As for all those automated systems we have to navigate–do any of them work so well that those profiting from them actually use them? Of course not. In Marc Andreessen’s memorable phrase, “software is eating the world.” Unfortunately, it now has indigestion.

Unbeknownst to the giddy participants, they’re not just betting on the omnipotence of the Fed Politburo, they’re also making a max-leverage bet that “the madness of crowds” will never end. Imagine an economy so dominated by its central bank that all markets hang on every word of its priesthood as life or death.

That the neofeudal lords and their lackeys offer the debt-serfs “choices” of forced labor would be comic if the results weren’t so tragic. We know we’re close to the moment when Everything Solid Melts into Air when extraordinary breakdowns are treated as ordinary and the “news” quickly reverts to gossip.