“So the modern world may be increasing in technological knowledge, but, paradoxically, it is making things a lot more unpredictable.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder
“Success brings an asymmetry: you now have a lot more to lose than to gain. You are hence fragile.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder
I had read Nassim Taleb’s other best-selling tomes about risk, randomness and black swans – Fooled by Randomness & The Black Swan. They were not easy reads, but they were must reads. He is clearly a brilliant thinker, but I like him more because he is a prickly skeptic who scorns and ridicules academics, politicians, and Wall Street scumbags with gusto. There were many passages which baffled me, but so many nuggets of wisdom throughout each book, you couldn’t put them down.
When his Antifragile book was published in 2012, the name intimidated me. I figured it was too intellectual for my tastes. When I saw it on the shelf in my favorite used book store at the beach, I figured it was worth a read for $9. I’m plowing through it and I haven’t been disappointed.
His main themes are more pertinent today than they were in 2012. He published The Black Swan in 2007, just prior to one of the biggest black swans in world history – the 2008 Federal Reserve/Wall Street created financial collapse. His disdain for “experts” like Bernanke, Paulson, and Wall Street CEOs, and their inability to comprehend the consequences of their actions and in-actions as the financial system was blown sky high, was a bulls-eye.
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As usual, all of Taleb’s warnings and rational analysis of how the world really works have been forgotten or ignored, as the actions of the captured Fed, corrupt DC politicians, and greedy Wall Street shysters propel the nation and the world toward another historic financial collapse. The “experts” will be proven to be knaves and fools once again.
“The problem with experts is that they do not know what they do not know” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder
As I was reading passages of his Antifragile analysis of the real world, I was struck by how his concepts of fragility and antifragility become more relevant as this relentless bull market in stocks, bonds, real estate and government debt reaches nose bleed heights only seen twice before in financial history. When something is fragile it breaks easily.
Interventionist monetary actions by the Federal Reserve, non-enforcement of financial regulations by the Federal Reserve, introduction of unregulated indecipherable derivatives, repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, mass Wall Street collusion in the largest control fraud in history, and delusional expectations of ignorant investors created extremely fragile housing and stock markets which were certain to break.
“Complications lead to multiplicative chains of unanticipated effects.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder
And break they did. There was no specifically particular catalyst which caused national housing prices to fall 30% or the stock market to fall 50%. Their extreme fragility made it certain they would break. The “experts” who declared the housing market strong and the stock market not overvalued provided a myriad of retrospective causes after the financial system collapsed.
They never provide prospective warnings before things break. Their job is to mislead, while the Wall Street pillaging machine does its work. Were lessons learned from this horrific man-made debacle? Based on the actions taken by those in power, no lessons have been absorbed. The authorities have done the exact opposite of what needed to be done to make the financial system less fragile. Their reckless self-serving debt spawning scheme has guaranteed another far worse collapse.
“If something is fragile, its risk of breaking makes anything you do to improve it or make it “efficient” inconsequential unless you first reduce that risk of breaking.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder
As the ill-gotten profits of criminal Wall Street banks evaporated during late 2008 and early 2009 the very survival of these Too Big To Prosecute behemoth owners of the Federal Reserve was in question. They were effectively bankrupt, as the toxic mortgage debt and busted derivatives blew gaping holes in their balance sheets. With 30 to 1 leverage, they were dead shysters walking.
It was at this point the captured central bankers, crooked politicians, and feckless government apparatchiks across the globe colluded to prop up the existing elite establishment at the expense of the people they had just got done screwing out of $700 billion, after they had absconded with trillions in middle class wealth.
The plan has been to introduce massive doses of central bank and government debt into an already debt saturated fragile global economic system and artificially suppress interest rates in order to prop up stock markets and high end real estate markets, while impoverishing senior citizens, savers and the working middle class. A few million middle class eggs must be broken to make a gold plated oligarch omelet.
“The world as a whole has never been richer, and it has never been more heavily in debt, living off borrowed money. The record shows that, for society, the richer we become, the harder it gets to live within our means. Abundance is harder for us to handle than scarcity.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder
It was reported with great fanfare by the mouthpieces for the establishment in the corporate mainstream media the net worth of U.S. households has reached an all-time high. The Fed has successfully elevated the net worth of the top 10%, with the majority of the benefits accruing to the top .1%. This debt engineered faux recovery has benefited only Wall Street sycophants and the parasites feeding off their wealth, while throwing 80% of the population under the bus. There has been no recovery for the average working class American. Wall Street has gorged on debt and rigged markets, while Main Street has seen their savings eviscerated and depleted by soaring healthcare costs, skyrocketing rents, mounting tax burden, and everyday living expenses.
The fraud of GDP growth since 2009, as pitiful as it has been, is completely dependent upon trillions of dollars of deficit spending by the government, Federal Reserve money printing, and massive forced spending created by Obamacare. The powers that be decided their own well-being, power, control and wealth superseded any civic obligation to future generations.
“As to growth in GDP, it can be obtained very easily by loading future generations with debt – and the future economy may collapse upon the need to repay such debt.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder
Their actions have guaranteed economic collapse, but as long as the stock market remains elevated all is well in Elitist-ville USA. As long as we pretend the $20 trillion national debt and $200 trillion of unfunded welfare liabilities don’t matter, the party can continue. As long as a dumbed down populace chooses to willfully ignore basic mathematical facts, the propaganda spewing corporate media’s narrative of economic expansion and strong jobs market will be believed.
