Back To The Big Short

All the glee over the GameStop short squeeze in the past several days actually reminds me of a very good recent film, The Big Short (2015), We have it on DVD and watch it at least once a year. It's a fictionalized version of a true story about various contrarians and outsiders who foresee the 2008 housing crisis and in effect short the US economy via the housing market.

The 2021 short squeeze actually reverses the circumstances of The Big Short, since in the current case, the forces of dark financial consensus are looking to clean up by shorting GameStop, expecting its price to go down, while the contrarians and outsiders see an opportunity to confound the establishment by buying up GameStop stock, forcing the big boys to buy it back at inflated prices.

In The Big Short, the outsiders and contrarians realize the housing economy is a bubble and find a way to short the market, expecting it to go down when the establishment expects prices to rise forever. But the message is the same. A sympathetic group of not-quite little guys outsmarts a monolithic consensus supported by backroom cronyism and old-boy loyality.

Unfortunately. the ultimate message of the film is that the little guy suffers. The outcome of the 2008 crisis, played out during the election, was that Democrats and Republicans worked in concert to make sure this would happen. In 2021, I don't see much difference.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday it “shouldn’t be a surprise” that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was paid to speak to Wall Street, including a hedge fund involved in the GameStop populist investing struggle.

Yellen, a former Federal Reserve chairman, was paid $810,000 by hedge fund Citadel for three events in 2019 and 2020, according to disclosure forms.

The firm reportedly infused $2 billion into Melvin Capital Management, a hedge fund hammered by losses in the GameStop struggle waged by smaller investors.

2021 isn't the Great Reset. 2021 is return to business as usual, or maybe an attempt to do so, The COVID lockdowns figure into things this time -- they didn't have to work this hard at enforcement in 2008.

Backing Off The Narrative?

I've followed Angelo Codevilla for 20 yers, since he outlined the tension between the "ruling class" and the "country class". His most recent piece suggests the lizard people, or whoever it is, have decided to back off the COVID lockdowns.

But as much as the oligarchs enjoyed COVID powers and dreamt of segueing them into a “new normal,” they knew that America could not be locked down forever.

They especially knew, were they to unseat Trump and become responsible for the country, their charges that he had failed to stop the pandemic would come back to haunt them. “Why can’t you stop it?” would be the natural question they would have to face as the virus did what airborne viruses do: spread. Hence, after January 20, dismounting the COVID tiger, albeit gingerly, became the order of the day.

He cites in particular California Gov Newsom's lifting of his regional supplementary lockdown on Monday. After Codevilla wrote, New York Gov Cuomo made a similar move, though he waited some days to do so after telegraphing it last week.

I'm not sure this signals any sort of beginning-of-the-end for the lockdowns. The restrictions both Newsom and Cuomo lifted were supplemental impositions over and above those that had been in effect, and remain so now, over much of 2020. For instance, I can (for now) legally get a haircut in Califonria, but barber shops are still essentially restricted to one customer at a time, no matteer how many barbers or chairs are in the place, so the barbers are still losing money, and customers have to scramble to book appointments.

And both Newsom and Cuomo are weak men with histories of vacillation. If either the media or the lizard people tell them to clamp down again, they'll do it. In addition, while Los Angeles County has allowed some measure of indoor worship since December, the rest of the state does not, and LA County can prohibit it again at any time based purely on someone's whim.

It reminds me of an exchange someone reported to Scott Adams a while ago. Two people are driving n a car. One asks, "I wonder how much that job pays."

What job?" asks the other.

"The job where you change the traffic lights from red to green."

That job pays what the governors of New York and California are paid. It's not a good sign that Dr Fauci is now musing about making people wear two masks. So far, he hasn't advocated doubling social distancing to 12 feet, but it's probably not a good idea to give him ideas.

The YouTube commentator Hard Bastard, one of the best, has family background in Jehovah's Witnesses and sometimes draws parallels with cult behavior in society at large. The other day he noted that the Kingdom, unlike observant Christians and Jews, has endorsed government prohibitions on group gatherings, indoor worship, and proselytizing door to door. (Indeed, Hard Bastard says since Witnesses are not saved by the Blood of Christ but instead by going door to door, this is a critical ocncession for them to make.)

Hard Bastard concludes that Jehovah's Witnesses are deeply impressed by the opportunities for control the COVID crisis has given petty authorities, and they endorse it.

I don't think this is going to go away anytime soon. It's worth noting that Trump had no strategy to deal with the lockdowns all last year, he erred gravely in elevating Dr Fauci as an authority, and in my view, it's a mark against his record. For now, nobody has a coherent strategy. This is urgently needed.

