"When misguided public opinion honors what is despicable and despises what is honorable, punishes virtue and rewards vice, encourages what is harmful and discourages what is useful, applauds falsehood and smothers truth under indifference or insult, a nation turns its back on progress and can be restored only by the terrible lessons of catastrophe." … Frederic Bastiat
Evil talks about tolerance only when it’s weak. When it gains the upper hand, its vanity always requires the destruction of the good and the innocent, because the example of good and innocent lives is an ongoing witness against it. So it always has been. So it always will be. And America has no special immunity to becoming an enemy of its own founding beliefs about human freedom, human dignity, the limited power of the state, and the sovereignty of God. – Archbishop Chaput
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Thanks for your analysis.
ReplyDeleteHowever, there never seems to be any mention of the wonderous "Wash/Rinse/Repeat" machine engineered by Bernanke.
Whereby stock market selloffs are accompanied by collapsing gasoline and grain prices, and plunging interest rates.
Enough such that the consumers become even more emboldened to borrow and spend, and renters are enticed into home ownership thanks to 30-year mortgage rates from the failed Fannie Mae in the 3% range.
Not only that, have you checked the prices of muni-bonds? They are soaring on a huge bubble, enabling governments to float new debt at will and finance even more programs for the "takers", now receiving ever increasing free money, which in turn boosts consumer spending and consumer confidence.
Every time stocks bottom out after a correction, they rally to even higher highs, and the interest rates bottom out at even lower levels than before, creating a vicious cycle of cheaper financing which drives government and consumer spending even higher.
Nobody in history was as ingenious as Bernanke to be able to construct a "Perpetual Motion Machine" such as this.
Mark - I always enjoy reading your posts. Indeed, it often does seem like a "Perpetual Motion Machine". I suppose it will just keep on keeping on until one day when it just seizes up.
DeleteGreece is the pattern and with a "fiscal cliff" coming that is unavoidable here in the US, I am increasingly convinced that is where the nation is headed.
Debt was once regarded in this nation as something to be avoided. In our brave new world, it is that which is DELIBERATELY encouraged.