Faites vos jeux

Here we are, the eve of the US election: a vote which follows an unusually rancorous campaign in a nation more than normally divided by culture, ideology, and notions of ‘identity’ – real or affected.

To the extent we believe what their advisors have told them to say on the stump or promote in their slick, slanted advertising slots, Trump is the man who wishes to preserve as much of the status quo as possible – for good or ill – while Biden stands as the front half of a curious pantomime horse: a half-century veteran, machine politician who seems to aspire to eke out his dotage as head of the student union of some awfully Right-On, Liberal Arts college.

Given that society has become increasingly atomised and fractious -tribal, even – in recent years, perhaps the last thing this election is about is “The Economy, stupid” but – were it to be so, it would be hard to say that Trump’s pre-COVID term of office was not at least a qualified success, even if its accomplishments were simultaneously built upon the shifting sands of credit expansion and lessened by the protectionist atavism of his debilitating ‘trade wars’.

Biden, on the other hand, is a man who has stood for both nothing and everything during his long years guzzling at the Top Table but who now seems happy to stumble his way through whatever ‘progressive’ script his teleprompter-jockeys throw up before him.

It is typically the case in Western politics – particularly post-Soviet, Western politics – that elections are not just ‘advanced auctions of stolen goods’, as H. L. Mencken so sardonically put it, but sham battles between the Tweedledee Left-of-Centrists and Tweedledum Marginally-more-left-of-Left-of-Centrists.

Those pinning anachronistic Blue coloured badges to their lapels in the US, (unhelpfully, Red, Black, or Orange elsewhere in the world) are largely unprincipled careerists who perceive the greatest threat to their self-advancement to lie on the Water-Melon Green-Red fringe – and who also sniff the biggest bucks coming from the pockets of the biomass and bird-killer boondoggle rent-seekers who want to stop the seas rising another millimetre or two by regularly packing the coastal defences with fresh bundles of taxpayers’ dollar bills.

Conversely, their opponents are similarly unencumbered by a moral compass nor much possessed of experience of the rigours of having to earn an honest, private sector living. These chancers’ main strategy is to treat the small-c conservative voters whose values they notionally espouse as forlorn  political orphans and to proceed try to steal as many of the votes to their left as possible in order to command that minuscule plurality of a disillusioned or apathetic electorate who do bother to turn up to vote which is necessary to their personal advancement.

Should this shamelessness inspire their bedrock constituency to turn, in its disenfranchised frustration, to a newly-founded party or seek to elevate an outsider to the captaincy of their old one, they, it, and he will be routinely derided as being ‘populist and reflexively smeared as  ‘far-right’, its matrons and machinists, shopkeepers, and solicitors damagingly tarred as ‘neo-Nazi’.

The associated hyper-inflation might be ahead of, not behind, us this time around, but the Weimarian echoes of polarisation, street-violence and the demonisation of opponents are already here, at least in embryo. The 1920s saw the Rote Frontkämpferbund battling with the Sturmabteilung. We are treated to the edifying spectacle of Antifa versus the Proud Boys, though it must be said that the former’s numbers and organisation not only dominate the scattered hooligan bands of the latter, but also enjoy much barely concealed support among the media and the political mainstream.

Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind, do I hear you say?

Whatever the relative demerits of such roving bands of marauders, the only real losers in this, as in the previous, conflict are the good, ordinary folk of all colours and creeds whose simple civic pleasures, not to mention their valiant local businesses and routine interactions, are what fall victim both to the savagery itself and to the mutual suspicion and hostility it foments in its wake.

America is hardly alone in this, of course. Nor is much of it President Trump’s ‘fault’ – except inasmuch as he has proven anomalously resistant to the typical Western leader’s cowardly compliance with the never-ending assault of the Identitarian Left on all aspects of Enlightenment culture, their fellows’ cherished traditions, their bourgeoise politesse, and their everyday tolerance and understanding.

In reducing all of public life and most open discourse to either a Maoist ‘struggle session’ or a Stalinist show-trial, the 68-ers, – the ‘Soixante-huitards’ – now percolated up through the ranks of society to its most elevated levels of power and influence – have so successfully suborned the swelling battalions of aspiring young diploma-hunters that these latter new Red Guards and Young Pioneers have come perilously close to inaugurating a new Cultural Revolution every bit as terrifying as the old.

This we simply cannot allow. And so if Donald Trump – flawed, vain, truculent, often unlikeable human being that he is – is our best hope of warding off the intertwined, existentially-dangerous assaults on our lives, loves, livelihoods, and liberties which the unholy alliance of the Campus Communards and the reptilian Technotyrants of Davos are using the fear of this soi-disant pandemic to undertake, his much lesser evil is the one we must embrace.

And so to markets.

It is hard to say where this will all lead, once the dust settles, since we do not have much confidence in our estimates of how sincerely the contender has set out his platform, nor how quickly it will be enacted (or instead watered down by his backers) if he truly does intend that his promises be kept.