East Of Eden: Why You Have To Read The Novel

Because I'd been thinking about East of Edem lately, my wife and I watched the 1956 Elia Kazan film on DVD over the weekend. It's unquestionably one of the greats, but because Kazan limited its scope to the last third of the novel, there's an enormous gap in the portrayal of Adam Trask, Caleb's father, that leaves an important issue unexplained.

As I've said, East of Eden covers a swath of what might be regarded as recent memory as of the early 1950s, much like Middlemarch in the early 1870s. a 65-year period between the Civil War and World War I, three generations of the Trask family. Kazan leaves the patriarch, Cyrus Trask, completely out.

The problem is that, like Middlemarch, East of Eden has secrets, and a key one is buried in Cyrus Trask's career as a professional Civil War veteran who becomes some sort of Washington, DC fixer -- exactly what he does isn't specified, except that although Cyrus loses track of his son Adam, he leaves both Adam and his brother a substantial inheritance.

Exactly where this money came from isn't explained, and it's likely a secret to everyone but Cyrus (and presumably those who paid him off). One problem is that Caleb's father, Adam, was a drifter who'd had problems with the law until the inheritance came along, when, just like that, he was able to buy a ranch in California and become a respectable gentleman farmer.

Although the film refers vaguely to the very brief marriage of the psychopathic itinerant prostitute Cathy Ames to Adam, the fact is that after Adam buys the ranch, he's been effectively living a fantasy, asking no serious questions about Cathy or what became of her, and certainly no questions about the inheritance that brought him prosperous respectability. In fact, it's implied that the ranch never paid off, and Adam's sale of it and the family's move to Salinas was probably a result.

The film covers none of this backstory. It provides context, though, to Adam's ill-conceived scheme to freeze lettuce and ship it back east, a bubble that bursts in a matter of hours when the shipment is delayed and the lettuce thaws. Caleb, holding his father in great respect, develops a scheme to speculate on the price of beans in the runup to the US entry into World War I and restore his father's wealth to him -- without understanding that the money his father had invested had itself come from a highly questionable source. Caleb's profit came much more honestly than his father's (and we can't completely ignore a context in the Parable of the Talents, either).

Poor Caleb. I've been there. But Kazan, for whatever reason, completely omits this irony.

So the central event of the film, the birthday party in which Adam rejects Caleb's gift as coming from war speculation, insisting Caleb return it, is actually a manifestation of Adam's general moral fog, refusing to recognize his wife is madam of a nearby brothel and refusing to recognize the source of his own wealth and respectability, insisting on his own moral purity in the face of ordinary conmmercial activity around him -- commercial activity at which he's been a failure, something even Caleb doesn't fully understand.

This isn't in the film, and you don't see it unless you've read the novel. In fact, maybe unless you've read it several times.

Steinbeck is a highly underrated writer.

Newsom Lifts The Double Secret Lockdown

On December 9, Gov Newsom issued a completely new regional lockdown order based on prospective ICU capacity that covered most of California. This was over and above an existing color-coded lockdown order that was itself draconian, limiting family gatherings and prohibiting indoor restaurant service.

The new order went farther, banning haircuts, manicures, facials, outdoor restaurant service, and most travel. This was effectively the same as the lockdown imposed between March and May 2020, with some added permission for limited "non-essential" retail.

I've callled this the double secret lockdown. Yesterday, Newsom lifted it, with little notice -- he telegraphed it only the night before, when the California Restaurant Associatioin released a letter from him giving them a heads-up. Newsweek, clearly unhappy he'd done this, nevertheless pointed out the contradictions:

Up until this week, California has been under one of the harshest lockdowns across the country. But Governor Gavin Newsom moved to reverse those orders amid an effort to recall him from office.

Despite no significant improvement for the state's overwhelmed intensive care units (ICU), public health officials announced Monday that regional coronavirus stay-at-home orders across the state will be lifted, allowing restaurants to immediately resume outdoor dining.

. . . {T]he state's coronavirus dashboards shows that two regions currently remain nowhere near the required 15 percent. ICU capacity in the San Joaquin Valley is at 1.3 percent, and the number of hospital beds available in Southern California, the state's hardest-hit region, remains at zero.

The lack of improvement in the state's coronavirus figures raises question as to why Newsom would begin lifting orders now, as the parameter he set hasn't been met everywhere.

Newsom caught a lot of criticism for easing restrictions mildly last May, with much handwringing in the media over whether he'd done it "too soon". Subsequnt experience seems to indicate that the disease does what it does, irrespectivve of lockdowns. Los Angeles County locked down before Thanksgivinig with dire wanings of what would happen to grandma over turkey, but cases soared throughout the holidays nonetheless.

