Sleight of Hand

Cars lined up at a food bank; photo: William Luther, San Antonio Express

    Distraction is the key for the magician or illusionist, the left hand keeping your eyes glued while the right hand does the switching.  But even among the "experts," there are tricks of the trade, an example being the famed duo Penn & Teller hosting a show titled "Fool Us," which is now entering its 7th season.  Those lucky enough to "fool" the duo not once or twice but three times, receive a token trophy and an openong spot in Penn & Teller's Las Vegas show.  What I found both amazing and disheartening was how many times I was fooled (about 99% of the time) only to hear Penn & Teller tell the performer that their "trick" was too easy to figure out (Masters of Illusion is a similar show which features a variety of magicians from around the world).   Watch the birdie, as they say, and prepare to be entertained.   Of course, the real world is not like that...or is it?  All is well, we are told, with the economy coming back and unemployment claims dropping but there is a bit more happening behind the scenes (as but one example, once your unemployment runs out you are no longer considered "unemployed," even though you are likely still not working; you become part of a category Bloomberg terms the "permanent" unemployed, not working but also not part of the official unemployment "figures").  Here's how online banking firm ALLY put it in one of their weekly newsletters: We're in a fierce recovery as the economy has reopened, and stocks are reflecting that.  But the stock market is not the economy.  Take May retail sales for example.  They rose 17.7% in May, the biggest monthly jump on record.  But their total dollar amount was the lowest it's been since August 2017.  Jobs follow a similar pattern.  U.S. companies added 2.5 million jobs in May, the biggest gain on record.  But we've still lost a total of 19.5 million jobs since February.  On Tuesday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell acknowledged the modest rebound while doubling down on the fact that the economy is still way below pre-pandemic levels.   If you're still waiting for work, or a check in order to pay the bills, it doesn't mean a thing to read about how great the market is or how the economy is "rebounding."

    On June 24th, Bloomberg put it this way: Markets have often seemed disconnected from the reality faced by most during the pandemic and its concomitant economic calamity.  Wall Street smiled as bailout money flowed to corporations, despite tens of millions of Americans losing jobs and many of them lining up at food pantries.  But as the trillions of dollars authorized by Congress (and doled out by the Trump administration) dry up, so too may investor risk-taking.  Indeed, they may be headed for a wake-up call, as dire scenarios they recently brushed aside begin to come true...At least one in 10 small businesses in the U.S. are expecting to lay off workers once their fiscal relief funds run out.  More aid may be needed to keep businesses afloat and workers employed, especially as infection rates are now spiking in states that reopened before they were advised to.   Just months earlier Bloomberg noted: When we talk about an 'exogenous shock' to the system, we might think about a hurricane destroying a hotel in a popular tourist area.  But there's a playbook for what you do.  We rebuild a new hotel, and maybe it's a nicer one, on the expectations that the tourists will eventually come back.  The experience is costly, but we know the way back.  Economically, this is kind of like a hurricane.  But we don't yet know the economy that we want to rebuild. Yes, some of it will be the same, but because of the potential real-world corollary to the volatility smile, there are so many ambiguous questions.  How much will we travel?  How much will people prize living in dense urban areas?  How much domestic manufacturing will we do?  These are just the start.  None of us know, and not only that, some of these fights will be intensely fought politically, leaving tremendous uncertainty for anyone involved with investing in and building that future.

    So where do you fit into this picture?  Are you watching the market or watching your checkbook?  Are you heading to a restaurant or heading to the food bank?  Are you applying for a 6-year/no-interest auto loan or waiting for an eviction notice?  Or perhaps like many, you are finding yourself somewhere smack in the middle.  Whatever your stance --mask or no mask, virus cases up or simply overhyped, tear down statues or let history be-- your viewpoint may shape the rest of what you see as an illusion of sorts.  Take the recent protests and the issue of police brutality; last week Justin Fox (financial editor and former editorial director at Harvard Business Review group) said this about the risks of dying on the job: ...being a U.S. police employee is not as dangerous as their unions would have you believe at this time of reckoning for police brutality and wrongful killings.  In fact, being a cop ranks No. 16, just above construction worker, and has been getting less dangerous over the years...police-work is safer than being a roofer, truck driver, farmer or sanitation employee.  Actuarial tables can bend in any direction and even reading such data likely wouldn't sway most of us to consider a police officer's job as a walk in the park.  But recent events and videos of excessive police force may have possibly exposed something that may lie hidden inside each of us, a prejudice or bias that can be awakened and fueled by politics or upbringings.  A black commentator who tested positive for Covid-19 (but was asymptomatic) said that racism may be quite similar, something which is possibly lurking inside each of us without us being aware of it..  