As long as the American people allow themselves to be distracted by a tweeting reality president, bloated hog Hollywood sexual predators, mysterious video poker playing mass shooters, kneeling overpaid low IQ athletes, and the usual Washington bullshit about budgets, tax cuts, and healthcare plans, the oligarchs will keep their raping and pillaging of the national wealth machine running at hyper-speed.
“More data means more information, but it also means more false information.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder
Never has there been more false information disguised as data in world history. Technology instantaneously disseminates data, as governments, central banks and corporations issue economic narratives and financial reports designed to mislead, confuse, obfuscate and hide the truth from the public.
The government reports “strong” GDP of 3% while somehow ignoring the impact of two devastating hurricanes. The number is a pure guess based upon models designed to show it in the best light possible. It will be revised dramatically lower in the future with little fanfare, but its PR effect has already done the job of elevating stock markets higher. Mission accomplished.
The brainless bimbos and talking head twits peddled as financial experts on the corporate fake news channels gushed about the strong economic results without even questioning the basis of the number. Consumer spending accounts for 69% of GDP. Some critical thinking might make you question the validity of that 3% GDP number. The massive increase in healthcare spending forced upon the public by the Obamacare cataclysm is counted as a great big positive for GDP. So is the jump in gasoline expenditures and food costs.
A supposed large increase in auto purchases gave a boost to GDP. If automakers are reporting lower sales and reducing production, how could this be? Plus virtually all auto “sales” are nothing but easy money debt based rentals through 7 year $0 down, 0% interest loans or low payment 3 year leases.
A full 17% of GDP ($3.4 trillion) is generated by the Federal, state and local government spending money they have absconded from you at gunpoint. Only a deeply dishonest disgraceful captured bureaucracy could count money taken from its citizens and then miss-allocated in epic proportions as an increase in GDP. The GDP calculation is fake data used to mislead the masses.
If consumer spending was really robust it would be based upon strong wage growth from a vibrant jobs market. That’s the other outrageous fake data narrative being spun by the masters of propaganda within the Deep State. The government and politicians need to keep the sheeple calm and sedated during their never ending sheering, so they falsely report a 4.2% unemployment rate and the bloviator in chief takes credit for all the new jobs.
In reality, there were 2.6 million new jobs added last year and the trend over Trump’s first eight months is 2.7 million new jobs – and most of them continue to be low paying service jobs. If the unemployment rate was really 4.2%, wages would be soaring as demand exceeded supply. But we all know real wages are stagnant and consumer debt has reached new all-time highs, as average middle class Americans are clinging to their credit cards to survive.
A few basic facts obliterate this strong jobs market false narrative. Since 2007 (before the Fed created financial crisis) the working age population has grown by 24 million, while the number of employed Americans has increased by 8 million (only 3.6 million men), but somehow the unemployment rate is the same. Of those 8 million new jobs, 2.5 million are part-time.
There are currently 2 million less men between the ages of 35 and 54 employed than there were in 2007. Those are considered prime working years for men. According to your lying government, 16 million working age Americans voluntarily left the workforce because they don’t need a job. Only an Ivy League professor or a 75 IQ moron could actually believe the drivel fed to the American public by these government apparatchiks.
Ask yourself whether the real situation on Main Street America matches a 4.2% unemployment rate or a 20% unemployment rate. Ask yourself whether your real world inflation rate is 2% or in excess of 5%. If rising consumer expenditures reflect the health of the consumer, why are JC Penny, Sears and Macys dead retailers walking? Why are there more store closings and retail bankruptcies in 2017 than the depression year of 2009?
Why has restaurant traffic been declining for over a year? Why do putrefying ghost malls haunt the suburban landscape like a scary apparition? We are living in zombieland, with the only an extraordinary amount of debt being pumped into the diseased veins of the global economy by central banker mad scientists giving this cadaver the appearance of life.
With real median household income still at 1999 levels, the middle class (aka the deplorables) in flyover country is lifeless and barely surviving on their credit cards. This supposed recovery has passed the deplorables by, as it has been specifically engineered for the wealthy oligarchs. The pliant academic puppets running the Federal Reserve, ECB and the Bank of Japan on behalf of billionaire oligarchs, Wall Street bankers, government bureaucrats, mega-corporation CEOs, and corrupt politicians had a moral obligation to take actions which would have made the global financial system more resilient and less fragile. After the near death experience in 2008/2009 for the financial elite, central bankers and their co-conspirator government lackeys decided they would do whatever it took to elevate stock, bond and real estate markets.
These traitors to their citizens have printed tens of trillions of currency out of thin air to elevate stock markets, buy bad debt to artificially suppress interest rates, and colluded with Wall Street hedge funds to drive real estate prices higher by purposefully reducing supply. Their actions have benefitted the haves at the expense of the have nots, while providing the deceitful appearance of stability when they are steadily introducing instability and vulnerability into the system.
“But the larger point is that we can now see that depriving systems of stressors, vital stressors, is not necessarily a good thing, and can be downright harmful.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder
They have created an eight year bull market in everything, while increasing global debt by a mere $70 trillion. This long period of faux prosperity has encouraged rampant risk taking and speculation utilizing leverage to supercharge returns. The lack of volatility and unquestioned belief central bankers will bail them out, has led arrogant swashbuckling MBA hotshots to program their supercomputer high frequency trading machines to buy every dip.
