Of Two Minds

When we lose small businesses, we lose More than tax revenues.
Small businesses receive plenty of lip service but very little appreciation–until they’re gone. By then it’s too late to do anything but mutter, “you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.”

Nobody seems to be wondering what happens should the real world no longer respond to the Perpetual Motion Finance Machine.
Scrape away the hand-wringing about interest rates and we find a bedrock of complacency.

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.