Of Two Minds

The Social Contract is broken not just by wealth inequality per se but by the illegitimate
process of wealth acquisition

Extremes keep getting more extreme, but for those at the top of the heap, it’s all fine. For everyone else slipping down the ladder, all that FINE adds up to Fragile, Insecure, Nonsensical, Expensive.

Together, these factors generate a self-reinforcing cycle of debt saturation, declining collateral and credit contraction.

Who’s left to buy overvalued houses? Too few to prop up bubble valuations. If as many posit the Federal Reserve has an unstated mandate to generate a “wealth effect” by propping up housing, they’ve managed to create a no-win situation.

And what happens next? Bubble symmetry: valuations fall at the same rate as they rose, declining back to the starting point over a roughly equivalent time duration.

Be careful what you wish for, because currencies are not abstractions we ponder, they are commodities that serve real-world functions that place demands on the currency as a mechanism of trade, trust, value and risk.