Many of these 30 somethings have never experienced a terrifying plunge or a real bear market. By eliminating fear of losses and suppressing volatility, central bankers have created a landscape where a buildup in risk and fragility guarantees a Minsky Moment.
The speculative juices have now reached epic levels. The appropriate cautiousness of respected financial minds like Shiller, Hussman, Mauldin, Stockman, and Taleb is scorned and ridiculed by the egotistical big swinging dicks on the trading desks of the criminal Wall Street banks. Their belief in their statistical models is only outdone by their faith markets will never crash again. They believe central bankers have figured out how to levitate financial markets for all eternity. With the markets overvalued on par with 1929 and 2000, bullishness and margin debt have never been higher.
The FANG stocks are the new Dotcom bubble stocks. Last week’s Amazon earnings release tells you everything you need to know about the outrageous hype and false narratives spun by Wall Street and their media mouthpiece pawns. The hyperbolic headlines screamed “HUGE EARNINGS BEAT”. At the start of the year earnings projections for the 3rd quarter were $2.00 per share. The company and their Wall Street analyst minions guided that down to 2 cents per share and then “beat” that by announcing 52 cents per share. Wow!!
Meanwhile, their gross margins fell for the 4th quarter in a row, chiming in at NEGATIVE 18% or a $5.2 billion loss. That’s right. They lose 18% on every sale. That was enough to propel the stock over $1,000 per share, with a PE ratio of 250. This certainly isn’t irrationally exuberant. Right?
No one on Wall Street dares to question the narrative about Amazon, Netflix, Facebook, or Google. The corporate propaganda media dutifully reports what they are told to report. Financial metrics, valuations, GAAP earnings, and common sense have left the building. The “professionals” on Wall Street are fully invested because they want those year-end bonuses.
The little guys are entering the market. ETFs dominate on the way up and will lead the way down. Everything is being bought by the machines and everything will be sold when the machines revolt. The confidence level for future gains is off the charts. The herd of lemmings is stampeding towards the cliff. Skeptics and contrarians are getting flattened.
“There is something like a switch in us that kills the individual in favor of the collective when people engage in communal dances, mass riots, or war. Your mood is now that of the herd. You are part of what Elias Canetti calls the rhythmic and throbbing crowd” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder
Central bankers have succeeded in convincing virtually everyone they have everything under control, when in reality they have introduced far more risk and fragility into the financial system than existed in 2007. Curing a debt problem with far more debt is like treating a gunshot wound to the leg with a gunshot to the head. This cycle of greed and fear will end just as every previous cycle has ended.
The debt financed speculative frenzy will cease when cash flow becomes insufficient to service the debt taken on to make the speculative investments. Even relatively small losses on the speculative assets will cause lenders to call their loans, which will begin a multiplicative chain of ferocious selling and unanticipated consequences. The sell-off will lead to a sudden and precipitous collapse in market-clearing asset prices, a sharp drop in market liquidity, and a severe demand for cash. Minsky will be smirking.
The suppression of volatility by central bankers has lulled the masses into a false sense of security as the everything bubble grows ever larger and less stable beneath the surface. If they had allowed corrections over the last few years to periodically release the buildup of speculative pressures, the financial system would not be nearly as fragile.
The all-knowing “experts” see nothing on the horizon which could derail this bull market. Trump has taken ownership of this bubble by taking credit for the surge since Election Day, after previously calling it a huge bubble during the campaign. He will rue his decision to own this over-priced market.
This market bubble is so overblown, a specific trigger is not necessary to start the disintegration of this bubble. In retrospect, as in the case of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers in 2008, the financial press will need to blame the inevitable collapse on something tangible such as a military conflict, political indictment, financial institution failure, natural catastrophe, or surge in interest rates. This house of cards built on a foundation of dodgy debt and mass delusions of grandeur will come toppling down, with societal implications which will propel this Fourth Turning towards its bloody climax.
The overconfidence and hubris being exhibited by the ruling class and the parasites feeding off their leftover scraps is palpable. There is no fear. They’ve got this thing. The suckers not getting rich in this market are to be disparaged and derided as losers. They remind me of the turkey who has been fed like a king for a thousand days by the butcher and every day turkey “experts” report with unequivocal statistical confidence that butchers love turkeys and will treat them like kings forever. Then on the 1,001st day the turkey experiences a fatal surprise. The Wall Street turkeys should note Thanksgiving is approaching rapidly.
No one knows when or how this collapse will appear, but we do know Bernanke, Yellen, Draghi, Kuroda, Wall Street, Washington DC, and the fake news corporate media are culpable in weakening our economic and financial systems through their reckless, arrogant, corrupt solutions to the last collapse caused by their irresponsible, greedy, fraudulent schemes designed to enrich their wealthy oligarch constituents. They’ve created a supremely fragile financial system. When the losses begin to mount, we (the deplorables) will need to get in touch with our inner butcher. These turkeys will need to pay for their evil miss-deeds.
“Not seeing a tsunami or an economic event coming is excusable; building something fragile to them is not.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder
Reading your originals are like watching Rocky. You deliver such a literary ass whipping it’s hard not to get on your feet and cheer at the screen.
