We Want Peace, Others Benefit from Chaos

A brief tour of a world in disarray

On this Monday we are presented with a weird state of affairs. In the past month we have seen Trump almost assassinated, what looks like a palace coup which has installed Kamala Harris as the Democratic Party nominee, a Middle East that as of this moment seems poised on the edge of a level of violence not seen in a very long time - possibly ever in the modern era, a Japanese stock market crash, an American stock market that might be crashing, riots in England over the stabbing of three little girls by a Muslim immigrant, Taiwan conducting air raid drills in anticipation of a Chinese invasion, Russia grinding through the mud and a Ukraine that is clinging on despite the new F-16s we just sent, not to mention a war in the Sudan that has UAE, French, Russian, Ethiopian, Egyptian, and who knows what other interests involved.

The whole world is in a rather nasty state. But things could get far nastier.

Will they? We don’t know. There is no clear ping from our spidey sense right now. There are a million obvious scenarios that could play out but we are old enough to know that when things flare up, they can also flare down. What was last week’s “crisis” suddenly can become old news with a quick turn of events. What looks like imminent war can suddenly become less imminent. What appears predestined can quickly appear impossible. This is the nature of human events. So we generally take a “wait and see” attitude.

Saying this we are also old enough to know that a giant confluence of chaotic factors like we see now is probably not good for you and me. They are good for some people, but for most people probably not.

Let’s take a brief look at these various crises. (And in some cases who benefits.)

1. Trump almost assassinated

Obviously it’s good for Trump, he lived. He also got a bounce out of the event and the images from the shooting in Butler Pennsylvania were compelling. I don’t care if you are the ultimate blue haired, p**sy hat wearing, hyper-woke Democrat, those images were compelling.

Kamala Harris also benefited. It is doubtful that she would have become the Democratic nominee had Trump been killed. The group, or as Tulsi Gabbard refers to them, the cabal, surrounding Biden (and now Harris) would probably have ridden the Biden thing out and then figured out what to do after Biden was sworn in again.

2. The Biden White House palace coup

Yep, Biden is the big loser here. He didn’t want to step down, but he was fired by the Democratic Party’s senior partners, most of whom were not elected by the American people. There is a reason Obama set up shop in Washington DC after his presidency, in violation of all norms and in our opinion respect for the Republic. Valerie Jarrett, Blinken, the Soros crowd, the Clinton machine, all of these folks and maybe a few dozen others are the ones kind of collectively running the show it appears. These folks need a figurehead, an employee who will be compliant. Kamala will be compliant. She knows where her bread is buttered.

3. The ongoing war in the Middle East

One could argue that Netanyahu stands to benefit from the war. It keeps his legal and domestic political issues at bay, and if he can emerge from the war with Israel making clear security progress, he might even emerge a hero.

The war also benefits (as of this moment) Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran. It makes them look like heroes themselves in the eyes of many in the Middle East (but by no means all). The war means more money and an opportunity to score points in what for them is a decades long attritional war. Iran knows it has no chance against Israel which is a nuclear armed state (which also, reportedly, has nuclear submarines) as long as Iran remains nuke-less, and maybe even if Tehran had deployable nuclear weapons.

4. The current stock market troubles

Well congrats go out to “all” of you guys who shorted the market last week. Congrats to Warren Buffett for getting out of half of his Apple position just in time, adding yet another mini-chapter to an amazing career.

As I write this the Dow has closed down over 1000 points. This is one of those days when I am glad I am no longer a financial advisor. Life will go on, and if you are positioned correctly and are disciplined in your strategy the market moving down, even in a big way, is probably long term good for you. When does one buy stocks? When they are on sale. I don’t even know that they are on sale yet. (Of course if I did I’d be writing this column from the top deck of my yacht and not from my basement office.)

At this moment things look chaotic. If they continue to unwind steadily (or even worse not steadily) over the next week it could be really ugly. If one is coming right up on retirement the downdraft could be bad for you. Overall though it’s probably a good thing for your 401K if you are that kind of investor, which most American investors are.

5. The England riots

We don’t see many good things coming from this mess. We think that the riots likely play right into the hands of a Labour government that would be more than happy to ramp up the surveillance state far beyond the extraordinary levels in Britain currently. Think facial recognition always with AI monitoring everyone with predictive algorithms running over it all. It sounds kind of nuts, or bonkers as they say in the UK, but it is really not that far off.

Whether the riots help the UK firsters at all is an open question. But we definitely see the street fighting as benefiting Big Brother ultimately.