The Next Great Bubble to Burst; The Right-Wing Message

[The Doctor.]

I played a little with the stock market in the fall of '02 when I had some extra money to gamble with. I actually did pretty well, eventually. It was definitely a learning experience, and I learned a little about how people interact with the market. Well, ok... how online day-traders interact with the market, because it seemed very much that others were doing the exact same thing I was. Soon, I learned the 'trick'; I started looking for stocks in small companies that traded below $10, had a specific range of trades per day (about 500-1000), a recent upward trend, and a modest p/e ratio. I'd then wait for some small uptick in the price, and buy in a block of 100 at a time at a very slightly higher asking price thereby bringing the price up further. I'd do it few times at the right intervals and then, when there seemed to be enough upward momentum and the difference was significant enough, I'd start selling in large blocks. I found that I could make maybe a couple hundred bucks in a day if I had at least a few grand to work with. Obviously, I wasn't the only one doing it, and someone else was losing while I was winning. The important thing I understood from this was that the illusion of value and potential gains are what drove the price I was able to 'cash in' at. I did pretty well turning 10K into 16K over a couple of months using the technique, and some weeks weren't great while others were.

Those were (relatively) sunnier days.

Like nearly everyone else, all my extra funds had to go towards expenses, emergencies, and the higher costs of everything. The money just left, like it did for almost all of us, after the disaster of 'W' was foist upon us. Of course we can add the deregulation stacked up from the years prior to 2001, but let's face it; the shit really hit the fan in '01. (Not that I'm suggesting one face the fan at that particularly unfortunate moment)

Many bad things happened, of course, but it was the bubbles that seemed to be the most devastating overall to the economy.

My little trading experience gave me an appreciation for just what had happened when the .com bubble burst. From wikipedia;

The period was marked by the founding (and, in many cases, spectacular failure) of a group of new Internet-based companies commonly referred to as dot-coms. Companies were seeing their stock prices shoot up if they simply added an "e-" prefix to their name and/or a ".com" to the end, which one author called "prefix investing."<2>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble

Then, more recently, we saw the housing market take a massive fall. The rise was built on the perception that people would always pay their mortgage first even if that mortgage was not within their means. This allowed banks to devise what appeared to be 'iron-clad' financial 'derivatives'. Essentially they were motley little investment bundles with mortgage investment at their core. These looked better than gold on paper, and were sold at ever-increasing prices. Obviously, I don't know all of the very meticulous details, but the fat and short of it is this; "The value was based on faith"- a pretty typical market driver.

Well, as many predicted, this was another artificial bubble created by people who knew they were driving value through perception. Those people, at least, presumably, a large percent of those people, liquidated in timely fashion and left a whole swath of middle-class wannabe investors (read;'suckers') holding bags of pure shit.

*POP!*

And there, by the twisted grace of God and the markets in which we trust, we went.


So I'm sitting at my console raking through the news from Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and Florida and something hit me, really, really hard;

They're cashing out!

Oh yes, I've seen this before. Only... I've seen it in the market. This is very different, and exactly the same.

Over the course of nearly thirty years value has been slowly, methodically, and very deliberately built up in a particularly pervasive, pursuasive, polemical, political, partisan position of petulance and pride... the 'Conservative Ideology'.

Over decades this ideology has been invested with false value. Framed on lies, covered in bias, and inflated by countless blowhards, this ideology has been bought into by millions of working class schleps with no real understanding of markets, let alone politics or social philosophy. The 'value' of this ideology is not, obviously, in direct currency, but rather an 'indirect' currency; LICENSE. With 'license', granted by the high level of deliberate ignorance which is the buy-in for this particular commodity, those who spent literally hundreds of millions of real dollars inflating the value of this mass-ignorance are at 'liberty' to act as they see fit and take what they want. In particular; the bill just passed in Wisconsin allows industry/billionaires to buy public property for pennies on the dollar. THIS is the ROI the forces behind the mass-mindscrubbing of America are going for... and they're doing it NOW. They have to. Wisconsin is the bellweather here. The waking up of the middle-class hasn't occurred yet. It's only just beginning. Those that have bought into the ideology are more likely to go 'all in' than they are to wake up. So watch for the giant spike in rhetoric selling more bankrupt bullshit coming from all media sectors. The attacks on NPR and PBS are part of the need to mitigate information that could deflate the value during this last big putcsh.

Watch for every sector where corporate interests intersect public policy. Look for the big rush to strip social programs and create a desperate and profitable low-cost work force. Keep an eye out for budget-busting measures that will force states and municipalities to sell off public assets. Be on guard for anything that will give corporations and billionaires a massive return on investment from their minions and their message.

They are about to cash in.

When they do, the bubble will burst, and hard. In the light of facing reality and seeing so many more millions of Americans than they've been told they 'surround' out in the streets, they will realize the worthlessness of the message on the airwaves. It might be years, or better; decades before more people so easily buy the Right-Wing Message again.

Now for the bad news;

It doesn't mean the wingnuts, teabaggers, freepers, neo-cons, and ignorant, sports-fan mentality 'conservatives' will actually divest themselves of their bankrupt beliefs.
No, this particular product was certainly designed to leave everyone high and dry except for the very wealthy, but they built something special into it, something for which I can think of no allegorical quality in the market except maybe one; When the holders of mortgage-backed derivatives were left with shit, they were told to blame the homeowners. Not high energy prices, not the rise of food prices, not the credit bubble that we'd been living on, no... they blamed the economic victims rather than the market that created them. That's a BIG problem. Sure, in the case of those holding junk derivatives, they tried to dump them, but in the case of the holders of what will be proven a worthless ideology, they will look desperately for someone else to blame than themselves... and continue to hold on as hard as they can. When this bubble is 'liquidated', the blame will be laid at the feet of those who for so long painstakingly dissected this ideological instrument and so desperately tried to warn our fellow Americans of its worthlessness.

That would be 'liberals', and pretty much every aware and educated person that recognized what's been happening (Which, as far as the right is concerned, are also liberals).

We need, right NOW, to get this message to as many people as we can. I wish this was merely an academic exercise, but it's happening in real time. I have no illusions that any RW rageaholics will listen at all. They're too vested in their world. But, if we want to avoid what could be a messy, or even bloody civil conflict, we have to wake as many people up to the Divide and Conquer strategy that is being used against the American people.

It could take several years, it could take much, much less if we're hit with the reality of energy crisis and climate destabilization, but When this bubble implodes, millions of Americans, stunned and afraid, will turn on their fellows. UNLESS they can be shown what's being done to all of us now. The very least we can do is try. The price for the cure will be much, much higher than the cost of prevention... especially now.

I know this is not pretty or fun to ponder, but I will confess to one thing; I have my own little bubble, and I'm vested in it against all better judgement; it's Hope.

... And I think that's a sound investment right now.