Friday, December 23, 2011

In Your Best Interests...

Greetings good citizen,

As the end of the year looms larger we find ourselves stuck in an overly optimistic rut. Who want to contemplate the unraveling of civilization at this time of year?

Thus today’s narrative is pretty much the same as yesterday’s.

A spate of better-than-expected economic reports has spurred growing talk of a U.S. recovery. In fact, many observers are convinced that the post-crisis low is in, and that it's onward and upward from here. One problem with this view, however, is that some of the data we are getting is not all that accurate, as I noted in "More of Less." Perhaps more importantly, the headline statistics don't  necessarily tell the whole story (as I alluded to in "Thinking Like a Bull"). This seems particularly true when it comes to getting an accurate read on supply-and-demand, which ultimately determines future economic trends. In many areas of the economy, there is a large overhang of prospective supply that can quickly come to market if things suddenly perk up. Such a dynamic tends to keep a lid on prices and turnover, nipping nascent recoveries in the bud. The following reports highlight four markets in particular where growth-stumping supply lurks in the shadows:

I suspect most of us are inclined to chalk up investor’s ‘irrational exuberance’ as a ‘side-effect’ of Holiday merry-making.

Perhaps they honestly believe that driving the markets higher is the only thing needed to lift the sagging spirits of the outsourced, rousing them to go out and ‘spend like it was 1999 again!’

The gaping hole in the above line of, er, ‘fantasy’ is that investors are ‘rational’.

Anyone who thinks the investing community is ‘rational’ needs THEIR head examined!

Although I would stop just short of giving Wall Street a pass by reason of insanity…

Bump and Stump are totally aware of what they’re doing despite their whole-hearted belief in the War on Christmas.

Which is to point out that you can be ‘fully immersed’ in a fantasy and still behave rationally.

There are numerous historical precedents…

And Historians will point to the one that currently envelops Western society as one of the most glaring examples, driven by deep rooted denial.

Which brings us to another disturbing subject, the level of denial necessary to keep us functioning under the strains of a collapsing society.

You have to swallow all of your hopes and aspirations, accepting hopelessness in their place just for starters!

You have already accepted that YOU will NOT succeed, that the most you can hope for is to hold onto what you currently have.

Since few of us ever bother to perform a simple, honest inventory of our blessings, some of you have a rather inflated idea of what you currently possess.

All so someone else can be rich.

Sadly that is the part most people overlook, their efforts do the purchasers of their labor more good than they do for themselves.

And all your money won’t another second buy!

How stark a light does that cast upon the fragile web of lies that make up most of our existence?

Ironically, perfection is merely a matter of shifting the goalposts in the proper direction.

Something that a Simple Plan strives to do.

It just struck me that our collective ‘major malfunction’ is that YOU DON’T KNOW what is ‘good for you’, so you believe what someone else tells you! (regardless of how implausible it is!)

You ‘buy into the lie’ because your parents did, because it was ‘safer’ than the truth.

No irony should be lost on the fact that the worst offenders as far as this ‘collective ignorance’ goes are the followers of Adam Smith!

They are taught to believe that ‘accumulating money’ is THE ONLY THING NECESSARY to satisfy their ‘rational self-interests’…

But they don’t control money’s value nor do they control the value of what money will and won’t buy!!!

Only a few get to play at that level and those few have the rest of us ‘by the shorthairs!’

Just another little something to contemplate when your eggnog saturated noggin starts to spin out of control.

Oh, and in case you didn’t pick up on it back there, you (as well as the collective ‘we’) are so tantalizingly close to waking up and shifting the goalposts back towards the correct direction that it’s absolutely mind-boggling!

Understand good citizen, your ‘best interests’ lie in a world where all things ARE equal and ‘justice for all’ insures that nobody takes advantage of you because ‘the law’ permits it.

So good citizen, do you know what is in your best interests?

If you do then you know going along with the current bullshit isn’t it.

And if you’re honest you know it doesn’t lie some imaginary, non-existent, make-believe past that only exists in a conservative's imagination.

It lies in a future where a united humanity takes its rightful place among the stars!

None of us will ever see it if we can’t get beyond this ‘me first’ bullshit!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

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