Monday, February 14, 2011

Where To Be or Not To Be

Bill Bonner from the Daily Reckoning speculates on Black Swans and bad places to be during the revolution -- that would be anywhere in the general vicinity.

What strikes me about what he says is the unpredictability of it all. We never really see it coming, and even if we do, it never falls as we would expect it to. The very nature of these events make them nearly impossible to forecast. This tells me that we are neither as smart as we think we are nor are we nearly as much in control as we'd like to believe. Conspiracy theories will abound in times like these for people want somebody to be in control. They want to believe that all of the chaos is not random or mindless.

Unfortunately much of the time it mindless. Want to know a secret? The experts have no idea what they are doing or what the consequences of their actions may be beyond next week. Not only is it true that There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch, there ain't no such thing as a sure thing (TANSTAAST) -- which is actually a better looking acronym anyway.

Are the financiers of the world bleeding us dry and trying to profit at our expense? Probably. That's what they do for a living. They have stockholders -- including many of us, to satisfy. If their derivative schemes collapse the civilization, which is possible, their money is going to do them no good. If the big ball does fall, I'd rather be on a scrubby Ozark farm with a few chickens and a garden than to be the CEO of Goldman Sachs.

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