Over the past week, I have had several people ask me about just a bunch of random ass business news in the market. So, I figured I would cover some of the hotness, in no particular order, and try to see if I can find a moral somewhere in the mire.
I think there is no better indicator of what is actually going on in the economy right now than to look at the fucking gas madness that hit the east coast this week. All from hype around a hack of one single pipeline that apparently has the shittiest cybersecurity on the planet.
Analysts are all over the place here, with some making this a story just about oil with a bit of cyber thrown in.
To me, the story here that is interesting is just how flighty the American consumer is right now. I think between everything that happened in the 18-24 months and an uncertainty of how stability returns. People are on edge. I suppose they always are but this is different.
To me, the actual lesson here is to expect a run on everything. If you don’t think there can be a run on it, there will be.
We are at an interesting time in media. The long predicted “wars” between the media companies are happening. I think at first, acquisitions were….sloppy. No more evident than the AT&T merger now spin-off.
Expect a whole hell of alot more of this. With tech companies WAY overvalued or just market valuations in general through the roof, a ton of people will throw their weight around. Each to their own strategy. I expect this purchase of MGM wont be Amazon’s last. They want to make that back catalog impenetrable. And that is what they are going to move toward.
What happens to HBO Max I dont know. Probably a bit of keepin on till they can add Discovery’s stuff in there. Netflix has its own strategy to keep churning out 3 season shows. Disney already said they are moving all digital. And everyone else will follow them.
I would expect fewer competitors. Right now there are a ton of streaming services….I expect some strong consolidation…till we are probably back at 3 or 4. Like the original TV networks but just for the new age. What is old is new again.
Ok, I want to talk about the latest in the sky is falling.
Now don’t get me wrong. Thats usually me doing the sky is falling thing. But right now its not like the sky is falling. Its like one of those days where its just fucking cold like winter in the morning than hot as shit by the afternoon then pouring down rain by the evening.
No one can actually tell you shit.
People freaked out about the jobs report because economists look for any datapoints that can help gauge what is going on in the bigger world. And the jobs report didn’t do what they thought it would. More to the point, you cant live or die on a single month’s jobs report.
The reason for all these “i’m having troubling finding workers” stories is simple. To me, this is simple. The pandemic taught people what they could really go without. And they figured out they can survive for a while without a shit job. As I have discussed before, the value proposition is so fucking out of whack for so long now that eventually people were going to get sick of it. Why would you go kill yourself for these shit salaries where you can’t even pay a medical bill if shit goes wrong.
It is not the worker force that is wrong. It is business. And its time for a correction. I don’t give a fuck who goes out of business. This is a correction that has to happen. Needed to happen for a long time now. And I am glad it is happening this way. Because there is much worse ways it could happen.
Oh and crypto is in the fucking toilet. But no one should give a shit about that.
So what this all mean?
Well I have a theory on this. Instead of one big crash we are seeing steam come out of the pressure cooker at various spots. In a way its a good thing, but it also means expect more weird.
There will be more shortages. Businesses will go under or get consumed. And hopefully the American worker ends up better on the other side of it.
The alternative of course is things get progressively worse and the economy fully imploads, like I have been saying is a possibility forever…after the pandemic and 1/6, I am not sure what it would actually take at this point for it to impload. Something stupid, I’m sure.
Well, keep watching the skys, but don’t horde gasoline. Come on. It has no resale value.