I have noticed a huge uptick in censorship of anyone questioning The Narrative lately, but they lose ground every day. The NFL debacle really showed just how soft their underbelly is and it doesn’t look like they can afford to fight on all the new fronts that open week after week. They’ve found themselves in a proverbial Stalingrad.
Wish I was born in another era, but if this is the time, may as well enjoy the fireworks.
“Never has there been more false information disguised as data in world history.” You could have just written that one paragraph, Bubba. That’s pretty much a succinct as it gets. This is always been your wheelhouse, Jim. You were the guy saying, this doesn’t compute, long before it was a popular activity. But bammy is gone. Our long dark national nightmare is over. We’ll have to see how it goes from here.
“These turkeys will need to pay for their evil miss-deeds.”
I am not a vindictive person. I have never sought revenge of any kind against those who have cheated me or otherwise abused my trust. Having said that the above quote expresses my thinking completely. Some crimes cannot be forgiven or forgotten. Justice demands it’s recompense in flesh and blood. In Dante’s Divine Comedy, one has to pass through hell before attaining heaven. Maybe he borrowed that cosmology from Zoroastrianism which teaches that the residue of evil deeds must be cleansed by fire before anyone can attain paradise.
THANKS for a superb article. Taleb is much under appreciated. It is worth pointing out that the ETF’s have no cash so any selling means they will have to liquidate the shares to meet redemptions.
Glad you caught the Amazon charlie foxtrot. Here is a good detailed review and some other missives.
Bravo Admin. The turkey analogy was great…..
“Curing a debt problem with far more debt is like treating a gunshot wound to the leg with a gunshot to the head.” This could be the best analogy ever.
Spot on article. We are without a doubt on the precipice of an unavoidable major shitstorm. Batten down the hatches sailors, they’ve created THE Perfect Financial Storm. The big questions are how many of us will be left and who will have control over our lives after it gets done blowing?
We will, again; once the TBTF have failed and those TBTP are prosecuted (and hanged), there will be no one left who is foolish enough to try and enslave a free people with chains of credit. Guillotines indeed! But I would settle for the simple solution, a single headshot from behind.
Those who enable bankers will join them in the ditches.
James TDW- Who has enabled the bankers more than Trump since January? You were giving him a blow job earlier today, would you include Trump?
You and the entire anti Trump establishment crowd will not be happy until Trump is removed from office and the status quo is no longer challenged.
But I’m betting you will still be professing unhappiness even then.
Some people bitch and gripe, and other people do things instead trying to make a change no matter how difficult is is.
Which type are you?
his statement has nothing to do with being anti-Trump. Your knee-jerk reaction to this reasoning shows just how mentally insecure your thinking is, that you have to be all in or all out. It has long been reasoned that free men should offer questions continually and question actions continually of those that would be leaders so that their motivations remain on the path of the electorate. Even the best leaders may stray from time to time and just because someone is elected to office, it does not mean that their constituents will agree 100% of the time. I offer up, DACA, Obamacare, Taxes, the Wall and all the promises that have yet to be addressed and have not been. The fact that deals could be made to legitimize daca in exchange for a wall is another example to which the leader may screw the people that voted him in… none of this has to do with removing him from office or being anti-trump you F-in dumbass
I look at Trump’s actions as prioritizing.
You go after Clinton and Obama and Podesta now because they are a real threat to the republic, what’s left of it anyway. You start with the Podesta-types because no normal human being is OK with pedophilia, and he’s left enough tracks that it should be fairly easy to take him down. Once you have him singing, then you can go after the others – except this gift of Uranium One that disqualifies Mueller and Comey and their lieutenants is just too good to pass up.
Once you clean up the FBI (not done _yet_, I know) then you move on to other groups of Executive branch malfeasors and traitors and root them out; then you move on to the next target.
The Goldman Sachs bankers may be later, either because the economic collapse would make cleaning out the government harder during the chaos, or because he knows they won’t go away until they are FORCED away. Bankers love being near power, it makes them richer; so if they screw up and collapse the economy early, well, it was going to collapse anyway. If it holds out until after the snakes are driven out of DC (well, most of them anyway) all the better, and his hold on power will be strong enough to survive the collapse (at least initially) while waiting for restructuring / new currency / whatever to get things going again. THEN he can get rid of the Goldman Sachs types, and if we’re lucky he’ll hang a few of them too.
See, the rot is so deep and widespread it might take three Presidential terms, three complete turnovers of Congress and a wholesale downsizing of the MIC contractors and intelligence agencies before it’s anywhere near half-done. Since both Bushes, Clinton, and Obama spent their terms making the rot WORSE, it’s gonna take a good while to clean out. If it ever is.
The Swamp is deep, can be resilient and tenacious; the collapse may demolish Federal power (can’t pay the spooks or soldiers with worthless script, would you fight real enemies with real bullets for free?) before the corruption is completely rooted out or some kind of coup or calamity might intervene. But for my (depreciating) currency, Trump is better than Hillary or any of the other 16 or 20 candidates, and he has actually delivered on some things (SCOTUS pick, rolling back some regulations, arresting some pedophiles) that Hillary would never have even considered.
If that makes me a Trump stump, so be it; I’d rather be misled by Trump than faithfully (?) served by Clinton, the three-letter agencies or the Fed any day.
James, that’s a great comment, but you can certainly clear out the rot quicker than that. It’s like building a house, might take you a year. If you’re knocking that house down you could have it in dumpsters in 3 hours with one guy running a trac-hoe.
