No Apologies
From Powell or Me
I watched Powell speak from Jackson Hole, WY on Friday and felt shortchanged after taking in his less-than-10-minute address.
I couldn’t tell why exactly I felt the way I did, but then it hit me after I read the following post on LinkedIn on Saturday morning, part of which is a section of an article from the Financial Times.
As a quick preface, I’m a big fan of Mohamed El-Erian - economist, businessman and president of Queens College, Cambridge (Yes, I like him despite the fact that he’s the head of an administration at a university. And yes, I even liked some of the administrators I worked with at universities - one in particular very much.)
El-Erian is one of the only major economists that’s continuously pointed out and critiqued so much of what Powell has been doing wrong over the course of the past two years or so. He’s consistently stated how dangerous Powell’s actions - or lack there of - have been.
When I read this post, it finally hit me what was missing not only from from Powell’s address yesterday and but from all of his addresses especially over the course of the last eight months or so: an apology (or some semblance of an admittance of accountability).
Can you imagine making life harder for billions of people around the globe by reducing the value of their labor by continuously eroding their purchasing power, while at the same time destroying the wealth that people have stored in markets - and causing the financial economy to get so bad that it begins to impact the real economy, as less businesses now have the resources to hire? I can’t.
I’d probably die of guilt. But I was raised Irish-Catholic and I’m prone to wanting to die of guilt, so I guess that’s just me.
Speaking of me, let me expand upon and provide some nuance for some of the thoughts I shared (in a not so nice manner) in the last edition of the newsletter.
I received a number of texts and emails about what I wrote a few days ago (see link above in previous paragraph). Some people texted me to say that they agreed with what I had to say. Some simply told me that they liked it. Yesterday, my oldest sister told me in person that the line about my skills in front of a whiteboard cracked her up.
Upon hearing this, I first apologized to her about all of the profanity, before explaining that I write the way I do because I write from my gut and blah blah blah. Her response was something to the effect of “Sometimes that’s what being honest sounds like.” (Admittedly, while the emotion behind what I’m saying is honest, I know that I can paint a picture that’s often far too black and white.)
Anyway, this calmness came over me. And then I told her that, oddly enough, I had her in mind when I wrote about college being a scam.
She’s a 39-year-old single mother with two kids who’s looking to go back to school to become a nurse. She has an undergraduate degree and taught for the better part of a decade. Yet, next semester she’s enrolled in a Western civ. course and, a few semesters ago, she had to take an English course.
Why? Because the college said so.
She wants to become a goddamn nurse and the school has her taking 101 liberal arts courses with 18 year olds. How can these institutions even espouse to teach critical thinking if this is how their systems are structured? And this is just one dimension how how backward and corrupt these institutions are. You’re taking money, time and life energy from a person who’s already done the work you’re asking her to do and whose time would be better spent with her children. I’ll get back to my thoughts on universities a little further down, though.
Let me rewind to people getting in touch with me after I published the last edition of the newsletter… I first want to thank you all for actually reading what I write. It means a lot to me, as I don’t take your attention for granted.
Second, please know that I don’t always feel good about how I say things. Sometimes, I walk around feeling a tremendous amount of guilt and shame about the less-than-pretty language I use (again, raised Irish-Catholic). I was raised by good parents, and I am capable of saying things in a nicer manner (But just think about how much more boring this newsletter would be… right?)
In efforts to contextualize some of my critiques of both universities and the Democrats, I’ll share the following things about myself.
I was raised in a household where higher ed was the holy grail. Both of my parents worked hard to help me get a good education. This does not mean they paid for all of my university schooling, though. They did help, but a lot of my higher ed debt still rests on my shoulders. And because all of my education doesn’t feel like it was worth what I paid for it - including the time I spent at a public college - I feel like I was duped in a way.
It’s not that my parents duped me into believing that college was important. In their generation, it was very important - and in some ways it still is - like if you want to enter a licensed profession… like nursing (though, the pathways to obtaining licenses could be heavily revised).
