Of Two Minds

Everyone caught by surprise that the infinite road actually has an end will face a bewildering transition. The End of the “Growth” Road is upon us, though the consensus continues to hold fast to the endearing fantasy of infinite expansion of consumption.

So-called “cosmetic work” can cost tens of thousands of dollars. Now that housing is finally rolling over due to rising mortgage rates and bubble valuations, many of those who have been priced out of the market are hoping to take advantage of lower prices.

What nobody yet knows (or the few insiders who do know are keeping to themselves) is what will matter. Being a doom-and-gloom Bear stops being fun when the Bear Bar gets crowded.

Trying to restore a system that is spiraling away from equilibrium with new extremes of obsolete, misguided policies only accelerates the swings from apparent stability to cascading chaos. The conventional view of the market is there are two sides to every trade and one is right and the other is wrong.

Everything’s fixed except what’s no longer profitable to plunder. Underfunded, ignored, mismanaged by incompetents, it breaks. Everything’s fixed–except what’s broken. Hmm. Maybe we need to read that again.

Echoing Sun Tzu (“All warfare is based on deception”), successful central banking is based on deception masked by a torrent of transparency. One classic form of manipulation is to set up a false either / or choice, as if there are no other choices.