“Moral obligation”? Perhaps the author hasn’t realized that the oligarchs operate with a totally different set of moral values. Stampeding the herd off the cliff once in a while is a very profitable part of the program.
“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”
— attributed to Thomas Jefferson
One of the all time great statements whoever said it. I have it on my office wall. Sounds rather Jacksonian as well. Supposedly the first record of the statement and attribution to Jefferson was in Congressional testimony about a hundred years back.
Unfortunately, the Jefferson quote is fake. “Deflation” as an economic/monetary term didn’t enter into the language until the 1920s.
https://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/private-banks-spurious-quotation
Actually, I think a fair percentage of Americans are aware of our fiscal problem, its just that no one wants to ‘own’ it. I get two modest checks each month from government. One from my 10 year stint working for a municipal utility and the other from Social Security. Could I live without them. I suppose but it would mean a much reduced retirement.
People who have a lot of money know that, should the government try to live within its means, it would mean huge tax increases on them and there just aren’t enough of them to really make a difference.
The poor? Well they know a good deal when they see it so why should they complain.
The fact is, as long as the government can borrow or print the money, why worry about it. Let the future take care of itself and, in the meantime, let the good times roll!
If we returned to an honest money standard without the Federal Reserve we would at least have a halfassed chance. The “Austrian School” has most of the answers, but since honest money involves honesty and a free market discovering rates and prices it is a no starter with the scammers and schemers who steal a speck of every Dollar you hold with every additional one they print or summon digitally.
Bring on the shitstorm already, tired of hearing about it…should’a happened in 07. When not one single motherfucker went to jail, we all woke up to how badly things are rigged. Don’t pay a speeding ticket, I go to jail. Fuck people out of 100 million, you get a raise and a bonus. These rich pussies aren’t going to fare well in the world of tomorrow they’ve created. They will regret opening the doors wide to let all the animals in, fuck em…hope their livers get cooked over a firepit. Karma is a real angry Bitch.
Have you heard of the Holder Rule? Around 1999-2000 Deputy Atty General Eric Holder issued a DOJ rule that when big business commits a crime, the DOJ must consider the effect of sanctions on the Stock price/market capitalization, employees, the follow on effects of businesses working with or for them on and on.
Now, when 400 bankers were charged with money laundering and in effect heroin trafficking, since it would harm investors and employees, the government merely punishes such transgressions with a fine which a cynic (I’m a cynic) would consider merely the cost of a permit to traffic in heroin.
Rastus gets caught with a few hundred Dollars of heroin he is arrested, tried and sent to the butt stretcher for months or even many years. Mr. Ivy League shithead launders two billion Dollars of heroin proceeds knowingly and is caught, his bank, not him is fined.
Great point.
Greetings,
It isn’t the banksters fault that such a thing as a bankster exists or that being one makes you rich and powerful. That job title existed long before any of the current Mafioso were born. That position, being available, must be filled by someone, right? Same as it ever was.
The Federal Reserve must be nationalized and we must have an immediate return to currency backed by something tangible. It can not be reformed, it must be destroyed.
Yep! my feelings exactly Dennis Roe.
If you can find it in the archive at Zero Hedge, around November 9, 2016 Taleb had an autopsy of the election “Nassim Taleb Explains Who Just Got Buried” in which he had a new acronym describing the IYI class. Intellectual Yet Idiot. Mostly about the Ivy League shithead academics and punditry sniff-sniffing at we deplorables and Trump and then having their heads handed to them. Explains why they are so stupid, pathologizing people they do not know, have never met and about whose daily lives they know nothing. The folks who want to lecture us about “Iowa” but have never been there and never met anyone from there.
I admired this for the naked truths and the slicing surgeon wordsmith style.
I have seen the inevitability of the “Everything Bubble”: No debt, stacked, the rest in cash, prepped, armed, like minded neighbor network being built, living on a modest farm – learning self-sufficiency every day.
Have warned those I love and care about. Will forward this to them.
Me too, Mark. Hope there are lots like you and I out there, preparing for the eventuality that cometh.
Slicing surgeon wordsmith style. Indeed.
The Elite have established (on our backs) a System that creates free money and then loans 99.9% of it to them for almost nothing (effectively as non-recourse loans). As Investors, they buy everything from securities to Senators & Actresses. When a crash comes, as Financial Royalty, they are escorted into the most Exquisitely Staffed Life Boats and whisked to to their Private Island Resort to suffer through the economic storm. The Schmucks that get raped are trapped by the fine print in pensions, mutual & hedge funds, money markets etc.
“we (the deplorables) will need to get in touch with our inner butcher. These turkeys will need to pay for their evil miss-deeds.”
WOW! Start cutting their heads off? I like it. I like it a lot.
Actually I 1st heard it here:
Savings rate plummets to a 10 year low and the MSM says it’s because we all have jobs and are confident about the future. The propaganda is flowing freely and you need hip boots to wade through the bullshit.
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Another depressing read from Admin.
That’s a compliment!
Woe. Woe is me. Trouble and turmoil await me at every turn. Why couldn’t I have been born and lived life in happier times?
