Edward Chancellor on the corona bubble

The language commonly used to describe speculative manias is borrowed from epidemiology. A new technology sparks a “contagion”, investors are “infected” with greed and speculative “fever” breaks out. During the panic phase, the contagion becomes more “virulent”. After the South Sea Bubble collapsed 300 years ago, contemporary observers likened the market situation to a plague. In fact, by late 1720 the bubonic plague was spreading across Europe. Today, the world is faced with another epidemic. Our response to the coronavirus pandemic resembles the inverse of a speculative mania, with fear replacing greed, and errors of pessimism potentially replacing those of optimism.

~ Edward Chancellor, "The Corona Bubble," March 2020

(Appears in Marc Faber's Market Commentary, April 1, 2020.)

Kevin Duffy: "The Covid-19 bubble is bursting"

The Covid-19 bubble is bursting as doomsayers backtrack on their death toll models.

The lesson: Do NOT trust self-proclaimed experts when a) dealing with complex phenomena, b) predicting doom, c) promoting massive government intervention, d) using simple narratives and e) gaining the attention of the crowd. At least 99 times out of 100 their fears will be way overblown and the response they're calling for far more damaging than the actual threat.

Now let's apply this logic to the climate change doom-and-gloomers ...

~ Kevin Duffy, April 9, 2020

"CDC Director Counters Media Narrative,
Predicts Covid-19 Death Toll Will Be 'Much Lower' Than Models"
The Western Journal

Alex Epstein on the "living death" of Covid-19 panic

Some people with [the coronavirus] are afraid of death.  I'm afraid of living death.  I'm afraid of a decade or more where we lose because we're just in this state of panic and we no longer produce value and we're no longer free to interact with one another and we're just perpetually terrified of this virus.  That's what I'm afraid of most of all.

~ Alex Epstein, podcast host of Power Hour, "Lockdowns vs. Human Flourishing: Is There Another Approach?," The Tom Woods Show, April 6, 2020

Jeffrey Tucker on mass panics and rationalizing cruelty

At the end of every mass panic, people work very hard to find ways to justify whatever cruelty, barbarism, and brutality they perpetrated or justified.  Any excuse that comes along.  That's already happening now.  It will be years before honesty returns.

~ Jeffrey Tucker, tweet, April 6, 2020

Surgeon General on the coronavirus: "This is going to be our Pearl Harbor moment"

This is going to be our Pearl Harbor moment, our 9/11 moment, only it’s not going to be localized.  It’s going to be happening all over the country. And I want America to understand that...  This is going to be the hardest and the saddest week of most Americans’ lives, quite frankly.

~ Surgeon General Jerome Adams, Fox News Sunday, April 5, 2020

Jim Grant on the panic of 2020

That the central bankers do not always control events, but that events sometimes overwhelm the central bankers, is one lesson of the panic of 2020.

~ Jim Grant, "Biggest hearts, lowest rates," Grant's Interest Rate Observer, March 20, 2020