The Same River.

This essay dovetails quite nicely with what I’ve been thinking w/r/t the current economic climate. The bizarre discounting of risk, the flood of money without anything concrete behind it. I got seriously interested in growth investment in the early/middle 90s but all the historical measures indicators like P/E ratio no longer seemed to apply. The algorithm I was learning could not effectively separate speculative from organic stock value. I stopped playing because I didn’t understand the rules. Since then I’ve watched the bubble shift across the economy into real estate and now in to commodities. There’s all this extra paper wealth and no extra physical wealth to back it up.

I don’t know if this is indicative of my own social climbing or of a broader societal trend, but when I was a wee lad only my crazy aunt and uncle had anything to do with any kind of securities investment. Saving for retirement meant socking away in a savings account and working for a pension. Seems that now everyone around me has some kind of 401(k)/IRA/blahblahblah with significant amounts of money introduced into the market. Myself included. Like there’s so much money available these days that businesses don’t know what to do with it. Instead of R&D or creating capital assets it seems all this money is tied up in illusory logic puzzles. I can see how it would be easier to juggle money than come up with and commit to a good use to put it behind.

I know the financial world has passed me by—it was never more than an interesting diversion, but what I do know leads me to believe that maybe the financial world shouldn’t have passed so far beyond me so rapidly after all.

Anyway, IANAE…just an ex-accounting student who ended up graduating with a degree in philosophy.

Nattering on a bit further. I originally wrote this as a post to Metafilter on this thread. In another instance of what is becoming a trend, I decided not to post it there. It is kind of speculative. It is light on facts. It is narrative. And these things are increasingly not appreciated there. Instead of introducing the idea and suffering the snark from the masses I just spend fifteen minutes crafting the damn thing and then hit the preview button. I read it a few times and then just close the browser tab. Mefi really is a lot less like the kaffeeklatsch it used to be.

Buried in a MeFi thread was a link to Peter Schiff‘s latest essay on the US economy. If what he writes is true, then we are quite possibly way more fscked than previously believed.

Yes, Mr. Schiff is notorious for his bearish views on the US economy. However, he lays out how the government is fudging GDP in order to amplify any positive trends coming out of 3Q data. Basically, they’re acting as if there is no inflation (where commodity prices would strongly indicate the opposite). For 2Q they used an annualized inflation rate of 3.6% which is pretty league average while they used 0.8% for 3Q. This despite the fed cranking out dollars as fast as they can print them, the problems with credit, and the tanking dollar relative to other currencies.

I think this is another data point in the call for a new Constitutional Convention and revamping of the US government. You should note, Mr. / Mrs. Government Agent, that I did not call for an armed insurrection. Merely for a peaceful rethinking of our system of government. IOW, please do not lock me up for thinking critically.