That Newsom would loosen things now even without any improvement in ICU capacity suggests he may be recognizing on one hand that lockdowns are futile. On the other, he may be responding to pressure, given the continuing success of the recall campaign in gaining the million-and-a-half signatures needed to qualify for the ballot.

The proble,m is that Newsom is unreliable. When a lawsuit by San Diego area churches objecting to closed worship services got to the US Supreme Court in May, Newsom allowed them the same weekend, and the court declared the issue was moot and refused to hear the case. Newsom then closed churches again six weeks later.

This can happen again at any time. But Newsom can as easily declare that the stars and planets make barbers, restaurants, and churches unpropitious and shut things down again any time it suits him. Lawsuits insisting there is no rational basis for existing continued closures -- for instance, of indoor gyms or indoor dining -- are stalled in the courts. An astrological basis for new lockdowns would have the same de facto authority, it would seem.

The whole environment of red light-green light at the authorities' whim is incredibly destructive. A big problem is that the elites, including the media, are effectively insulated from its effects. Newsweek, which nobody reads, thinks this sort of thing needs to continue.

Lawsuits need to continue, even if Newsom strategically relaxes restrictions in hopes of making them moot. Precedents need to be etablished. So does the recall Newsom campaign -- even if he lifts this or that as expedient, he needs to be out to keep him from doing this forever.

John D Rockefeller Saved The Whales

I watched Bp Barron's Sunday homily yesterday, in which, beyond discussing the reading from Johah himself, he urged listeners to go to Fr Mapples's sermon from the 1955 film of Moby Dick on YouTube. I've embedded it above. I would have embedded the whole film as well, but YouTube won't let me, as it's age-restricted. (There are gruesome scenes of actual whales being killed, which probably carry out Melville's purpose more than that of the Hollywood version.)

The actor portraying Fr Mapples is Orson Welles, by the way.

I had been thinking about Moby Dick anyhow. I think I've read it five times, once as an undergraduate, once in grad school, and three times since then. I'd set it aside for some time, as I'd begun to have my doubts about how serious Melville actually was as a writer. (Joseph Conrad annotated a copy of Moby Dick and thought little of it.) On the other hand, I've had almost ten years of Catholic Bible study, and this has made me conscious of how familiar Melville, along with many of his comtemporaries, was with scripture on even a casual basis, and this brought me back to reconsidering the novel once again.

Melvillle was a nominal Presbyterian, but I'm not sure if he was ever observant. Nevertheless, Moby Dick begins with a reference to the Abraham saga in Genesis, contains a sermon about Jonah quite early, and ends with a reference to Job's servants who survive calamities only to bring the news to Job. And all of Moby Dick is a reference to Job 40:25, "Can you lead Leviathan about with a hook, or tie down his tongue with a rope?"

The plot device, as well as the dominant metaphor of the book, though, is that the whales have begun to recognize that they're being hunted to extinction, and they've begun to change their behavior as a result. Not only are they resorting to large herds for mutual protection, but they're retreating to more distant oceans, and ultimately, like Moby Dick himself, they're turning on their tormentors. Melville suggests this is a human violation of both the natural and divine order.

The real-world twist here is that effectivly one man, John D Rockefellr, developed a system for refining and marketing kerosene, a product of mineral petroleum, that became cheap enough to replace whale oil for lighting in the post-Civil War period. For that matter, Standard Oil kerosene was cheap enough that it became the first stage of improved living conditions in the poorest parts of the world.

Not the narrative we want to hear.

The Narrative Has Shifted, But Nothing's Changed

A press release from the LA County health department on Friday read, in part:

Key COVID-19 Indicators Trending in the Right Direction in L.A. County

New cases are considerably lower this week, with a decrease of 30 percent in the seven-day average of daily cases from last week. The test positivity rate has also dropped to 12.7 percent. On January 1st, the test positivity rate was 20.8 percent; this is a reduction of 39 percent in three weeks. On November 1st, just before our surge began, the County’s test positivity rate was 3.8 percent.

Nevertheless,

While we have come a long way this week with community transmission, we have a long road to go and must continue to practice infectious control measures: wear a face covering and maintain physical distance when out of your home.

blah blah blah. What stands out for me is that while there's now lots of happy talk, there's no indication of any prospective change in the most draconian lockdowns we have in much of the world, and more significantly, no news on when the ordinary plebs can get vaccinated. (The Archdiocese of Los Angeles's position, by the way, is that the vaccine is moral, and Catholics should get it, sooner rather than later.)

While certain large parking lots have been designated vaccination stations, they're apparently amied largely at the uninsured. There's no news on where we can get shots at Kaiser.

