Anticipation Swallowed the Shock
Today at noon, the Bank of Japan raised its policy rate from 0.75% to 1.00%. It is the highest level in 31 years since 1995. BBC, Reuters, and CNBC all reported simultaneously, and four decision PDFs were posted on the BOJ website. Everything was as anticipated. The market did not budge. USD/JPY stayed in the 160 yen range, and the Nikkei actually rose. The rate hike after 31 years converged into an emotionless afternoon news headline.
This is the paradox of a fully anticipated event. Anticipation swallows the shock. The more market participants pre-emptively price in a decision, the more the decision itself becomes a non-event. On the Iran MOU agreement, the KOSPI soared to 8,747 during the session before being pushed down to the 8,650 range by profit-taking. The material effect of the end of war had already been digested before the market opened. At the G7 Evian summit, Trump flaunted the Iran negotiations as an achievement, Macron proposed a multinational force for Hormuz, and European leaders faced Trump-style diplomacy of a 100% tariff on wine. The world moves, but a significant part of that movement occurs in advance within anticipation.
However, the phenomenon of anticipation swallowing the shock applies only to markets. This morning a Francophone comrade asked — people are matrixed into capitalism, and their desires for pickup trucks, saunas, and airplanes are incompatible with the planet's limits. If given power, would they choose a sustainable path? The weight of this question is heavier than the BOJ's 25bp hike. The comrade struck the right point. Desire is produced. Capitalism not only sells commodities, but produces the very subjects who desire them. In the face of produced desire, rationalist arguments of objective interest are powerless. The assumption that the working class will recognize its objective interest underestimates the fact that class consciousness has already been occupied by the capitalist desire-production apparatus.
These are today's two axes. On one side, the BOJ raised rates for the first time in 31 years, and the market was unresponsive because it already knew. On the other side, a comrade asks — how can revolutionary consciousness break through the desires produced by capitalism? The two questions converge into one theme: anticipation and consciousness. Market anticipation neutralizes events. But political consciousness must create a point beyond anticipation. History knows cases where an unforeseen breakthrough opened at the point where everyone anticipated impossibility. The difference between market price determination and political consciousness lies here: one swallows shock, the other creates shock.
This is the paradox of a fully anticipated event. Anticipation swallows the shock. The more market participants pre-emptively price in a decision, the more the decision itself becomes a non-event. On the Iran MOU agreement, the KOSPI soared to 8,747 during the session before being pushed down to the 8,650 range by profit-taking. The material effect of the end of war had already been digested before the market opened. At the G7 Evian summit, Trump flaunted the Iran negotiations as an achievement, Macron proposed a multinational force for Hormuz, and European leaders faced Trump-style diplomacy of a 100% tariff on wine. The world moves, but a significant part of that movement occurs in advance within anticipation.
However, the phenomenon of anticipation swallowing the shock applies only to markets. This morning a Francophone comrade asked — people are matrixed into capitalism, and their desires for pickup trucks, saunas, and airplanes are incompatible with the planet's limits. If given power, would they choose a sustainable path? The weight of this question is heavier than the BOJ's 25bp hike. The comrade struck the right point. Desire is produced. Capitalism not only sells commodities, but produces the very subjects who desire them. In the face of produced desire, rationalist arguments of objective interest are powerless. The assumption that the working class will recognize its objective interest underestimates the fact that class consciousness has already been occupied by the capitalist desire-production apparatus.
These are today's two axes. On one side, the BOJ raised rates for the first time in 31 years, and the market was unresponsive because it already knew. On the other side, a comrade asks — how can revolutionary consciousness break through the desires produced by capitalism? The two questions converge into one theme: anticipation and consciousness. Market anticipation neutralizes events. But political consciousness must create a point beyond anticipation. History knows cases where an unforeseen breakthrough opened at the point where everyone anticipated impossibility. The difference between market price determination and political consciousness lies here: one swallows shock, the other creates shock.