I think the analysis is correct, and the collapse is inevitable. But, this issue I have – like with Denninger’s pieces – is that you criticize the populace for not doing more. Things like this:
“As long as the American people allow themselves to be distracted by a tweeting reality president, bloated hog Hollywood sexual predators, mysterious video poker playing mass shooters, kneeling overpaid low IQ athletes, and the usual Washington bullshit about budgets, tax cuts, and healthcare plans, the oligarchs will keep their raping and pillaging of the national wealth machine running at hyper-speed.”
Those types of criticisms are simply misplaced and wrong. Anyone (as an individual of modest means) or any small group can do nothing to fix the problem. And, all groups of any size are corrupted before any corrective measures can be taken. Take for example, the Tea Party movement. I personally know several people that became involved with the entire mindset of it being a mechanism to reduce government, and they devoted a lot of spare time to it believing that they could make a difference. But, less than a year later, it was completely corrupted by the Republican establishment, and all of my friends quit is disgust.
Honestly, the best advice to anyone that is listening is to do four things.
First, learn skills that will be useful in the post-Tech world. When the collapse comes, all this bullshit Tech will disappear. Seriously, who the hell is going to be able to afford a $1200 phone when they cannot pay for anything else? Good old-fashioned skills like gardening, carpentry, and sewing will be a lot more useful.
Second, tune out. Pay attention to the goings-on just enough to understand what is going on generally. Otherwise, ignore it because it is bullshit.
Third, start talking to and being friendly with your neighbors. Without the bullshit Tech, the world will be a much smaller place, and your neighbors will be the people that you will need to live with.
Finally, don’t panic. The prepper’s Mad Max wet dream is highly unlikely for all but the biggest cities. Any place where Mad Max is going to take hold already has; look at Baltimore and Chicago. This will be more like the 1930’s, but on a larger scale. Focus on the day-to-day, and be happy with what you have.
Taleb is a WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY overrated schlub.
His aphorisms book (Procrustes Bed) is about the only readable thing he’s written.
His 3 – count ’em, THREE! – books all blather on endlessly about randomness,
never making a single point which he develops and explains.
This author’s review makes more sense and reads more into Taleb’s work than is there…a credit to this author.
Taleb’s problem?: to be able to write clearly, one must first be able to *think* clearly.
Snark he’s got. Vocabulary too. A hatred of Bush as well.
But that’s about it.
good column admin–
Simon Black,Sovereign Man
last month the fed govt added over $200 billion to the debt–
some interesting tax #s and %s–
short article–
https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/the-us-government-quietly-added-200-billion-to-the-debt-this-month-alone-22558/
Repeat big truths often enough, and people will believe them.
Great post Jim. I’m reminded of the US govt (US Forest Service) that had a policy of fire suppression at Yellowstone Nat’l Park almost from the beginning of the park’s existence. That policy spread to other national parks and large parts of Federal lands. This was the practice for most of the 20th century. Then, they changed course in and around 1987. When they did, Yellowstone and surrounding areas went up like a torch in ’88. All the tinder built up to epic proportions.
I was out in Wyoming that year. A group of Ga Tech folks and I were planning to do a 12 day back-country back pack trip in Yellowstone. Needless to say our plans changed and we did a 3 day shake-down trip in Grand Teton park to start and a shorter 6 day trip in the SW part of Yellowstone that didn’t burn-up. West Yellowstone looked like it was occupied by the military and flames shooting up 100s of feet just outside of town gave it an apocalyptic feel. I’ll never forget it.
The analogy is that Federal Govt has been trying to suppress the business cycle and have caused even more instability. Then, after the GFC, they have amped-up counter-cyclical monetary efforts to an even greater extent to counter the instability THAT THEY HAVE CAUSED! The great conflagration so far was the 2008 GFC. It didn’t resolve completely and was largely papered-over by debt and ultra-easy money and even more govt intervention. I suspect that the “tinder” has built up once again and that the Fed’s current efforts to reverse their extreme “emergency” measures might ignite the “tinder?”
The GREATEST conflagration is probably baked-in now. My worst fear is where the stock markets shut down and stay limit-down meaning the market can’t re-open.
I specifically asked my Fidelity Representative that, if the markets (stocks/bonds) are closed for such an extraordinary event, could I still withdraw money from an ATM using my debit cards. He said yes, but I’m not sure he really knows. If the stock and/or bond markets remain closed, you won’t be able to sell any position to raise cash –perhaps for a long time. So, have a couple or 3 months of cash hidden at home just in case. It’ll be the most useful thing, maybe even more than gold or silver coins.
Jim, by the way, the total of Federal, State and local spending is $5.7 Trillion out of a $18.5 Trillion economy or 31% of the GDP — even worse than you stated.
With all this HaKaKa going on at this moment in history this vision or such came into my head… that is! what if time started going backward? Would conditions and quality of life seem to get better? Look at the path back for a span of seventy years.
Admin posts another tour de force, and this is comment number 39. What fucked up bullshit that is. Thanks Admin.
Stuck, and this is not meant as a dig at him, because he is the lifeblood of the place these days, posts a thread about hoarding, and gets 140 comments. It is not a comment about Stuck, but about the posters here. And the posters are not what they used to be, to let an Admin article, that takes much work and is based on many years of thought and experience, be so little rewarded with comment.
My red ass is likely to become increasingly scarce around here, for reasons I will not go into. You that remain need to lift your fucking game.
Agreed, Llpoh. But Taleb is tough reading. Someone like Admin can delve into it and persevere enough to profit, but Taleb’s compositions just do not connect with the average reader. He could benefit from a writing coach to connect with his readers better.
