Latest Issues of #AxisOfEasy
Sadly, as markets stall and crash, participants will still be in their seats thinking all is well.The tragic 2009 crash of Air France Flight 447 offers an apt analogy for the global economy and central bank-driven false signals. Flight 4…
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Things are moving quickly.
In the old adage “Never let a crisis go to waste”, governments everywhere are using the pandemic opportunity to: Rule by decree, Enact mandatory surveillance, Silence dissenting speech
Read it »Motif trading platform, which claimed to use data driven methodologies to enable the creation of thematic and “next-wave” portfolios (translation: they grep 10Q’s for keywords) has rather abruptly shut down. Their own advisors heard about it via Twitter. Yes, it did come with %FIRSTNANE%, who cares I guess… pic.twitter.com/3IuwpuBJQG — Hylland Capital (@HyllandCapital) April 18, 2020 They also had developed some “next generation thematic ETFs” like “human evolution reimagined” (SPTX), which were launched by Goldman…
Read it »There is no way authorities can limit the coronavirus and restore global growth and debt expansion to December 2019 levels.Authorities around the world are between a rock and a hard place: they need policies that both limit the spread of the coron…
Read it »If you have any doubt that the Fed and Wall Street will some day be dismantled, please re-read this “real life in America” list again.The pandemic is a stark, brutal spotlight on income/wealth inequality in America: while the top 10% who own the m…
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Before the current Coronavirus pandemic, the Canadian government took delivery of the Broadband Telecom Legislative Review. The 235-page report tabled 97 recommendations, most of them bad ones. Among them were provisions for requiring all content creators to obtain a license for operating from the government and “discoverability provisions” to force major tech platforms to emphasize “credible sources of news” over others (what the government calls “Approved Media”).
Read it »The price of a great many assets will crash, out of proportion to the decline in demand.Oil is the poster child of the forces driving massive deflation: overcapacity / oversupply and a collapse in demand. Overcapacity / oversupply and a collapse i…
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Carta, a unicorn that makes dashboards for managing equity investments in other unicorns is laying off staff and sniffing out a cash injection from existing backers. Bloomberg reports that the company is seekng a $200 million investment from existing investors at a $3 billion valuation, up from 1.8B last year. Somewhat incongruent with the “growth story” picture that normally garners such a sharply higher round, Carta is laying off employees. They just axed 161 people…
Read it »Like the rest of the financialization machine, sickcare was never sustainable.What was once known as healthcare in the U.S. has largely been replaced by sickcare: healthcare was focused on restoring and maintaining health and w…
Read it »Hacked video conference logins being sold on the Dark Web
Apple and Google teaming up for Coronavirus contact tracing
Eurozone Coronavirus surveillance efforts use mobile apps to track spread
What I see is a global collapse of intangible capital that is invisible to most people.It’s only natural that the conventional expectation is a return to the pre-pandemic world is just a matter of time. Whether it’s three months or six months or 1…
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AirBnB, the tech unicorn that monetizes your spare room has been hit hard by the Coronavirus academic. As the company and the phenomenon grew, more and more “investors” levered up to buy more properties to rent out short term. Some becoming so-called “super-hosts”, running dozens or even hundreds of rental units. There even emerged a phenomenon, of “STR arbitrage“, which is Short Term Rental Arbitrage: taking out long term leases on properties you don’t own,…
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CNBC reported Friday that Tesla will be laying off up to half of it’s sales and delivery staff, this comes on the heels of other layoffs reported earlier in the week. Salaried employees are looking at pay cuts of 10% to 30%. In other news, Elon’s brother Kimball appears to have pulled a switcheroo on his employees “emergency fund” for his Nextdoor Restaurant chain, pulling the plug on the fund right before he laid off…
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The fictitious valuation of the stock market will eventually re-connect with reality in a violent decline.No, buy the tumor, sell the news ™ is not a typo: the stock market is a lethal tumor in our economy and society. Buy the rumor, …
Read it »Put another way: eras end.While the mainstream media understandably focuses on the here and now of the pandemic, some commentators are looking at the long-term consequences. Here is a small sampling:Coronavirus, synchronous failure and the gl…
Read it »Big Tech jumping into red hot Coronavirus surveillance market / Let’s Make This Simple: Zoom is Malware
Read it »An economy of rackets designed to enrich the few at the expense of the many is brittle because self-serving rackets snuff out competition, accountability and transparency.What’s remarkable about the lockdown isn’t the hue and cry about the economic dam…
Read it »An economy of rackets designed to enrich the few at the expense of the many is brittle because self-serving rackets snuff out competition, accountability and transparency.What’s remarkable about the lockdown isn’t the hue and cry about the economic dam…
Read it »Recall that the initial deaths and related costs are only the first-order effects; policy makers have to consider the second-order effects.Everyone who reckons that the lockdown is needless and more destructive than the pandemic that triggered it has t…
Read it »Recall that the initial deaths and related costs are only the first-order effects; policy makers have to consider the second-order effects.Everyone who reckons that the lockdown is needless and more destructive than the pandemic that triggered it has t…
Read it »Everyone with any position in today’s market will be able to say they lived through a real Bear Market.In the echo chamber of a Bull Market, there’s always a reason to get bullish: the consumer is spending, housing is strong, the Fed has our back,…
Read it »Contributors
Mark E. Jeftovic
Mark is the co-founder of easyDNS and the editor-in-chief of #AxisOfEasy. He is the author of Managing Mission Critical Domains & DNS (Packt UK, 2018) and Unassailable: Protect Yourself from Deplatform Attacks & Cancel Culture.
The Canadian Bitcoiners
Joey Tweets and Len the Lengend are the hosts of The Canadian Bitcoiners Podcast, and you may recognize them as the voices (and faces) behing the AxisOfEasy Podcast. CanadianBitcoiners.com
Charles Hugh Smith
Charles Hugh Smith is the author of numerous books and writes from OfTwoMinds.com.