DOES HOPE TRUMP REALITY?

The Fed’s balance sheet will not be growing unless we have another market crash. GDP barely grew in the 1st quarter. Stock valuations are at all-time highs. The auto industry has begun to implode. Corporate profits are falling. Retailers are declaring bankruptcies and closing stores like we’re in the midst of a depression. Wages for the average person are stagnant. Real household income is declining when using real inflation numbers. Hope can work for awhile but it eventually runs head on into reality. We are living in a hope driven, profoundly abnormal society. People don’t realize it, but danger is lurking just over the horizon.

“Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.”

Red – The Shawshank Redemption

“Hope. It is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective. A lot of hope is dangerous. A spark is fine, as long as it’s contained.”

President Snow – Hunger Games

“The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. “Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does.” They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted.”

Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited

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Tommy
Tommy

well, maybe Hillary’s available? Yeah, I thought so.

i forget
i forget

Hope insulates reality. So does 6 feet of dirt atop a corpse.

Pandora’s Box, a mytho story, was an attempt to prevent hope from putrefying reality. Which woulda’ killed 2 birds with the one throw: all that concomitant ‘covering it up’ with fraudulent accounting. Madoff & victims will always be with ye’.

“It’s called a confidence game. Because you give me your confidence? No; because I give you mine.”

Ali gave Foreman his confidence, calling it rope-a-dope. All that confidence gifting wore Foreman out. Then, it got him knocked out. Rope a hopeful dope.

Does hope precede brain damage, precipitate it, or chimera-like, both? Latter, I think.

Or: hope’s part of the training wheels, slapped on by those who had ‘em slapped on by those who had ‘em slapped on…∞…that, if never removed, results in balance, proprioception, fun, atrophying away to nothing. Give me security, even if – especially if – wholly illusory, or give me death…because that’s what no illusions, no collusions, feels like, to many, anyway.

Fiatman60
Fiatman60

“Hope insulates reality. So does 6 feet of dirt atop a corpse.”

Love It!!!………..

TC
TC

Now that Barky is out of office and Trump has officially claimed ownership of the stock market, there’s really nothing to keep the Fed from pulling the rug out from under the market. Maybe all this sudden flip flopping on Trump’s part is to placate a certain, uhm, “group” of people who pull the strings at all the major banks, federal reserve, etc.

Gator
Gator

I saw the retail collapse first hand today. Was about an hour away from home, saw a Gander Mountain going out of business. My favorite pair of shoes are Merril hiking shoes I got for about 60% off at a Sports Authority going out of business last year. I paid about $40 for a hundred dollar pair of shoes, which have been the most comfortable pair of non dress shoes I’ve ever owned. Today, I went into this closing down Gander store and got another pair of them for about $50, which I will leave in the box and not wear for a couple more months, since my current ones still have some good life left before they get ‘retired’ to yard work shoes.

Personally, I don’t see how ANY Gander stays in business, because anything they sell can typically be bought from a nearby Academy for 10-25% less, but its still not a good sign, as this is a pretty populated area that has robust outdoor activities. The lady at the checkout counter said it was just this store and ‘a few others’ not the entire company, but when that sports authority first put up going out of business signs, they said the same thing.

Iska Waran
Iska Waran

I never throw away shoes. After they’re fit only for yard work, I save them for going canoeing through rapids – which I last did about 27 years ago. I could send them to the poor people in Haiti, but they’d prefer to go barefoot. Maybe someday I’ll switch careers to applying hot tar to flat roofs. Then all those old shoes will come in handy.

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