Plus, Admin intimidates the hell out of people. He does me, and I’ll generally mix-it-up with anyone except him. Admin gets widely read regardless of the comment count on any specific post here. That’s what’s important. If Yo and BB don’t “weigh in” on a thread, that’s always a bonus to the site.
Vodka – commenting is a key way we learn around here. I learn, Admin learns, everyone learns if we comment, bicker, and fight. And if we do not value the real education, which Admin so richly provides, then the fun stuff Stuck provides is is just potatoes with no meat.
And it is the meat that we most need. We need to spread the word. Hoarding threads are great fun. But the things Admin posts are life or death of the country, of freedom, of values. And it deserves to be debated, discussed, and acknowledged.
Thanks for the reply.
I don’t know if there are others like me, but I “save” Admin’s lessons for the early mornings when I have a clear head and a hot cup of coffee. Stucky’s stuff is interesting and fun to banter mindlessly about. Admin’s wordsmithing and idea splicing with surgical precision (borrowing from Mark, above, who made an amusing reference to a surgeon regarding Admin’s writing style) require more introspection and self-analysis.
For example, I brought this line here as an example:
“Curing a debt problem with far more debt is like treating a gunshot wound to the leg with a gunshot to the head.”
That is a really profound analogy. Or is it a metaphor?
Above, someone commented that they just wish the economic collapse would start already. Something like that… they are tired of knowing it is coming and trying to guess when, where and what to have in hand.
I’m terrified of what is coming and I think my husband and I are as ready as we are going to be. The majority of people want to be entertained and they will delude themselves that the “data” that entertained them just informed them. That is why the bread and circuses continue to work.
(Not intending insult to Stucky, who, like Gamera, is friends to all children… it was Godzilla night at the log cabin last night. When TSHTF I am going to be a Godzilla expert. My husband bought a crapload Godzilla type movies.)
Edit: I just read your comment above. And I now see Stucky’s below. I feel rather clever for mentioning the bread and circuses while you mention potatoes. But, Stucky does more than just provide entertainment and starchy carbohydrates for the masses. I think of him as the rodeo clown; fun and entertaining for most of the silliness at rodeo. But, when the main event — bull riding– comes up, the clowns are the ones who will save lives. Now, Stucky is NOT a clown and he probably isn’t going to save anyone’s life here, but he certainly educates a few dunderheads and whets their appetite for the real meat on the table.
Well, now I feel like shit.
Stuck – you are irreplaceable. And I mean that. But when hoarding articles get more play than what Admin does at great effort, that signifies an issue with the posters, not you. Sorry if I upset you. Not my intent.
I am absolutely NOT offended. Your words are words of truth. I feel “like shit” BECAUSE what you say IS correct.
More on this in a separate article I’ll be posting very shortly.
Llpoh
I know which articles will generate a decent comment stream, and this one won’t. It’s too technical, long, and only dealing with economic and financial issues. It’s the political and social articles that get people fired up. I understand that. Since it’s my blog, I get to post whatever interests me. My next article will be about the Fourth Turning. I know that will generate a huge number of views and comments. It is what it is.
Well, Admin, they are still a bunch of ingrates. Knowing they are such does not change the fact. It is just plain courteous to acknowledge the time, effort and skill you bring to the party. And unless enough comment, we are unlikely to see you tell any dmbfucks to “blow me”.
This article is really a wake up call and should be spread to the masses. But how many would take the time to read it?
All the bullshit we are inundated with 24-7, is just that, bullshit, but so entertaining to the people, economics is boring. Bread and circuses I suppose, it’s always worked before, why not now?
All the bullshit is made to keep our attention off the real story because the average attention span of an American is already poor. Even the media hyped story of goldfish having a longer attention span is bullshit, but people believe it because their friends posted it on facebook.
“There is something like a switch in us that kills the individual in favor of the collective when people engage in communal dances, mass riots, or war. Your mood is now that of the herd. You are part of what Elias Canetti calls the rhythmic and throbbing crowd”
I don’t pretend to know what is happening in economics because I’m not brilliant like Jim, or the intelligent people he reads, or some of the smart commentators here. I do know something is happening now, something bad is going to happen going forward and I want to prepare the best I can for when it does happen.
Then I can be like BL and say to people I knew what was going to happen, but I wanted it to be a surprise.
Thank you for all you do Jim.
Now that all central banks have broken the seal on money printing, it is difficult to see any major bear markets lasting for very long. Sure they might let one run for 9-18 months but after that they’re going to stomp that crap out with a deluge of printed fiat. From now on, the real black swan comes when one of these “hyperinflation containers” (healthcare, tuition, etc) breaks open and floods the broader economy with inflation that cannot be statistically manipulated away. The big problem is by the time this happens, the masses will be so broke and broken that they are likely to either chimp out completely or go full commie.
Great article. I posted it on SLL.
I get an undeniable machine gun effect when reading many of your articles. Each thought or sentence posses much power and is linked to the next, as if in a belt, exploding in rapid sequence with a trajectory that can be far reaching or in your face depending on aim. Bam Bam Bam or Rat ta tat tat, the uncomfortable facts fly from the barrel in rapid succession with deadly purpose. In the war of ideas, few if any have ever stood against the fusillade of one of your posts.
