Pareto's Foxes

From millions of private triumphs to trillions in public folly...

(Source: Getty Images)

Bill Bonner, reckoning today from Normandy, France...

There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty. When clear prospects are opened before vanity, pride, avarice, or ambition, for their easy gratification, it is hard for the most considerate philosophers and the most conscientious moralists to resist the temptation. Individuals have conquered themselves. Nations and large bodies of men, never.

~ John Adams

We are biding our time…waiting for the heat wave to pass in the South. It was 100 degrees there yesterday. We’ll wait it out in Normandy – temperature 82 degrees.

In the meantime, the reckoning hour approaches. Charlie Bilello:

The Leading Economic Index has now declined for 16 consecutive months, the longest down streak since 2007-08. The Conference Board is now forecasting a US recession to begin in Q4, pushed back from its previous forecast of Q3.

What are some signs pointing to economic weakness?

a) Industrial Production, which declined on a YoY basis for the 2nd straight month.

b) Retail Sales, which after adjusting for inflation have fallen for 9 straight months.

Both Target ($TGT) and Home Depot ($HD) reported lower revenue than a year ago, a sign that the US consumer may be pulling back.

Foxes and Clucks

Market timers wait for the sell-off. Economists wait for the recession.

Here at Bonner Private Research, we are on suicide watch.  

In the rich muck beneath the news is the story of the rise of America’s elite – the rich men north of Richmond. It’s the real story of America…a story of power and how it is abused by those whom the famous Italian economist, Wilfredo Pareto, called ‘the foxes.’ They are the clever ones. They are at the top of the heap. Whatever you call your government – they are the ones in charge. 

Why bother to look at it like that? Because there are still chapters to be written…and, most likely, it won’t end well. What’s good for the foxes isn’t necessarily good for the clucks in the henhouse.  

What we’ve seen, in the story of the USA, is a tale of millions of triumphs – from Powerglide steering to Post-it notes to cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay. But we’ve seen failures too – and a particular kind of flop (described by Adams, above): the foxes are corrupted by power…and their desire to dominate sucks up more and more of the nation’s wealth. Pointless foreign wars…unproductive ‘investments’…bureaucracy…taxes…inflation…and futile ‘programs’ whose only real consequence is to make the rich richer and the powerful even more obnoxious – democracy cuts its own wrists…and bleeds out its vital capital. 

The major political parties squabble over bathroom rights…and can’t be bothered to balance the budget. The geniuses at the Fed bring disaster after disaster by pretending to improve a $25 trillion, global economy. America’s military/industrial complex has become a $1.5 trillion/year colossus that can’t win a war. Its pharma/medical complex shuts down the whole economy… delivering drugs that don’t work…and life expectancies fall.

The Vainglory of the Elites

For while the Democrats were on TV howling furiously at the Republicans…and the conservatives were making obscene gestures at liberals in Congress…

…while the rights of the unborn were debated…the rights of the gender-affirming millennials were assured…. ‘hate’ speech was condemned…women were trained for combat roles.. .TV talk show hosts are ‘called out’ for saying the wrong thing…

…while pasteurization, vaccinations, and standardization were undertaken by armies of regulators…while the habits of the halibut were studied…while the fat, the lame, smokers and drug abusers were cared for…the idle were subsidized…reckless bankers were excused from bankruptcy…imprudent investors were rescued… incompetent generals were promoted, along with insufferable jackasses, such as Victoria Nuland and Anthony Blinken... US troops dispatched to nearly every woebegone sh*thole country in the world…lobbyists rewarded…bribes offered and taken…reputations built…the stock market pumped…sinecures secured…connivers connived…ill-gotten gains gotten…and trillions in tax money, loans, and printed money handed out to unworthy causes and shady characters…

…while all this was going on…

…the rich men north of Richmond grew richer and more powerful than ever.

Little by little…then by huge bounds…energy drained away, out of things that really matter – work, saving, investment, innovation, generosity, courtesy, humility – and into the precincts of the rich, so as to enhance the vainglory of the elites.   

Yes, America could dominate the world. But she was never mistress of herself; never could she control her elites’ drive for dominion.      

Regards,

Bill Bonner

Joel’s Note: As Bill mentioned earlier in the week, Tom and Dan have been hard at work behind the scenes reviving our BPR Doom Index. The new, backtested version they’re working on now (tentatively – ominously? – called Doom 2.0) is approaching the lows it last made in (wait for it…) 2008. And you know what happened next...

“The idea behind the Doom Index,” mused Bill when he introduced the very first iteration more than a decade ago, “is to measure the tension in the system and get a better idea of when the rubber band is going to snap.”

Long-suffering readers of these pages know full well the kind of “tension” of which Bill speaks. It’s the chasmic divide between the Wall Street economy and Main Street reality… between D.C. politics and what folks in America’s cities experience on a day to day basis… between what the mainstream press parrots of an evening and what working Americans see and hear with their very own eyes and ears…

“We're focused on the real economy,” explains Dan, “instead of the fake stock market. As such, we're concentrated on the price and flow of the 'master economic resource,' energy. The 8 indicators in the new index are almost all related to the flow of energy in the real economy, from extraction, to transport, to use (this is a faint echo of how the Transports, the Utilities, and the Industrials work in Dow Theory)…”

BPR members who tuned into our recent Private Briefing with Tom will recognize the golden thread here… how energy impacts everything in the real economy, and how it underpins the foundational thesis behind not only the overall Asset Allocation Strategy, but also the individual stocks under coverage and the way in which all the puzzle pieces fit together to form a comprehensive investment strategy. As Tom explained during our conversation (members can listen in here):

“I'm not just putting out ideas that I think can go up. I'm running a hedged book where you can see the effect of these hedges. We're hedging oil tankers with actual energy production. We're hedging gold with cash. We're hedging cash and gold with a series of stocks. We're hedging capital appreciation with income. The whole thing is creating a giant hedge.”

Clearly, there’s a lot that goes into running a broad-based investment approach. If you’re interested in learning more, feel free to join the BPR project here…