Coro The Big Short 2: Political Testosterone
Cure Deadly Management by Man-Children by Hiring Globally
A modest proposal for fans of REALLY free markets. As is clear from the images above, COVID19 has exposed the divorce between competent governance and geopolitical power. Germany excepted, the female-led COVID management competents are all geopolitical midgets, while the geopolitical giants — the USA, Brazil, Russia, India — are all led by hydroxi-popping or vaccine research-hacking alpha male narcissists. Testosterone and toxic governance are highly correlated: “A new study published by the World Economic Forum now confirms what many have suspected: “Being female-led has provided countries with an advantage in the current crisis….“Nearest neighbour analysis clearly confirms that when women-led countries are compared to countries similar to them along a range of characteristics, they have performed better, experiencing fewer cases as well as fewer deaths,” the study’s authors declared. “This is true whether we consider the nearest neighbour … or even five neighbours.” (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/01/week-in-patriarchy-women-lead-men?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Gmail
This begs the question: how to broker a remarriage between largely female-led competent governance to dilute alpha male-led geopolitical weight? How do we get to grade lightweight leaders governing heavyweight countries just like Dr. Trump used to rate aspiring entrepreneurs on The Apprentice and say, “YOU’RE FIRED!”
Politics, like any other industry or market, is subject to market failure and anti-competitive practices. Don’t apply anti-trust law just to Facebook and Google. Apply it at the source of electoral market failure by tearing down barriers to free market competition that keep more competent women leaders out of power. How can we let the free market work its magic in that least innovative of industries: politics and government leadership and policymaking?
For all you fans of unregulated free markets, the answer is to deregulate segregated sovereign elections and establish a borderless global free trading platform in COVID response and leadership selection. Let’s update and one-up Adam Smith with a Modest Proposal to end the sovereign subsidy for incompetent, viral virus-friendly tweeting by anti-science populists. Let citizens vote across borders with their money by pricing leaders and their healthcare policies and systems as tradeable shares and options. Let citizens worldwide vote to put their money where their masks are (or aren’t if they vote for hydroxichloroquine and Dr. Trump’s Lysol). Let’s end global gerrymandering through which politicians choose their voters and enable voters to source the best talent and best practice and policies globally through market-driven asset price discovery in a truly cartel-free governance market.
Since such a large portion of the US citizenry believes government can’t do anything right, let’s expand voting rights to make voting more global. Since American passport holders can now travel to only 22% of the world’s nations, cross-border voting is your only way out of the COVID cul-de-sac.
All you hydroxied, MAGA-hatted maskholes shouting “STOP THE STEAL!”: please sell me put options on Dr. Trump and US COVID management (a put option is the right with a fixed expiration date to sell an asset at a fixed (“strike”) price). If you buy the Trump line that COVID19 is just a nasty flu that will “eventually” disappear, please sell me cheap call options on Merkel, Ardern and South Korean contact tracing so I can leverage data and reality-based science with as little capital as possible. It’ll be like getting a gift of put options on bankrupt Hertz Rent-a-Car.
In Liar’s Poker, Michael Lewis of Big Short fame said financial markets are a mechanism for redistributing money from the weak to the strong. I ask all MAGA-hat wearing pool-partiers to play a last pre-ventilator game of trading poker with me and go long the Trump’s “greatest testing in the world” so I can short it while the price still levitates on your July 4th patriotic, pool-partying hot air. When fear is underpriced in the Ozarks, I’m buying from whoever’s selling.
To limit voter confusion, let’s start with just the G-20 countries (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G20 ), non G-20 EU countries+ Taiwan, Switzerland, Norway and New Zealand (suggested additions always welcome). American voters will eventually figure out how to vote for leaders and policies from countries they can’t find on a map, since some will be allies snubbed by Trump on geopolitics stories reported by Fox and Breitbart “News”. This will have the side benefit of expanding K Street lobbying opportunities and campaign management firm growth, not to mention Fox, Bannon and Breitbart’s planting of alternative facts worldwide. Bannon’s Italian Job would certainly get a boost from American voters bored with homebound Hamburger Helper and hot dogs and ready to try Salvini’s gnocchi al xenofobo arrabiatissimo. Buon appetito will not be lost in translation in a truly free market transnational electoral system.
Frustrated Fox and Friends-watching Trumpsters cheering unidentified DHS agents’ kidnapping of Portland protesters could vote for even more undiluted authoritarianism by bidding up the share price of “I’m not a grave digger” Bolsonaro’s Brazil or Putin. Russians who think Putin has worn out his welcome after 20 years and want a more entertaining president and the Internet Research Agency to have more domestic business could vote for Trump. British Brexiteers tired of getting shagged by their shaggy blonde PM and COVID could vote for the illiberal migrants-are-poison Orban or the Italian populist Salvini. They’ll eat better and lower the UK’s obesity index by turning Britain into Britaly. Recently laid off Americans will finally understand the true definition of a Canadian by losing their employer-provided health insurance: an American with healthcare and no gun. Then they could vote for Justin Trudeau and Canada’s single payer healthcare system. Justin’s campaign ads could repeat what daddy Pierre once said: “living next door to the United States is like being in bed with an elephant; always sleep with one eye open (and now with your border closed) in case the elephant rolls over.”
As the image above clarifies, nanny-state hating, testosterone-driven men worldwide will be free to vote with their money for Dr Trump and his medical advice. They will finally get the hydroxichloroquine and disinfectant/ultraviolet light COVID19 treatments they believe will defend them against the real threats. They’ll vote with their money against the woosie women epidemiologists and healthcare systems exaggerating a virus that’s really just a nasty Chinese Kungflu, easily cured by starting another trade war with China and praying at the pedestals of confederate generals.
But if you’re a masked Floridian wanting real accountability for friends and family on ventilators, our policy and leader trading platform is your chance say with your money to Dr. Hydroxi-Trump “YOU’RE FIRED!”, just like on The Apprentice, by selling off high case and death rate countries’ shares and bidding up shares in Dr. Merkel and German and South Korean contact tracing or Ardern’s COVID-killing dance steps (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4SBb465bF0 ).
Let the maskless hydroxied MAGA-hatters catch the falling knife in the biggest short of all: shares in US COVID management and private healthcare provision that crash as cases and fatalities nightly draw a vertical bar chart. Why should Big Pharma, no-bid PPE contractors Treasury Secretary Mnuchin’s cronies make the only fortunes from the pandemic? Step up and vote on leaders and countries’ COVID policies that are now assets as tradeable as FAANG stocks and forex. As Warren Buffett once said, it’s not until the tide goes out that you’ll find out who’s swimming as naked as the emperor in new clothes:
Two Biggest Shorts: America First and BoJo’s Battle of Britain Brexit:
