Of Two Minds

Needless to say, few are expecting bubble symmetry to manifest now, because, well, of course, “this time it’s different.” Indeed. It’s always different and yet always the same, too.

So babble on, Babble-On 7; it won’t change anything. The forces in motion are like tides, and you can’t talk the tide into reversing. Allow me to introduce the Babble-On 7: the six board members of the Federal Reserve and Treasury chief Janet Yellen. (The Fed board has seven slots but one is vacant at the moment, so 6 + Yellen = 7.)

This madness is now global, so next up: global depression. A few days after the Covid pandemic was officially announced last year on 1/23/20, I prepared a chart projecting the course of the pandemic. In my view it still stands, with two updates: “vaccines months away” has been updated to “mass vaccinations months away” and “Wave 2” has been updated to “Wave 4.” (see chart below)

America’s financial system is nothing more than a toxic waste dump of speculation, fraud, collusion, corruption and rampant profiteering. What Poisoned America? The list of suspects is long: systemic bias, special interests dominating politics, political polarization, globalization and the offshoring of productive capacity, over-regulation, the rise of rapacious cartels and monopolies, Big Tech’s gulag of the mind, the permanent adolescence of consumerism, permanent global war, to name a few.

The lifestyle you ordered in the euphoria will be out of stock in the panic. Humans running Wetware 1.0 (which is all of us) love to gamble, and we are entranced by the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. When there’s a market for speculation, these wild swings of emotion manifest as euphoria (I’m winning!) and fear (I’m losing).

Regardless of our opinions about President Carter and his legacy, his Farewell Address is worthy of our attention and study. On Presidents Day 2021, I invite you to read/watch President Carter’s Farewell Address from 40 years ago. As a Washington outsider, Carter was relentlessly mocked and undermined by the Establishment, as insiders’ loathing of outsiders knows no bounds.