This parallels President Biden's announcement that “there is nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic over the next few months.” This marks a radical departure from the variations on "15 days to flatten the curve" that we've heard over the past year -- but again, there's no accompanying indication that, although this amounts to an admissiom that existing policies haven't worked, anything will be done to change them. If it doesn't matter whether you can get a haircut in California or not, why not let us get a haircut?

In fact, I've seen commentary that, with some parts of the world locked down about as tightly as they can be, there's no practical next move available to authorities. This is probably at the root of curfew orders in places like Quebec and France: authorities feel the need to look like they're doing something, no matter how feckless the measures they impose.

I sort of hope this is an indication that the panic is entering a late stage, in which it begins to dawn on more people that we're reactng to an overrated threat. If the most effective measure against it, vaccination, isn't being pursued as the highest priority, something's badly out of whack.

I think what we're seeeing is incompetence at very high levels. Officials have backed themselves into a position they can't easily unwind. I wouldn't rule out an end game not much different from the Waco massacre, which was the tragic set of blunders that ended the Satanic day care panic in 1993. I pray about this stuff.

The Abolition Of Women

Yeesterday I brought up one cause of the 1980s day care Satanism panic, the underlying social tension resulting from wives and mothers working outside the home. This is actually one factor in the amorphous populist rebellion represented by Trumpism, the fact that middle-class incomes have been stagnant since the 1970s. The economic need for two-income households has been a direct result, and one source of Trump's support was his advocacy of policies that would raise middle-class incomes.

In fact, I recall a Wall Street Journal editorial in the 1970s recognizing the issue in a backhanded way, patting the US economy on the back for its ability to grow at all, given the numbers of women it had sudddely had to absorb into the workforce. But was this because women suddenly chose en masse to take outside jobs, or because they had to? And if the latter, why? The Journal didn't go into this, and given its contemporary never-Trump posture, will not now.

Women entering the job market in significant numbers has been a phenomenon since World War II. Before then, as a family friend explained it to me decades ago, "Nice girls didn't work in offices". Well, since then, nice girls do lots of things. This has had unintended consequences, none of them good for women. The most recent is the ability of men to identify as women and at least try to assert what in the past would have been regarded as female privilege. The incoming administration has officially endorsed this trend in the person of Dr Rachel Levine. Just a generation ago, this was a comedy routine.

I think the aspirational end point of this trend is some sort of recognition that women, if they aren't completely unnecessary, can be placed in a permanently subordinate role, because, with surgical, hormonal, and cosmetic enhancements, men can take over all their functions save reproduction (and they're working on that one). The highly preceptive TV series Fringe foresaw this with the all-male technologically enhanced race of humanoids from the future, the "observers". However they actually did it, it's plain from the show that only a father was involved.

It's a matter of great interest to me that the almost-forgotten 20th century commentator Ferdinand Lundberg had something to say about this, as far back as 1947. I want to stress again my view that Lundberg is a literary performer, not a sociologist -- but John Milton as a pamphleteer was a writer, not a social theorist, and the same applies to Solzhenitsyn, who was neither a historian nor a reporter in The Gulag Archipelago. With Marynia F Farnham, a psychiatrist, Lundberg wrote Modern Woman: The Lost Sex:

Lundberg and Farnham conclude that once women are forced out of the home by male aggression and advancing technology, women are emotionally and psychologically susceptible to neurosis. Once women leave the home, they lose their sense of emotional security, their ability to readjust to changing environments, and their ownership of femininity and sexuality. This confusion and instability is magnified by the "irreconcilable" demands of industrial society - capitalism, Communism, Fascism, democracy, and other political forces expect different reactions from women and become "both cause and effect...of widespread modern unhappiness."

More specifically, Modern Woman: The Lost Sex focuses on the effect of unhappiness and neurosis on female sexuality, approaches to motherhood and childbearing, and the development of modern feminism.

According to the Wikipedia entry at the link, Modern Woman: The Lost Sex was a bestseller at the time and highly influential, to the extent that it inspired Betty Friedan to write The Feminine Mystique in opposition to it. However, the Wkipedia entry here incorrectly describes Lundberg as a sociologist. His own entry describes him as a journalist and author and, in his later years, a professor. He collaborated here with a psychiatrist, which would have been desirable, since he was trying to outline the causes of what he saw as psychological dysfunction, but unfortunately, Farnham was a Freudian, which is now a largely discredited school of psychiatry.

But of course, Lundberg in 1947 was also writing a generation before hormonal birth control, whose availability has only served further to separate women from a biological reproductive function. The trend, which neither he nor Farnham could foresee, will be to continue removing female privilege -- separate men's and women's toilet and shower facilities benefit women, not men, as do women's sports programs. The current mainstream Democrat agenda is to eliminate both.

Such trends must certainly be driving the current forces of panic and hysteria, in both directions.