Why is the stock market hitting record highs? Why are oil futures not even higher? Even if the Strait of Hormuz were reopened immediately—which it will not be—it will take six months or more to restore oil supplies to an Asia that is already running short. The IMF says the odds of a recession are way up. Why aren’t traders paying attention to the slow-motion disaster heading our way due to the Iran War?
Denial-Based Economy
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The TMI Show" talk show. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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The stock market is frequently detached from “reality” (TM). The mathematics are inevitable. The DJIA is a “basket” of stocks (i.e., a “representation” selected by people whose interests are very, very deeply intertwined with keeping everyone thinking that everything is awesome). So, much like the numbers on a scratch-off lottery ticket, you aren’t being given a random set of elements to match “your” numbers with. It’s a rigged field. And the people who do the rigging, rig it so everything tends to go up. But, should a DJIA company falter, much like a transgressing nun in the 1950s, it is removed. The Ship of Theseus, at least for finance.
Keep in mind, none of this reflects the “health” of the company in the sense of how happy its workers are, how well they’re treated, how their benefits package compares to other companies in the same industry, etc. It’s just about the stock. It’s like looking at something like Mark Zuckerberg and saying that because he’s very rich, he’s better. The whole civilization is predicating on rewarding vulpine degeneracy such as Zuckerberg’s with power, praise, and special dispensations. In a better world, he’d be under careful supervision. In our world, he has all the politicians on his phone list and when they answer, it starts with “Yes, sir. What can I do for you?”
The K shaped economy is real and fortunately (and/or thanks to my own intellect and hard work) I’m on the right side of the K
Those who are subject to systemic oppression know that good fortune, intellect, and hard work are not sufficient. “I ask no favor for my sex, [race, religion, spoken language, citizenship, education level, geography, etc]. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.”
There are stock indexes that are broader in scope and harder to manipulate, and they are up too. Yes, this is a money victory, at least temporarily, for those who own stocks. But not so much for those who earn their bread through their labor.
And the fact that stock prices are up isn’t magically always because companies are making good products more efficiently. There’s the bribes and kickbacks to Trump so that he will send government largess (i.e. our tax money) to the largest of the corporations. And there are the corporations that are making money because their wares are bombs and other armaments that are killing people. There are the companies that are selling our information (but not paying us for it!). And there are companies that are burning through our energy but not paying to clean up the pollution and/or are otherwise raping our environment. The list goes on.