Well folks, was an interesting weekend. Albert Pujols joined the 700 club by knocking a 2 run dinger over the fence Friday night. College football was not disappointing. The Clemson v. Wake battle was probably the most exciting. Maryland looked like a contender in the Big House, but Blue just had too much talent and inched out the win. Here in Virginia, the weather could not have been more perfect, the beer was cold and all over the Commonwealth there were pigs split over ambers of hickory as Fall rituals began in earnest.
While most of us were focused on weekend activities, the beginnings of what might be significant events were bubbling under the surface.
Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, the weakest party of the right-wing coalition in 2018, scored a major victory in Sunday’s elections. She will become Italy’s first woman prime minister, and will govern with other center right parties, including Matteo Salvini’s League (Lega), and three-time former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italy. Meloni was practically the only politician who vehemently denounced Italy’s draconian and extremely authoritative Covid policies, and thus has been rewarded for not being a wimp. Her movement, national in nature, calls for a curb in unfettered immigration, protection of traditional Christian values and fiscal responsibility. Italy is a microcosm of events spiraling on the world stage, as the new coalition is expected to be a populist movement against the elitist forces of Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum which seem to be in control of the European Union, with its ridiculous climate control “you will own nothing and he happy agenda.” Predictably, German EU Chief Ursala von der Leyen, an uber global elitist, has smeared Meloni for being a racist and undemocratic (even though she just won a huge election). As noted in my column last week, there are forces in the world that ignore fundamental truths and deny reality. It feels as though there is an awakening occurring. With recent elections in Europe, Hungary, Poland, Sweden and Liz Truss’s ascension to power in Britain, perhaps the non-wacko populations in the western democracies are beginning to say “throw these crazed nitwit elites out of power.”
I’ve never understood how national electorates can be so blind to the lessons of the past. Tax and spend, over regulate, penalize capital, and you will always get the same result. No growth and an economy in shambles. Electorates seem to go through a willful forgetfulness and simply avoid critical issues about what works and what doesn’t. When they wake up, they find themselves in a deep economic crisis and perhaps at war. Like Italy, it seems that our electorate in the United States is waking up. Our ruling class are complete whack jobs; they believe things that are preposterous. Pundits on the center and the left are now openly acknowledging that we could very well be in disastrous times. The Atlanta Fed has forecast that we are in the 3rd quarter of recession. The Dow has been in a freefall. 30 Year mortgages are 2.4 times higher than they were in January of 2021 and there seems to be no end to out of control prices. The Fed has issued dire warnings of future economic hardships. There are signals that the residential real estate market is quickly slowing down and some pundits are predicting a painful crash. There was much disruption in commercial real estate markets during Covid, but now the Covid money has been spent, rents have not returned, but higher interest rates have. Many landlords may well be in a squeeze. Banks are getting jittery. One can feel the national mood turning gloomy and finally acknowledging that we have arrived in “buckle up for a tough ride” time.
No set of problems can be solved by ignoring truth, elections are won and problems are solved by having the guts to tell the truth. Giorgia Meloni just proved that.
To Giorgia. Salute!
