Game Over Globalists

In this post, I’m going to show that the West is in a deep, dark depression that has been contained for 20 years by authoritarian and quasi-authoritarian policies. I believe the destruction of these governments and the people ruling them has begun at every scale: internationally with a growing war against Russia and China, nationally with populist uprisings and locally with secession movements gaining momentum. This even extends into the spiritual realm with battles and schisms within the Catholic Church and Protestant denominations. What follows could be better or worse, but we are entering the period referred to as the Fourth Turning by Strauss and Howe, predicted by cyclical historians such as Turchin and Tainter. These all serve as background and help place this post in context. For this post however, I will focus on Socionomic signals.

How to Determine Social Mood

Socionomic theory postulates that society is driven by waves of social mood. These waves are detectable in broad financial instruments such as stock markets. The hardest thing for most people is the arrow of causation. While there can be random events, for the most part socionomics says events follow mood, not vice versa. Stock markets fall because people are depressed, not because people get depressed about their falling stock portfolio. Individually, people can be all over the map, but the majority are experiencing the dominant social mood.

tl;dr There are positive mood waves evidenced by bull markets and negative mood waves evidenced by bear markets.

A straight read of the charts would say mood was very positive in the past decade because stocks didn’t peak until 2021. My personal version deviates from the official read over at Socionomics.net because I believe the stock market became a failed signal when the Federal Reserve instituted quantitative easing.

Here is the Fed’s balance sheet vs the S&P 500 Index, both on the same percentage scale. The two move in lockstep with a deviation during the first part of Trump’s presidency, when large corporate tax cuts created an organic valuation increase. (If you expand it into a another window, you can also see that is the only period when the stock market went up when QE wasn’t going on. Again in 2022, the stock market stopped rising as soon as QE was shut off.)

If the stock market is a busted indicator of social mood, then one can use the broader culture as a Socionomic indicator. Robert Prechter laid out much of what I’ll discuss below in a 1985 report. A PDF of many socionomics articles is available at the link, with the article in question being the first one: Popular Culture and the Stock Market.

What are cultural signs of negative social mood? Horror dominates the box office. The original Universal horror movies debuted in the 1930s. Horror returns in the 1970s with Freddy and Jason emerging at the tail end of the bear market. Horror has been in an upswing for 20 years now…

Fertility is a signal of social mood. Depressed people have depressed fertility.

Gender-bending is also a sign of negative mood. The 1970s had androgyny. The 2020s have people mutilating their children’s genitals and a trans movement powerful enough to cancel. Not only does this suggest negative mood, it suggests a depression on par with the 1930s if the extremism of gender-bending is in any way proportional to where stock prices would be without Federal Reserve intervention.

I’ve also been documenting cultural signs on my other blog. Some cultural highlights include:

Terror Pop

Socionomics Predicted Trade Tensions

Collapsing Fertility Might Hint at Collapsing Financial Markets

Socionomics Alert: Major League Baseball Contracts Farm System Again

Socionomics Alert: Stock Market Peaks Amid Record Horror Haul

Socionomics Alert: Struggling Hollywood Hits Horror Jackpot

Socionomics Alert: Comedies Aren't Funny

Majority of Americans Now Oppose All Immigration

Here’s a cheat sheet from the article, Popular Culture and the Stock Market. Where would you place social mood right now? Remember that popular, mainstream culture is what matters. What is broadcast on NBC News or in Hollywood movies, not what is popular in smaller corners of the Internet even if they are growing. The emergent mood is bubbling up within subcultures. Which political movements are against junk food, pro-natalist, working out, have nostalgia for eras of positive mood such as the 1950s or 1980s…there you will find likely candidates for political and cultural leadership when this dark period ends. For societal social mood though, focus on what dominates.

I see a clear period of negative mood based on cultural trends.

I could go on and on, and have at my other site. You can find the posts under the Socionomics tag. Others signs include anti-heroes in film and television. The Sopranos and Dexter being two of the early entrants. One area I’ve been attuned to is negative mood around migration. I see the broader media as also being politically controlled with hivemind thinking. Immigration polls without loaded questions show a majority of the public has wanted lower immigration for more than a decade. In Europe, they even hate tourists now. Vancouver immigrants themselves have called for bans on foreign homebuying. If you doubt whether this is spurious correlations akin to reading tea leaves, I saw Donald Trump emerging in 2014 in a post titled, Immigration Issue Set to Explode in America; Prepare for Political Volatility. I’ve made and continue to make predictions accurate enough to accumulate winnings in betting and financial markets.

