quote from one of my heroes: William Makepeace Thackeray “when sojourning among savages (who are out in force of late), man fears the mosquito more than the lion”.

Kind of has a ring of authenticity to the present day, now, don’t it?

But I reckon we have no choice other than to gather ourselves – perhaps under the titular banner of a New Manhattan Project. And if we do, we may just want to consider starting with Manhattan itself, which (along with the other four boros) is a hot mess at the moment. Worth a try? Well, remember, the original MP ushered in 75 years of conditions, for which, at the moment, we can only pine.

The markets carry on, seemingly untroubled by it all, and this renders me concerned that we lack the conditions needed to jumpstart New Manhattan. Consider, if you will, that the original project emerged as a desperate race against Hitler to develop nuclear weapons. He was close, you know, and does anyone really doubt that: a) he might’ve won; and b) had a) transpired, he would’ve lost even a moment in lobbing his own Fat Boy (Fetter Junge) over New York, London and Moscow?

But so long as the markets carry on as they have, largely untroubled by the declining economic conditions unfolding before us, said urgency is in short supply. And they have. Carried on serenely that is. This past week, the Gallant 500 waltzed briefly into positive territory for the year, before getting winded and settling at a still astonishing -0.19% year-to-date. Its dance partner, the lovely Vixen VIX, met its every step in the opposite direction, with Ginger Rogers aplomb, registering its lowest levels since late February, when everyone thought covid would play out as little more than a pesky but minor annoyance.

And this pair was hardly the most joyous at the ball. Record issuance and credit problems to beat the band notwithstanding, Investment Grade Debt baskets now trade at all-time records, and are annualizing at fat double digits for 2020:

But (of course) all of these hoofers have been forced to yield the floor to Captain Naz, which preens and prances from one record high to the next and is annualizing at 25% in what we might at some point characterize as the investment equivalent to the Grand Ballroom on the Titanic.

And all of it brings to my mind nothing so much as images of a financial particle collider/atom smasher, just being rolled out for testing purposes, like those original MP prototypes developed under the football field at the University of Chicago’s Amos Alonzo Stagg Stadium in the early ‘40s. On one side of the machine, we’ve got decades high unemployment, record debt, no visible way out of the Public Health Crisis for, at best, several months, and (likely) years ahead of economic impairment. On the other, we have, to date, $6 Trillion of stimulus.

Note that the latter is all additional debt of one form or another. Thee $3 Trillion CARES Act is financed by incremental Treasury issuance. The other $3T of Fed Balance Sheet expansion is funded by the creation of new fiat currency, which is nothing more than a promise by our government as to its validity to meet any and all future obligations. If you doubt this, just bust out your wallet and look at the fine print that accompanies the images of those recently criminalized icons of our past: Washington, Lincoln, Hamilton (?), Jackson and Grant. Take a look. It’s there on the left.

So, what I observe is a policy approach under which, to address the increasing fundamental insolvency we face, we just borrow more. And why not? It’s been tried before – not just by governments but also by businesses and individuals. And once in a blue moon, it’s actually worked.

But know this: these mega particles are certain to both expand, and, ultimately, to collide. There will be vaporizations, and maybe even some green glass. And we just don’t know what else, but it will be fascinating to observe in its unfolding. Particularly if, as a nation, we choose this (dubious) moment to correct nearly 2.5 centuries of perceived social injustice, aggressively redistribute our (dwindling) resources and wealth, rewrite our history so as to throw mad shade on our forbearers, limit the words we say and the stories we tell for fear of offending someone, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

I want you to know that I recognize my critical role in guiding us through this once-in-a-lifetime change in conditions. I know you are there with me, and this is what gives me strength. Though we are small compared to those stars we gaze up at in the Northern Skies, together, we will be too many for them. We just gotta get through it is all. For better or worse. For richer or poorer. In sickness and in health. Till death do us part.

But we gotta tread lightly, fearing the mosquito more than the lion. As was the case 75 years ago this week, we’re all sons of bitches now. But it’s not like we ever shed this designation. Maybe every 75 years ushers in a new era, and if so, then maybe this one has just begun.

I think there are worse concepts with which to commence than a New Manhattan Project.

And if this notion does take hold, all I ask is that you remember where you first encountered it.

TIMSHEL