But we now live in an age where information is democratized and where we can learn from free online resources like podcasts, YouTube and newsletters. Hell, if you can curate a decent FinTwit feed, it can be better than getting an MBA.
Regardless, I don’t say that college is a scam because the idea of sitting in a classroom to learn from a specialist in a field is inherently a bad thing; I say it because I no longer think it’s worth the cost. And these institutions and the people who work at them want you to believe that they are more important than they really are.
I could go on about this as I have about a billion stories from my experience as a teacher and a student that I could share that drive me crazy. For now, I will just say that I truly do believe that most college programs operate under the principal of artificial scarcity, and I think this is having a terrible financial - and therefore psychological - effect on my generation the generation after mine.
Now, the Democrats.
I’m still a registered Democrat (though, I think of myself as more of an Independent). I’ve never voted for a Republican candidate in my life. (That would change if I had the opportunity to vote for Francis Suarez.) And before I continue, that simple fact I am a registered Democrat doesn’t make me a good or bad person. I know and love a lot of people who are registered Republicans and I dislike a lot of people who are registered Democrats - especially the holier-than-thou righteous ones. Besides, I’m now more interested in where you stand on the Keynesian - Austrian spectrum of economic thought than I am in your political beliefs.
But I continue to vote mostly Democrat and sometimes third party for a reason that I will illustrate below.
The following tweet represents what much of the Republican party has become.
I don’t know what scares me more about people like this in the Republican party: the fact that politicians like this maybe believe ideas like the one above or that they simply don’t care and are willing to say such things to rev up their base (not that the Democrats don’t say ridiculous shit to rev up their base; it’s just less ridiculous IMO).
If you believe that there’s some truth in the statement above, let me please explain to you that Donald Trump and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. have little-to-nothing in common, other than the fact that maybe they were of the same species.
I want to say that I despise Donald Trump, but I feel like people’s contempt for him is what gives him fuel. So, I will just say that I feel he’s an incredibly dangerous human being, far more dangerous than anyone I can think of in the Democratic party. I think just about the same of the likes of Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz and Lindsay Graham.
These people aren’t conservatives; they are psychopaths.
I had an uncle who was an architect who passed a few years ago. I spent an afternoon in his hospital room with him a few weeks before he passed and he told me about the time he almost won the contract to design a building for Trump.
He ended up not getting the contract, and when he met Trump at a meeting a few months later, he said to Trump something to the effect of, “We almost worked together. I recently applied to design a building for you but didn’t get the contract.”
Trump replied, “That’s probably better for you, because I wouldn’t have paid you anyway.”
And this is really one of the less dangerous aspects of Trump’s personality.
I don’t really need to comment on the type of human being who would say something like that, and I’m just going to guess that that wasn’t the way Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. talked, so Marjorie Taylor Greene, you can go fuck yourself for even trying draw such a parallel.
BUT, just because Trump and others of his ilk in the Republican party exist, doesn’t mean that the Nancy Pelosis, Joe Bidens or Hillary Clintons of the world get a pass, and it doesn’t mean the policy they pass or try to pass is immune from critique.
Not being Trump or not being a far-right Republican isn’t sound policy. It’s an excuse for not crafting and implementing sound policy, especially when you have the House and Senate on your side.
Democrats like Nancy Pelosi are sociopaths. And most others are just spineless/toothless cowards who’ve been purchased by lobbyists. And they keep getting to try to brand themselves as the “good guys” because they vote in favor of some policy that appears to be good for the poor.
And so the choice we often get to make when we vote as Americans today is as follows: spineless/toothless cowards and sociopaths vs. psychopaths. Real good stuff.
In all honesty, it was probably never much different. The best president we’ve had in modern history from an administrative standpoint - Bill Clinton - was still raping everybody (and repealing Glass-Steagall in the process).
People who seemingly have at least what appear to be principles like AOC on the left or Justin Amash on the right are few and far between (and accomplish virtually nothing).
Oddly enough, though, they tend to agree on what’s truly wrong with America today.
I share the thoughts above because I get the impression that sometimes people think I’ve “changed”.
