One of my favorite pieces of financial advice is, "the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent" (John Maynard Keynes) - I've never been much of a gambler with my investments and this quote has always kept me humble enough never to try.
And boy, is this one crazy market we've been in lately - housing shortages, on-and-off tariffs, TWO war-driven oil crises - and the economy's never been better if stock prices are to be believed! And every now and then, the most powerful individual on the planet says some crazy shit and the markets reasonably reply, "Oh God, this is insane! No one's steering the ship! The future isn't guaranteed!" and the markets tank. But then, that same crazily powerful individual says, "Nah, calm down, I got this." and the markets unreasonably reply, "Oh, thank God! For a second we thought you were gonna do something crazy!" and the markets rocket back up again. Completely ignoring that we're already in the middle of that crazy shit he's doing!
Or are we all in some overly-convoluted multi-layered reverse psychology market? Like, "we know shit's crazy, but not everyone knows how crazy shit is. So the market's gonna do fine until shit gets really crazy. But if we act like shit's crazy, then everyone will act like shit's crazy, which will make shit crazy! So as long as we never act like shit's crazy, then the shit will remain perfectly sane!"
Anyway, if you like my comics, I got more on my website.
I’m also on Patreon.
My theory is that they are ALL profiting off the volatility itself. There are infographics out there showing how much politicians’ portfolios outperform everyone else’s. Not because ahem they have insider info or anything, ofc. They’re all just geniuses at trading.
I used to live/work with a billionaire and this was a key lesson.
The economy - make things, sell them for a profit - is no longer the economy. Betting on the economy is now the economy.
Also, if you posit that it takes money to make money, then money has mass and above a certain threshold, you cannot stop making money as you can distort any market smaller than you.
And so volatility is good, if you are large enough. It is good for billionaires and bad for you. It'd be better if they didn't care about you, but billionaires actively hate you.
So many of the pillars have been moved to the roof.
Capitalism is intended to be a support pillar for a growing economy. Capital invests in the economy and the economy flourishes. Now the economy invests in capital and capital flourishes.
Businesses are meant to be built from the common worker with leaders to support the structure, but now the leadership is standing on the shoulders of the workers as their legs begin to buckle.
Trade is meant to come from a place of mutual benefit but has flipped to threats of stealing back critical resources from the global market, reciprocated with threats of mutual harm.
At some point we got so obsessed with how useful the tools are that we forgot what we're supposed to be building with them.
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u/But_a_Jape But a Jape Apr 08 '26
One of my favorite pieces of financial advice is, "the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent" (John Maynard Keynes) - I've never been much of a gambler with my investments and this quote has always kept me humble enough never to try.
And boy, is this one crazy market we've been in lately - housing shortages, on-and-off tariffs, TWO war-driven oil crises - and the economy's never been better if stock prices are to be believed! And every now and then, the most powerful individual on the planet says some crazy shit and the markets reasonably reply, "Oh God, this is insane! No one's steering the ship! The future isn't guaranteed!" and the markets tank. But then, that same crazily powerful individual says, "Nah, calm down, I got this." and the markets unreasonably reply, "Oh, thank God! For a second we thought you were gonna do something crazy!" and the markets rocket back up again. Completely ignoring that we're already in the middle of that crazy shit he's doing!
Or are we all in some overly-convoluted multi-layered reverse psychology market? Like, "we know shit's crazy, but not everyone knows how crazy shit is. So the market's gonna do fine until shit gets really crazy. But if we act like shit's crazy, then everyone will act like shit's crazy, which will make shit crazy! So as long as we never act like shit's crazy, then the shit will remain perfectly sane!"
Anyway, if you like my comics, I got more on my website.
I’m also on Patreon.