HYDE PARK — As U.S. unemployment has skyrocketed to world-historic levels, the stock market has continued to deliver great returns to investors, because "the vibes are just too good right now," according to University of Chicago grad student Marshall Harper, 29. If Harper and his fellow economist Irving Yount, 31, are to be believed, the US economy may run on vibes alone as soon as 2025.
Yount, a principal investor in an ambitious new hedge fund called Burning Eye of a Dead God, claims that the market's continued "exceptionally healthy appreciation" coincides with a near total untethering of speculative markets from the real economy. Harper added, "I just [invest in] whatever everybody's vibing with."
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The good vibes of this historical moment create an environment where the process of a company going out of business can be very lucrative for its own investors. According to the duo’s new book Dump: How to Eat Good While Everything is Going to Shit, which has a toilet filled with money in sort of a New Yorker cartoon style on the cover, there are few safer investments than those in the ongoing decay of the domestic economy.
"Maybe in three years we’ll all make a killing by flipping shares in some company that only sells CD players, because it got bought by a private equity firm who's selling off all its assets before flipping the husk back to the market to oversell it on the strength of the brand," muses Yount, adding cheerfully, "whatever!”
Harper implements a similar ethos in his investment strategy, explaining, "I always buy a bunch of something that looks like it's gonna go down, because then it'll be funny if it goes up."
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Harper and Yount are very optimistic about their future in the American economy, which they predict will soon be propped up almost exclusively by activity that Yount calls “highly financialized markets that essentially function as pyramid schemes.”
The one thing Harper and Yount stress for all investors is that they shouldn’t get weird about anything. When asked about the prospect of further market regulation, Harper asked, "Are you mad at me?"
Yount was no less firm, clarifying that, "investing in securities is about having fun with your friends and making memories to last a lifetime. It would honestly be pretty fucked up if you guys tried to kill the vibe."
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