I guess in some ways, I have. The most fundamental shift in the way I view the world is that I believe more than ever that the best systems on Earth are the ones that give humans the freedom and ability to solve their own problems. I’ve developed a healthy distrust for experts and highly-bureaucratic institutions, whereas in the past, I used to think that the people with the most knowledge had all of the answers, as naive as that may sound. I now see how dangerous it is to trust anything (or anyone) other than your own gut when making important decisions. Systems that protect your right to do that are the best systems.
No, I haven’t joined a Bitcoin or crypto cult. I’m intentionally hyperbolic when I write about crypto (though, I do try to curate the best info I can find on the asset class when I write about it). A lot of you need to develop a sense of humor. That being said, I do think Bitcoin is an absolutely amazing counter to the absolutely shit central banking system we have today, and I also think it’s an incredible tool for human rights. It’s not the savior of the universe that some make it out to be, though. Society and the systems that govern it are and will always be complex, and “fixing the money” doesn’t “fix the world” as some “Bitcoiners” (what a fucking cringe-y term) might say. The world doesn’t need to be “fixed”; it just is what it is. In my humble opinion, though, Bitcoin makes the world at least marginally better. It’s been a financial lifeboat for me, so I will continue tout its benefits.
Yeah, I run my mouth here and use a lot of bad words. Sometimes, I feel like I can’t help it. I grew up biting my tongue and putting on a front like everything was okay, when internally I was a mess. Plus, back in 2012, I started hanging out with comedians in New York City and in watching them perform and sitting and talking with them after their sets, I felt this immense sense of freedom. I admired how they were able to say the things they’d say. I used to say to some of them “But what if your mom hears you say these things?” and that the name of my comedy record would be “Please Don’t Tell My Mom”. When I write, I think about how Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock or Ali Wong (I heard she’s recently divorced; if anyone’s got that connect, please tell her I love her and will do anything for her) would say what I was trying to say - and then I say it that way. If what I say offends your ideology or your fragile ego and that doesn’t feel good, there’s an unsubscribe button somewhere in this email. Feel free to click it.
In all of the best ways, I haven’t changed. I still care deeply for the people around me, and I still hate to see human suffering. I just have a different view than I once had on what’s causing that suffering from a macro viewpoint.
So, while I know that I probably don’t have to go as hard as I do in the newsletter sometimes, I’m not going to apologize for it. I’m a flawed human being with a clinical OCD diagnosis, and this is where I rant when the dots don’t line up in my mind.
I don’t write to be right. I write to simply offer my views on things. Sometimes, the things I say are meant to agitate, yes, because I’m a human being and have EMOTIONS. Sometimes, I get angry. Please understand, though, that my viewpoints don’t automatically have to become yours and that I care for you regardless of whether or not our perspectives on the topics I write about align.
And whether you agree or disagree with the things I write, I hope that some of what I’ve shared in this newsletter has opened up your mind in some way.
Had I not opened my mind to learn from true conservatives like F. A. Hayek, William Easterly, Nassim Taleb and Thomas Sowell to name a choice few about the soundness of money and its impact on society as well as numerous other topics, I would have done myself a great disservice.
Okay, that’s enough.
This was edition #102 of the newsletter. Whether you’ve been reading from the beginning or subscribed somewhere along the way, thank you. And thank you if you’ve take the time to leave a comment or let me know in some way that this has had an impact on you.
We’re living through some strange times, and I don’t take for granted the privilege I have of documenting them both here and at my job as a professional writer.
I know I haven’t always made the best calls about the market and I’ve felt immensely guilty about it. I’ve honestly never had less of an idea where markets will go from here, but I think everything that’s happening in markets and in the economy right now is offering us all a massive learning opportunity, and I’m going to keep sharing my thoughts about what I’m observing - even if I sometimes do so in a sloppy and ineloquent fashion.
(B+ content with A+ consistency. This is my formula.)
Big love and big hugs to everyone.
Best,
Frank
Twitter: @frankcorva
