Here’s the way the world looks to me right now: The combination of a highly emotional Supreme Court fight, the failure of the government to agree on more stimulus/rescue money, and the way all that plays into the upcoming election and the virulent “end of the world” posturing we’ll hear from both major parties, means investors suddenly remembered their fondness for cash on Monday morning this week, even with the clear and relentless push of all central banks to weaken their currencies (including the Fed and the US$).

And it didn’t help that over the last week we also learned that, surprise!, the big global banks have probably been a bit too lenient with money launderers and scumbags over the years, and the coronavirus spread has picked up a little steam in the US and the UK, particularly with college students returning to campus (and making nothing but good choices, I’m sure).

That market worry on Monday morning moderated a bit as the week progressed, particularly as news items popped up that drove some investor enthusiasm in specific names, but clearly investors are “on edge” a bit as we head into election season. Heck, even Facebook says it’s “open to imposing curbs on content” if the US “descends into chaos” after the election… which is crazy. Not that they’d consider imposing curbs, their failure to police or regulate their platform is longstanding and I don’t think even they know what their policies will be going forward, but that they’re using phrases like “descend into chaos.” Seriously. It’s like we want to talk ourselves into a crisis, and that 200 years of democracy and an unending string of peaceful transfers of power from one administration to the next will be upended because final election results might not be available at 9pm EST on election day.

The US survived Herbert Hoover, Andrew Johnson, John Tyler and Richard Nixon, among many US presidents whose recklessness, disappointing character or failed policies pretty clearly made things worse (and there are plenty of other examples), and a bloody and long-lasting civil war (to say nothing of a multitude of foreign conflicts, both forced upon us and chosen), and national protests and riots that have several times dwarfed what we see in the police brutality and other protests that have saturated the media this year… so even with the poisoning and amplifying effects of ...