I always feel more grounded after bearing witness to the recon by fire you perform so well, thank you, and thanks for the Taleb reference, I have not read any and will after I finish Tragedy and Hope.
Market propped up by companies buying their own stock rather than hiring more workers or investing in their plants and equipment.
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Admin- The main headline on Drudge today…………
GREAT AGAIN !
CONSUMER CONFIDENCE SOARS !
HOME PRICES REACH ALL TIME HIGH !
Some of us here are missing something….what could that be?
If consumers are so hopped up with excitement and confidence is soaring then WHY are the retailers zombies and the corporations must spend every dime they have on stock buy backs to stay afloat? How does this add up?
It doesn’t add up. The consumer confidence index is as accurate as the presidential polls on November 1, 2016.
Yeah, yeah, the next time there’s a collapse, we’re going to haul out all the Wall Street types and bankers and hang them in the streets. Sure you are…more BS from a bunch of keyboard warriors.
Stop bleating pointless nonsense and start preparing to survive. Since no one can predict when such an event will occur, or how severe it will be, the Chicken Little squawking of “The sky is falling!” is just annoying. Concentrate on water, food, shelter, survival gear, guns & ammo. In that order, for most urban/suburban folks. As one of those people living uncomfortably close to a “diverse” urban area (*sigh*), I’m already stockpiled with enough means to bunker, fight, or run. But I don’t seek to hijack this thread into some doomsday prepper rant – – there’s enough of those blogs already. My point is to take action, not ramble on like some crazy grandpa threatening to hang all the “fill-in-the-blanks” from lampposts. It never happened before in the U.S. after an economic disaster, and it likely won’t happen in the future.
That’s right Admin, it’s all a lie. We have established that over, and over again.
You are the lone voice in the wilderness calling out this deceit, that is what I like about this place and I appreciate your efforts. Keep it going!
When I opened the monthly magazine for kids from the Missouri Department of Conservation (and I gotta tell you, I have no small children who visit YET, but I subscribe to it and save the issues for the fabulous photography!) and saw this two page spread, I immediately thought of TBP. I won’t name names, but it seems to me all the character types are well represented here.
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I finally read all of this article and looked up the terms with which I was unfamiliar. Or at least had been uninspired to look them up before. I’m sure there are others here who do just as I do when reading a book recommended by others that has big words I don’t know: I try to ascertain meaning through context and accept my own applied meaning as if I have a clue. Sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t.
For example, I assumed an autodidactic was a natural teacher. I was close, but realized I wasn’t quite on track when thinking about types of knowledge.
I am tracking this doe and she is tracking me. I study the images and the times she checks for accidental apple slices dropped (I certainly am NOT baiting her). That is academic knowledge.
She alters the direction from which she arrives and changes the time of day. Autodidactic.
I’m getting there.
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I’ve followed Taleb for years. I’ve read his books & watch his interviews on UTube. Smart guy!
The Fed’s monetary policy is MMT, Modern Monetary Theory. The main tenet is that a Sovereign can print money at will to pay its bills & it’s impossible for them to default. So far this theory is holding up, our endless money creation has no consequences.
My personal belief, that Ive developed over years, is that the endless money creation will last until the Untied States is no longer the worlds #1 super power. In other words, the Untied States Military gives the U.S dollar value. I dont see anyone unseating us anytime soon so look for our debt to continue to climb a Trillion a year with an endless supply of digital dollars. As Dick Cheney famously said “deficits don’t matter” so far time has proved him correct.
I haven’t read Taleb… I think I read a summary of The Black Swan after the bailout created the outrage amongst the tea party crowd I was hanging around. I was NOT good at economic theory and did poorly in the one mandatory class I had to take as part of my college requirements in, ahem, journalism. Part of the problem was my lack of interest/attendance and the other was the fact that I was completely and totally LOST from the first week of class.
The U.S. military is as good as its contractors, I suppose. As long as those fiat dollars keep bleeding their way, the band will play on.
It is perhaps ironic that the job I like BEST as a military contractor was as a financial analyst. The company I worked for had actually developed a database to track maintenance scheduling, labor, supply and overhead costs and we could, at any point in the process of “fixing” an airplane, download all the data from the various data feeds and prepare a report on the Earned Value and Lost Value (misplaced supplies and labor charged against finished tasks). It was a bird’s eye view at the enormous waste the military industrial complex expends due to union rules and regulations. When I was told I was not allowed to look at names or employee I.D. numbers regarding labor charged to finished projects (is the law of the land that union employees remain invisible to managerial teams assessing fraud), I realized the game was over.
Battleships. Trump thinks we need more battleships. I wonder how many of his advisors come from battleship-making areas.
Having a clearance and background and a college degree gave me a foot in the door with several big name MIC companies. That turned out to be a good thing because I kept having to QUIT because the friction between my bosses and me got to be unbearable. Generally, people liked working WITH me or FOR me and the entertainment value was large, I’m sure. But, I couldn’t stand working for people who were so obviously corrupt and/or stupid. Or perhaps, I am just a natural born shitstirrer. There. The first step. Admitting the problem.
As for AntiFragile? I am hooked. I may have to read some of his other work. I particularly like his comments about how people do not like “negative” advice when that is really the only advice that has merit.
Do not smoke. Do not overeat. Do not sit on your ass. Do not waste money. Do not take bad advice.
Admin, Thank you for your superb well thought out posts.