    Many of my friends feel that their views are accepting and open to all races and all cultures, and perhaps you may feel that your views are similar; but picture you and a date (or spouse) emerging from a restaurant at night and, because you stayed a bit longer than you expected, you now find yourself having to walk down a lighted but basically somewhat deserted block to get to your car.  You're feeling giddy and content, perhaps dressed casually but nicely, but on rounding the corner you now see four black men approaching.  Do your find your emotions or thoughts suddenly changing, perhaps feeling a need to be a bit more guarded or protective of your date?  Suppose the four men were not black but Chinese?  Would that make you feel any different?  Would you feel any less cautious or apprehensive if the four were women, or were white men?  What if the four appeared homeless, or gay or perhaps "working" women?  What if you were not a male-female couple walking to your car but were two women?  Or if you were two elderly people?  The point is that you can change the scenario to whatever you want, but there would be no hiding of the feelings that would emerge because of what you were taught as a youth.   In another scenario, picture your car breaking down on a back road and what stopped to help was a police car...except that you, the driver, were black and all that you heard was, "I need you to step out of the car."   The toppling of historical figures and statues now being related to  slavery and imprisonment and forced labor also beg us to question where we should draw the line?  One could say that perhaps we don't want to memorialize dictators or brutal leaders such as Hitler, Stalin or Genghis Khan (who was estimated to have killed 11% of the world population at that time)...but then do we also reject Caesar and Medieval kings and queens who in many ways proved equally brutal?   My own high school was named after David Starr Jordan, a talented naturalist and the first president of Stanford University; but he soon began giving lectures to his students on eugenics, something he strongly believed in.  Charles Lindbergh spoke openly about his belief in Hitler's policies and Nazism.  Are we finding ourselves now in an effort to erase history or are we just now learning to correct it?

   Then there's the coronavirus and keeping "socially" distant and the effect that is having in the long term.  A recent AI program from Twitter found that Americans are the unhappiest they've been since Twitter first began.  Said the piece in Smithsonian:  A survey of 2,279 adults in early May 2020 found that Americans are the unhappiest they’ve been in the nearly five decades, reports Tamara Lush for the Associated Press.  Just 14 percent of Americans say they are “very happy,” compared to 31 percent of Americans who described themselves as such in 2018.  According to the AP, the percentage of “very happy” people has never dipped below 29 percent since NORC began conducting these surveys in 1972.  It seems that people are also feeling the effects of social distancing, according to the University of Chicago statement.  About twice as many Americans also reported feeling isolated in May, up to 50 percent compared with just 23 percent from the same time in 2018—perhaps unsurprising given the social distancing measures in place to keep most people apart.  Some of this may be due to the fact that despite all that we've researched, we're finding that we still know so little about this novel virus; when flu season arrives in a few months will the "flu" coronavirus merge or mutate with this Covid-19 coronavirus?  And will fungi begin to play an even larger role as an accomplice to the viruses in damaging the lungs?  Which, if any, of the 1200+ studies and trials being developed* will prove effective or have the fewest side effects (said Bloomberg Prognosis on July 3rd: With China and Canada at geopolitical odds over a range of issues, it may come as a surprise that one of the front-runners in the race for a coronavirus vaccine is born of their combined biotech prowess...One among a handful of Chinese companies whose vaccines have reached the crucial final stage of human testing, CanSino has also received scientific kudos for publishing the full data from the first phase of its human trials in the Lancet medical journal...Chinese President Xi Jinping’s vow to provide Chinese vaccines equitably to the whole world shows how high the pressure is on its scientists to prove themselves in this crisis.  Whatever your views of China in today's world, would those views change if the CanSino vaccine was readily available and could help prevent you from getting the novel coronavirus?

    To watch the news or the views on social media we have to wonder if sometimes we are an audience just ready to believe what we're seeing, or if we're merely being distracted and are actually part of the "magic."  The sun will come up tomorrow, said Annie.  But sometimes even that can seem difficult to believe.  What's it all about, Alfie, asked composers Burt Bacharach & Hal David: Is it just for the moment we live?  What's it all about when you sort it out, Alfie, are we meant to take more than we give?  Or are we meant to be kind?  During these times when we seem to be dividing more than uniting, we may want to think of our sun, bright and so steadily emitting so much life-giving energy...imagine if  the negative energy we might be creating during these times of struggle were instead put to positive means, our thoughts for others being only questions of how can we help?  How can we heal?  How can we come together?  There would be no "trick" in that, for it would be coming from the heart.   As Alfie added, "when you walk let you heart lead the way..."

*Here's what STAT had to say about those trials and vaccine developers after Trump told a rally that such efforts were basically harmless: During a CNN appearance yesterday, FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn declined to defend remarks made by President Trump during his speech at Mount Rushmore falsely claiming that 99% of Covid-19 tests are "totally harmless."  An exclusive, new analysis by STAT and AppliedXL finds that although scientists have been quick to design 1,200 clinical trials with the aim of treating or preventing Covid-19, the process has been marked by disorder and disorganization.  Many of the studies are also raising concerns about wasted resources: Nearly 40% of the studies haven't begun enrolling yet, for instance, and an additional 39% are enrolling so few patients that experts say they're unlikely to yield meaningful results.  “It’s a huge amount of wasted effort and wasted energy when actually a bit of coordination and collaboration could go a long way and answer a few questions,” University of Oxford physician Martin Landray tells STAT's Matthew Herper and Applied XL's Erin Riglin.