Nor do we know how quickly social peace can be re-established if the incumbent’s supporters are given cause to feel they have been cheated or, conversely, if the bid to evict the inhabitant of the White House fails, given that the Modern Left  has absolutely no ability to conceive that its arguments can be honestly rejected nor any qualms about denying the verdict of the ballot box should it ever go against them.

For certainty – for ‘closure’, to use that horrible pop-psychology phrase – we need a landslide whether Blue (shudder!) or Red (muted huzzahs!) and an indisputably large landslide is surely the LEAST likely of all the outcomes tomorrow night.

We can, of course, attempt a few glib ‘predictions’.

Team Trump will probably act to shield the oil and gas industry awhile from the Wind and Solar Barons whereas Team Biden may hand the country entirely over to the tender mercies of ‘War Powers’ Tom Steyer and the Sierra Club. But will that make oil prices rise, fall, or both  – and, if the latter, in what order? The Reds will allow the industry to grow – but with it expand supply. Buy stocks, short commodities. In contrast, the Blues will seek to plug up the wells and crush demand, but the impact of the first could easily overwhelm the effects of the second. Sell Exxon, buy crude futures.

What about the farmers? Neither side is likely to have much say in the state of Chinese harvests, Brazilian and Black Sea drought, or La Nina rains in Australia, but if the Blues act to outlaw the internal combustion engine, who will need corn or sugar for ethanol or oil seeds for biodiesel? Similarly, Tail-gate parties may be humming and barbeques a-roasting if Trump gets a second term, but the Weird Sisters behind Biden openly pay lip-service, if no more, to dogma that says meat is bad for ‘the‘ planet. Live hogs, anyone?

Moving beyond commodities, we know all too well that markets have been dominated of late by Big Tech, in a manner unheralded since the Dot.com/Y2k bubble of two decades ago. While the spectre of a ‘second wave’ persists, Biden’s crew are likely to hew more closely to a highly centralized Lockdown line whose lesser forerunners have already proven so lucrative to a few favoured digital oligopolists at the head of that industry.

For their part, the Donald’s Apprentice Boys are likely to be a touch more laissez-faire and more regionalized with regard to the response to COVID19 – thus affording bricks-n-mortar competitors some much-needed respite. They may also celebrate their continuation in office by seeking their pound of flesh from the censorious, Democrat-supporting, Tech Barons who have so blatantly sought to influence opinion against them during the election.

Another difference is that Sleepy Joe is likely to be less antagonistic to China than is Mr. Mar-a-Lago – whether or not because of dynastic Kompromat – and that, too, will may profoundly affect business decisions and revenue streams in the months ahead.

As for the fiscal/monetary mix – both will pressure the Fed to help absorb eye-watering quantities of new debt but, on the one hand, we face the prospect of untold trillions being thrown at the chimaera of the Green New Deal and, on the other, at least a semblance of support for private entrepreneurship to play a role in the healing process, so postponing the Sinification of boosting Commanding Heights SOEs.

All in all, it would be a shame to have to endure further unecessary disruption now that the US economy is showing signs that – as uneven as the nascent recovery still is – business (outside of the oil-patch and the coalfield, at least) is starting to find its feet again and might even be expected, therefore, to start about a reduction of the appalling, government-mandated count of the jobless, before too long.

But, as much of a watershed as this vote could be, let us not forget that the World is not just an island off the coast of the United States.

On the plus side of the ledger, we have China seemingly beginning to motor again economically – though this partial renaissance must be highly susceptible to a renewed COVID shock to its export business. We might also have reservations about whether this offers any realistic investment opportunities in light of the fact that Xi’s regime has lately become the focus (and frequently the fount) of increased political suspicion and heightened geostrategic tension.

Europe, meanwhile, is in full Lazaretto mode, re-imposing curfews, restricting commerce and communication, threatening to cancel both Christmas conviviality and New Year neighbourliness in terror of the dreaded ‘second wave’. Here, too, the fault lines run deep and a hashtag-‘Dark Winter’ of mounting economic and psychological stress could yet see not just a clash of nations but a dramatic splintering of social consensus leading to riot, military suppression, and perhaps even full-blown insurrection.

Little of this offers unbounded cheer for markets, even though they have so far been slow to react – perhaps lulled once more into complacency by the ever-present promise (or threat) of the further unrestricted creation of the new central bank money needed to prop them up.

Here we would do well to consider that, however long it takes to play out, at some point we shall to have to face up to the harsh reality that while we can certainly create unlimited amounts of money, we can also destroy unimaginable amounts of wealth with its use. 

Meanwhile, as we wrestle with this and the many other difficulties now facing us, one group at least – that comprised of the sinister puppet-masters in Davos – must be very pleased indeed with the fruits of their year’s work.

Let us hope Mr. Trump can wipe some of the conceited smiles off their faces by securing four more years in the White House tomorrow.