Politics

Instead of government’s responding to shifting public mood, they’ve suppressed political volatility congruent with their suppression of financial volatility. With policies such as immigration they’ve been extremists. They’ve flooded countries with migrants when the public wants immigration reduced. Policy and social mood have move in opposite directions. The result could well be total immigration bans and mass deportations across the Western world when the backlash inevitably hits. Then came the lockdowns, Internet censorship, forced vaccines, travel bans and so on. The globalist, neoliberal ruling class in the West has been playing with fire for a decade. Trump winning in 2016 might be a 3 on the shock scale and we’re heading for 7, 8, 9s and even 10s.

The peak of social mood in my opinion, was 2000. The euro came into full circulation. The EU would emerge as a major political entity, but you may recall many countries voted no and “had” to revote. Starting in 2010, there was turmoil around debt in Southern Europe. Since then we’ve had Brexit. Hungary is threatening to leave due to its treatment by Brussels. The EU is punishing Hungary, Poland and other nations that don’t toe the Brussels’ line. The trend is towards fracture and independence. Few will disagree that globalization is in retreat.

The latest electoral surprise was the Dutch farmers who emerged from nowhere to become the largest party. It follows a string of formerly-fringe nationalist parties that have become dominant in European politics, often via the issue of migration and national sovereignty. In this case, the Dutch government planned the wholesale destruction of farmers with a “green” policy that called for halving nitrogen emissions by 2030. The government revealed plans to seize 3,000 farms last year.

In the United States, there were the Russiagate lies, the first Trump impeachment based off a phone call with President Zelensky (I believe Russiagate and the impeachment episode reveals there were plans for a Russia-Ukraine war in a first Clinton term), a second Trump impeachment, the raiding of Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago. States kept their schools and economies locked down in 2020 to harm President Trump, while they simultaneously unleashed violent riots across the country. January 6th was likely a false flag operation with FBI informants inciting the initial violent break-in at the Capitol. There’s also evidence the Capitol Police helped trigger the riot by firing tear gas into the crowd. Whatever it was, it wasn’t a coup or an insurrection by any stretch.

Now there are plans to arrest President Trump. I do not believe this was motivated by anything buy politics, but the timing is very curious.

Economy and Markets: The Rivets Start Popping

Here is a chart of the S&P 500 Index in 1973 and 1974 with important dates relating to the Watergate break-in, impeachment hearings and Nixon’s resignation.

If you believe history is random or progresses linearly, everything I’ve written above is spurious correlation. A series of curious coincidences. If instead there are cycles in human history and patterns in human societies, this suggests we are situated in a similar period of dark social mood of undetermined scale. This could be the 1970s if we’re lucky; something more like the 1930s or worse if not.

Here is the current stock market lined up with 1973 and 1974. It’s off by about 100 days. If the form holds, markets will tumble into April, May and or June, whereas they bottomed out in early autumn 1974 with a test of that low in December 1974. The losses in the market thus far are far smaller than in 1974.

Normally, analogs don’t work for very long. This time, there are so many political and economic similarities maybe the analog will have stronger predictive power. Here for instance are some Federal Reserve publications from 1973 discussing the economy. A discussion of high inflation and the Arab Oil Embargo.

As Arthur Burns, the chairman of the Federal Reserve at the time, explained in 1974, the “manipulation of oil prices and supplies by the oil-exporting countries came at a most inopportune time for the United States. In the middle of 1973, wholesale prices of industrial commodities were already rising at an annual rate of more than 10 per cent; our industrial plant was operating at virtually full capacity; and many major industrial materials were in extremely short supply” (Burns 1974).

Substitute the Russia-Ukraine war and Russia sanctions for the Arab Oil Embargo and it’s a very similar story. High inflation was well underway and then an exogenous energy shock hit the economy.

