The pandemic hijacked 2020; NFTs, SPACs and IPOs (and the Kim-Kanye breakup) were perhaps the biggest draws of 2021; the War and its problem child ─ Inflation ─ were dominant in 2022; and so far, Generative AI has been the overarching theme of 2023.
2024 will see large sections of the planet’s population witness something that has always had high entertainment value.
2024 is chock-a-block with elections.
The year kicks off with the Taiwanese Presidential Elections. Followed by Presidential Elections in Russia (Putin, has not yet officially declared his intention to run, but if elected, it would be his fifth term); general elections in India, Mexico, and Indonesia; culminating in the US Presidential Elections.
As you scour through the various campaign promises made by both the opposition and the incumbent party leaders, beyond the cheap thrills provided by media sleuths unearthing skeletons from the past (remember how Obama had to wave his birth certificate around?) or fuelling xenophobia (Melania Trump is a spy), what you are really looking for from the leadership candidates are the ideas that are unstoppable. And usually what makes an idea unstoppable, apart from the simplicity of its structure, is the time or the era within which it takes roots.
Vivek Ramaswamy who is making waves in the Republican primaries, appears to be holding a bag full of such ideas: a new American Revolution that draws inspiration from the nation’s founding fathers; driving a wedge between Russia and China; slashing aid to Ukraine; and all this while taking clear aim at the Woke Movement.
Of what he holds in that bag, two ideas in particular, stands out for its boldness (and evokes memories of Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s call in 2020 to ‘Break Up Big Tech’):
1. Vivek Ramaswamy plans to take a large axe to the federal workforce, with plans to lay off 75% of the workers. Yeah, you read that right, that’s 75%! He also believes there is no place for what he refers to as the ‘administrative government’ comprising of the FBI, DOE, and CDC among others in his idea of America.
2. Pegging the USD to Gold, thereby reducing the influence of the US Fed on the economy.
Very often all that an idea needs is a simple structure and great timing. And what can eventually lead to an idea’s demise are a lack of details around execution.
A lot can change between now and election date, but for you and I and all the other market participants, what makes election year interesting are the ideas that could turn out to be unstoppable.
The ones that were best described by Victor Hugo when he said: “Nothing else in the world…not all the armies…is so powerful as an idea whose time has come”.
