Jim Chanos on market timing

I don't know where the market is going.  I don't know that other people know where the stock market's going.  What we do try to do is analyze companies, and we've been fairly successful in doing that.

~ Jim Chanos, CNBC interview, 8:50 mark, April 2, 2020

Edmund Burke on the preconditions of liberty

Men are qualified for civil liberties, in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their appetites: in proportion as their love of justice is above their rapacity.

~ Edmund Burke

(From Chapter 2 of Friedrich Hayek's The Fatal Conceit.)

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.)

World Health Organization on the link between poverty and ill health

The world's biggest killer and the greatest cause of ill-health and suffering across the globe is listed almost at the end of the International Classification of Diseases. It is given the code Z59.5 - extreme poverty.

Poverty is the main reason why babies are not vaccinated, why clean water and sanitation are not provided, why curative drugs and other treatments are unavailable and why mothers die in childbirth. It is the underlying cause of reduced life expectancy, handicap, disability and starvation. Poverty is a major contributor to mental illness, stress, suicide, family disintegration and substance abuse. Every year in the developing world 12.2 million children under 5 years die, most of them from causes which could be prevented for just a few US cents per child. They die largely because of world indifference, but most of all they die because they are poor.

~ World Health Organization, "The World Health Report 1995"

Friedrich Hayek on the civilized and beastly characteristics of man

Yet so far as we know, all currently civilised groups appear to possess a similar capacity for acquiring civilisation and culture by learning certain traditions.  Thus it hardly seems possible that civilisation and culture are genetically determined and transmitted.  They have to be learnt by all alike through tradition.

[...]

This gradual replacement of innate responses by learnt rules increasingly distinguished man from other animals, although the propensity to instinctive mass action remains one of the several beastly characteristics that man has retained.

~ Friedrich Hayek, The Fatal Conceit

Tom Woods on the Covid-19 doom-and-gloom models

The IHME model has almost surely been the most influential one when it comes to estimating deaths from the coronavirus, and it was the basis of the claim by White House health officials that the United States could see well in excess of 200,000 deaths.

Since that time -- a mere week and a half ago -- the model has been revised downward twice. It's now saying about 60,000 deaths.

The response from the doomers has been twofold:

(1) "This is because we've been doing such a great job living like vegetables" -- er, "social distancing."

Nice try, but the model already assumed extreme social distancing: schools and businesses closed, and lockdown.

(2) Don't worry, everyone: the models aren't supposed to be right! And if you don't understand that, then you just don't know science, man!

Oh, sure! A model that the authorities explicitly rely on, and use to justify confining people in their homes, destroying their livelihoods, and putting their hopes, dreams, and aspirations on indefinite hold, isn't meant to be taken literally, you unscientific boob! We'll use it to scare the hell out of you, sure -- the model has to have some use -- but other than that, just roll with the punches when we make revisions downward of 25 percent in just two days. That's normal!

~ Tom Woods, April 9, 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