The U.S. financial markets are also in turmoil, with moves on par with major crises, bear markets, crashes and recessions: Bond-market volatility at highest since 2008 financial crisis amid rolling fallout from banks

On Monday, following a weekend government intervention to protect the depositors of California's Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank in New York and to backstop deposits at other institutions, the policy-sensitive 2-year U.S. note yield experienced its biggest one-day fall since Oct. 20, 1987 by the end of New York trading -- though, outside of U.S. hours, the rate dropped by the most since 1982. That intraday drop of almost 60 basis points exceeded the declines seen during the 2007-2009 financial crisis/recession; the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks; and 1987's Black Monday stock-market crash.

My focus at this Substack, and my day job, is finance. You can browse other posts to see I’m very bearish not only because of everything I’ve written above, but because of macroeconomics, Federal Reserve policy and equity valuations among other factors. I believe a major bear market began last year and said so at the time in posts such as The Bear Pill, Asset Inflation Is Over, For Now and This Might Be A Big One. This however is a subset of what I see as a much larger event now coming into focus.

What I’m seeing in politics, international relations, domestic politics (such as chaos at the borders) along with the banking crisis is the confluence of multiple negative societal trends aligning within an environment of extremely negative social mood. I believe a window has opened that could see extreme financial market volatility on par with 2008, September 2001 and October 1987.

I mention 2001 because I also believe society is at risk for shocking events that can range from terrorism to war, to surprise elections and Black Swans. The window for major political change is also opening, but going back to the 1973-1974 analog, Reagan didn’t run until 1976 and didn’t win until 1980. A similar time scale would see a new political direction in 2028. If instead this is an order of magnitude larger wave such as the 1930s, the transformative period may not come until the early 2030s.

Good Game Globalists

The Globalists had a nice run, but instead of adapting to changing social mood, they’ve blindly pursued their own agenda. When democratic systems told them no, they forced people to vote again. If that didn’t work, they’ve used anti-democratic means to delay, prevent or reverse the popular will. They have increasingly governed like authoritarians. They eschewed compromise for punishment. Instead of adapting, they’ve become more rigid. In the process, they’ve become more isolated and more paranoid. They no doubt realize their position is increasingly unpopular and their hold on power increasingly brittle.

They also can no longer hide their contempt for ordinary citizens, reaching a new zenith in 2023. A massive chemical spill in East Palestine, Ohio was ignored by the upper echelon of the federal government for weeks. There has been no rush to help the citizens. There is no bailout for people who cannot return to their homes, who have lost the most valuable asset in their family: their home. The most important factor for quality of life: their health. In contrast, the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve rushed to rescue a bank used by wealthy technology investors and corporations, to protect them against losses that would amount to small fractions of their overall wealth. Moreover, Treasury Secretary Yellen admitted their bank bailout plan will not cover small community banks used by small business and middle-class savers.

Their behavior has awakened enemies from all corners. They are at war with Russia and China, the two main challengers preventing global domination by the United States Government (USG). Within their own countries, they are at war with nationalists, farmers, truckers, nuclear families, AI, cryptocurrency, people with frog or anime avatars on social media, doctors, anti-war activists, unions…the list goes on! They are at war with the Invisible Hand in markets, trying to prop up corrupt and broken financial systems. Spiritually, they are at war with God, with all that is Good, True and Beautiful.

This coming period is one where many will say, “All Hell is breaking loose.” If you believe as I do, that recessions and bear markets are cleansing processes, if you agree that we are well into a period of extreme negative social mood that has been hidden by expansive welfare states, central bank control over financial markets, political control over media and social media, totalitarian oppression with lockdowns and forced vaccines, then you should be optimistic. This might not be Hell but Heaven, albeit the Wrath of God.

If we are prepared to take advantage, be it positioning for profits in the falling markets to working towards genuine political reform, rebuilding communities and building healthy, happy families, then this period can be the first step to a brighter future. The Globalists won’t give up without a fight though. They are fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian. They will fight to the last Pole, to the last German, to the last American if given a chance. They will destroy the U.S. dollar and government bonds in their struggle to maintain wealth and power. They have set American against American to prevent an opposition movement capable of winning a supermajority of voters.

In the end, they cannot fight Nature or God. Get right with Jesus and get ready. We will soon cross the event horizon of the Fourth Turning. If prepared, what emerges on the other side will be our choice.