What
can go wrong will go wrong.
It’s so fundamental to the operation of the universe that Sir Isaac Newton
should have installed it between his 2nd and 3rd Laws of Motion — but he had his hands full
losing a fortune in Britain’s South Sea Bubble circa 1721, after muttering to a
colleague that he “could calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies, but not
the madness of the people.” Note to all you hedge fund cowboys out there: Old
Isaac was probably smarter than you (and all the algos you rode in on.)
Was
it a fretful Thanksgiving this year, a family feud of political recrimination
with a lot of teeth gnashing through mouthfuls of candied sweets? Well, yes,
coming after the extraordinary fiasco of the Kavanaugh hearings and the
disputed midterm elections, but the glide path to Yuletide looks kind of bumpy,
too, so here’s a short bill or particulars of things tending to go wrong:
Ukraine
verges on martial law after a naval incident with Russian ships in the waters
off Crimea. Say what? Martial Law? They might as well declare a Chinese Fire
Drill. Details of the actual incident around the Kerch Strait between the Black
Sea and the Sea of Azov remain murky besides the fact that two Ukrainian
gunships and a tug disobeyed orders from Russian ships to stand down in Russian
maritime waters and shots were fired. Who knew that Ukraine even had a navy,
and how can they possibly pay for it? But now NATO is trying to get into the
act, meaning the USA will get dragged into just the sort unnecessary and
idiotic dispute that kicks off world wars. Note to the Golden Golem of
Greatness (aka Mr. Trump): this dog-fight is none of our goddam business.
Russia, meanwhile, asked the UN Security Council to convene over this, which is
the correct response. What could go wrong?
Late Monday update: I’ve heard reports this
afternoon that Russia had intel Ukrainian ships were transporting an explosive
device supplied by NATO which they suspected was intended to be deployed to
blow up the strategic bridge across the Kerch Strait. Still unconfirmed chatter.
Developing story….
Tuesday morning update: It’s worth reading
this blog by The
Saker on the situation. https://thesaker.is/about-the-latest-ukronazi-provocation-in-the-kerch-strait/.
(Something is preventing me from making clickable link.) He writes:
“Considering the current
single-digit popularity rating of [President] Poroshenko
and the fact that he has no chance in hell to be re-elected (at least not in
minimally credible elections) it is pretty darn obvious of why the Ukronazi
regime in Kiev decided to trigger yet another crisis and then blame Russia for
it.”
Sunday,
about five hundred Central American migrants rushed the border at Tijuana. The
US Border Patrol tear-gassed them and they backed off. Bad optics for those
trying to make the case for open borders. Naturally, The New York Times portrayed
this as an assault on families,
defaulting to their stock sob story, though the mob assembling down there is
overwhelmingly composed of young men. Complicating matters, a new Mexican
president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, takes over next Saturday, a Left-wing
populist and enemy of Trumpismo.
Tijuana is now choking on the thousands of wanderers who were induced to march
north to test America’s broken immigration policies. What could go wrong?
Congressional
Democrats are said to be “loading the cannons” with subpoenas for Trumpsters to
get raked over-the-coals in a circus of committee hearings when they take over
the majority in January. They’ll be matched by Senators firing back in hearings
controlled by Republicans, setting up the worst political pissing match since
the Civil War. In a fair universe, enough dirt would come out on either side to
disable the most sinister forces of the Deep State — especially the seditious
“intelligence community.” But life is unfair, as Jimmy Carter once observed and
the exercise will only fan the flames of already-extreme antipathy. What could
go wrong?
The
engine pulling that choo-choo train of grievance is Robert Mueller’s Russian
Collusion investigation. I expect him to produce mighty rafts of charges
against Mr. Trump, his family and associates, and anyone who ever received so
much as a souvenir mug from his 2016 campaign. But I doubt that any of it will
have a bearing on Russian election “meddling.” And in that case, the charges
will be met by counter-charges of an illegitimate investigation, meaning
welcome to that constitutional crisis we’ve been hearing about for two years.
That’s a mild way of describing anything from a disorderly impeachment to
troops in the American streets. What could go wrong there?
Finally,
there’s the elephant in the room with the 800-pound-gorilla riding on its back:
the economy and its diabolical engine the financial markets. Anyone notice on
the lead-up to Thanksgiving and Black Friday that the markets have been going
south (and not on holiday to Cozumel)? Stocks are roaring back up again as I
write. The TBTF banks and their ringleader, the Federal Reserve, have had a few
days to engineer a rally, and the sharper it goes up, the more remaining
“greater fools” will get roped in for eventual slaughter. Bond rates are
charging back up too, meaning the price is skidding down. Bad combo. The poison
cherry-on-top is Bitcoin, which has plunged about 40 percent in ten measly days
to a 3000-handle and is headed to zero. So sad, as The Golden Golem might put
it. It seemed like such a sure thing less than a year ago. What could have gone
wrong?
