Thebacklash against Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter is part of the same story. Many of those migrating to rival platforms such as Mastodon are simply tired of crazy. Perhaps the failure so far ofMark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse to capture the public imagination is a rejection of the creed that powered the rise of Facebook:to “move fast and break things”. Previously beneficiaries of the Zeitgeist,Musk and Zuckerberg now look more like its casualties. The prevailing mood is for steadiness and solidity.
Something similar is happening in the currency markets,wherecrypto has crashed and the dollar has become a safe haven. The greenback has risen in value against other major currencies by nearly 20 per cent since the start of the year,while Bitcoin has plunged by about 70 per cent from its peak last November. Then there is thecollapse of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX,which began the year valued at $40 billion and ended it filing for bankruptcy. So much,then,for crypto ousting the dollar to become the reserve currency of the new age. Investors prefer the reliability of the old.
The markets killed off the prime ministership of Liz Truss after she unveiled an economic plan centred on mammoth unfunded tax cuts that violated numerous articles of fiscal faith. In this moment of freakoutonomics,as the pound plummeted and the cost of government borrowing soared,traders demanded rule-abiding rectitude.
Boris Johnson’s subsequent resurrection campaign,aimed at returning him to Downing Street only weeks after his ignominious departure,failed because the parliamentary Conservative Party viewed him as too much of a chaos merchant.
In the US midterm elections,the overarching message from voters was that they were weary of mayhem. “Big lie” true believers,who propagated the Trumpian myth that Joe Biden stole the presidency,were roundly rejected. The Republicans’ worse-than-expected performance was correctly diagnosed as Trump fatigue.
While much of the coverage inevitably focused on the success of his potential rival,the Floridagovernor Ron DeSantis,it is worth noting that the Republican governor of Ohio,Mike DeWine,achieved an even bigger landslide. DeWine’s victory is germane because he has built a reputation on being boring – as his lack of name recognition underscores.