Of Two Minds

Our economy is not resilient or antifragile, it’s a fragile sand castle of debt and denial. What could go off the cliff that hasn’t already gone off the cliff?

The right of free speech should not be confused with an obligation for privately owned enterprises to allow spamming and spoofing under the guise of free speech. The problem of bots on Twitter is in the news. This is of course a problem in all social media: fake accounts, spamming accounts, spoofing (expropriating your identity) accounts, and so on, all courtesy of anonymous account creation.

Burnout makes everyone uncomfortable, so it’s largely a silent epidemic. Epidemics are not just biological in origin. A strong case can be made that a silent epidemic has been sweeping the nation for years, an epidemic few acknowledge: burnout.

The decline phase of S-Curves can be gradual or a cliff-dive. Way back in 2007 I charted five long-wave cycles that I reckoned consequential: 1. Public debt (accumulating federal deficits) 2. Inflation 3. Oil (energy) 4. Interest rates 5. Speculative fever

All these curveballs will further fragment the housing market. Oh for the good old days of a nice, clean housing bubble and bust as in 2004-2011: subprime lending expanded the pool of buyers, liar loans and loose credit created speculative leverage, the Federal Reserve provided excessive liquidity and the watchdogs of the industry were either induced (ahem) to look away or dozed off in a haze of gross incompetence.

The casino has become complex and there are no easy answers or predictable paths. The Wall Street herd had it easy from 2009 to 2021. Life was simple and life was good: markets were easy to predict. As long as the Federal Reserve kept interest rates near-zero and increased its balance sheet to buy Treasury bonds, the stock market rose.