Some of the folks that I have to thank(??) for my current status as a fourteenth degree tin-foil hatter are the folks who write the financial dissection of the current fall from excessive affluence that we are experiencing. Mish, Yves, Jesse, and their ilk have been johnny on the spot concerning what is happening.
But now they begin to bore me. In a nutshell, they are still whining about it, a chorus of paunchy middle aged men and women gasping in exasperation at the way that the rules of their favorite game have been bent. They have watched and documented a financial event with huge moral and social implications, yet all they seem to care about is the loss of wealth. My current source of amusement with these guys is their demonization of Greenspan. This to me is roughly equivalent to a bunch of pampered frat boys suing the bartender at their party for making the drinks too strong.
The way that I see things, the money is gone. In all reality, the money was never there. Folks sent streams of zeros and ones hither and yon, those zeros and ones got really slutty and VoilĂ , more zeros and ones appeared. This phenomenon was documented in slips of paper sent about by mutual funds and brokerage houses. The owners of these odd bits of paper then ran to the local bank and got loans for new houses replete with marble counter-tops. The banks got greedy and then the game got really crazy.
But these folks are bent on retribution now. They are necessary in order to document the charade that led up to this mess, but the problems that they outline are going to be passé soon enough. I think I am going to start checking them only once a month or so. That is sufficient frequency to keep abreast of the current digging for recriminations and sulking about imaginary lost wealth.
What I want is to stop pining over the loss of a flawed past. I also want to think that the financial is not the be all and end all of human experience.
4 comments:
I find that 99% of people I meet are completely unwilling to even admit that things will never get back to where they were, much less consider that they might need to alter their lifestyles. They'll find out eventually, but it'll be a slow, painful process for them. Much better to chuck it all now, and dive headfirst into the new. Like cold water, it'll be a shock at first, but one quickly gets used to it....
On the bright side, in a couple of weeks we won't have to worry about a late frost and can start getting dirt under our fingernails again.
I already have volunteer potatoes coming up and have about twenty onion sets in.
I peruse the financial doomers once in a while and I have to say you hit the nail on the head with this post.
Good job the way you put it.
The way I see it, it does not matter one way or the other to me, I don't have much money to begin with and those high flying bastards are going to make a crater when they finally hit the ground.
I just keep getting by and keep trying to increase my odds of survival the old fashioned way.
The financial types ARE a little loopy about this whole thing. They need to get over it and get on with it.
Michael
J:
Great point.
I just suddenly got bored with the financial scandals/collapse, too. I have a good friend who got into it a few months after I did, and he's still harping on Facebook and elsewhere about the financial & economic collapse, the scammers and Ponzi-schemers, etc.
I told him recently that I'm not that interested anymore. That I more worried about things like: survival, gardening, small-scale industry, etc.
The financial game is over.
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