Collapsing Fertility Might Hint at Collapsing Financial Markets

Is fertility crashing because of mRNA shots or because of an unfolding economic depression? I haven't seen clear evidence because I haven't seen economic-adjusted fertility data. If you accept that an economic collapse is possible, then fertility numbers aren't crazy. They seem unexplained because the collapse in the economy and financial markets happens after fertility begins falling. If fertility is tied to the economy and not the mRNA shots, it's forecasting something as bad or worse than the 1930s Great Depression.

If you're familiar with the mRNA skeptics, you have seen the falling fertility data. Alex Berenson will be posting a new article on the topic soon. For myself, I remain skeptical. Not because I have a dog in the fight, but because I'm familiar with the existing explanation for falling fertility rates. 

Socionomics Institute: Stocks & Sex: Revisited

This correlation means that trends in conceptions significantly precede expansions and contractions in the economy, which lag the a-d line, usually by years. Most noticeably, the lows in procreation coincide with stock market lows, not economic lows, which follow shortly thereafter.

Is Fertility a Leading Indicator?

In a new paper at The Economic Journal, Steve Lugauer, along with Kasey Buckles `00 and Daniel Hungerman of the University of Notre Dame, use data on more than 100 million births in the United States to examine whether fertility behavior anticipates economic recessions. They find strong evidence that the growth rate of conceptions declines very rapidly at the beginning of economic downturns and the decline starts several quarters before recessions begin. In other words, fertility is a leading economic indicator.

Socionomic theory posits that financial markets are expressions of social mood. Rising markets reflect optimism or positive mood and declining markets pessimism or negative mood. A key point: mood generates news, not vice versa. Socionomic theory doesn't say falling stocks make people feel negatively, it's that depressed people sell their stocks or don't invest. Similarly, depressed people will not bring children into the world.

The data is very supportive of mood driving society. Fertility doesn't start falling after the economy goes into recession. It starts falling before, sometimes years before. Mood doesn't affect everyone in the same way, but most people are affected by mood.

What's concerning about the current drop is that it is ongoing. It would make sense for a V-shaped drop in fertility that lines up with the pandemic. It doesn't look like that is happening. Fertility is still falling a full year later. The mRNA not-vaxxes are an obvious candidate because fertility falls as they're rolled out, but this raises the question of temporary or lasting impact? Both are possible. The other explanation, social mood followed by visible signs in the stock market and economy, cannot be ruled out.

Consider that national leaders are also driven by mood. What makes a President threaten to use F-15s on citizens? What makes the government and people clamor for potentially nuclear wars with Russia and China? 

I've chronicled why I think the entire stock market boom was Federal Reserve "manipulated." I don't think they intentionally drove it higher, but I saw a very clear gap between social mood indicators and stock prices developing into the mid-2010s. Signs of extreme negative mood include transgenderism and the horror genre. The U.S. is experiencing extremes in transgenderism that might only have a parallel in Weimar Germany. The horror genre in movies has been strong for two decades now and even crossed into pop music:

Socionomics Alert: Terror Pop

Socionomics Alert: Stock Market Peaks Amid Record Horror Haul

Socionomics predicts rising and peak social mood produce heroes and a clear separation between good and evil. Falling and negative mood produce anti-heroes and ambiguity. The 1970s saw heroes such as Dirty Harry and Paul Kersey (from Death Wish, notably being remade with Bruce Willis in 2017). Dirty Harry gunned down criminal to the cheers of audiences and Paul Kersey carried out vigilante killings. Rambo was a hero who ran afoul of the law. In the 1980s, the good-guys are within the law. Rambo works for the government. Many heroes are fighting communists. At the peak of social mood, the superhero was reborn with characters such as Spiderman. This quickly turned dark in the 2000s. Dexter was a serial killer anti-hero. FOX currently has a show called Lucifer with Satan as the main character.

Horror movies also rise and fall with these trends. Freddy and Jason, two of the more famous horror movie characters, were both created in the late 1970s and peaked in the early 1980s. Horror was a less popular genre in the mid-1980s through the peak in social mood at the end of the Millennium. Since then, horror has steadily grown its box office receipts. It also turned gruesome with movies such as Saw and Hostel, what some critics describe as "torture porn."

And now amid a new high in stocks, horror is at a new peak too.

That was written in 2017, the market peaked about three months later and then more QE...and yet more extreme social division, negative mood, still rising trends such as transgenderism. Going solely by mood, the S&P 500 Index should be sub-2000 if not sub-1000. I concluded that post:

Horror movies peaked in the late 1970s and early 1980s amid recession and a low in stocks. It comes back for a one-year blast in 1987, the year global stock markets plunged 20 percent or more in a single day. Horror doesn't return until the late 1990s and hits a short-term peak in the year 2000. After that, it grows into a larger and larger genre with a growing list of subcategories, before hitting a new record in 2017.

The implications for financial markets would be bullish if stocks were making new lows, since it would give a coincident indicator of a bottom in negative mood. Instead, this peak looks like it could be a larger version of the 2000s peak, a burst of horror at a peak as mood turns. If that's that case, the next downturn in mood, the next political shift, is going to a lot more like the 1920s or 1850s than the 1970s.

The existing explanation for plunging fertility is negative mood. Mood leads the markets. If the stock market crashes in the next few months, if the economy sinks into the worst recession in the past 40 years, maybe the past 90 years, then the drop in fertility is not only wholly explained by negative mood, but is actually a flashing neon sign screaming "Sell Now!"

I'm not invested in this explanation. The timing lines up with the mRNA shot rollouts. It being a side-effect would confirm my belief that the shots are worse than covid itself. 

The point I'm trying to get across: let's say the shots harm fertility. It could be temporary, permanent, it could be a major crisis or a minor one. Whatever the data is showing you and making you think about the vaccines, translate that into the economy and the financial markets.  If it's a minor crisis that reverses over time, the markets may dip and then recover over time. If the drop in fertility is off the charts and if the vaxxes aren't the explanation, it's telling me that financial markets might collapse off the charts. If you can't rule out a social mood and by extension economic explanation, then you had better be on high alert in the financial markets.