>>> we both know that they will keep right on spending. Same as the USA. If the assumption is that they are all going to keep on spending (and they are),<<<
just keep right on spending......
There will be no consequences of that of course. Well maybe a little hangover tomorrow, but that is tomorrow, and its always gone away after a few days. Yeah. I'll get tough with myself tomorrow.
I was cruising the TimesOnLine today, and I saw that a mass grave from WWI has been found - some 400 previously unaccounted dead from 94 years ago ... The site at Pheasant Wood is believed to be the largest modern mass grave that was not the result of genocide.
timesonline.co.uk
I have a morbid fascination with WWI. All those poor souls standing in ditches, getting shelled, gassed and then "going over the top" to play in the machine gun fire. I am at once appalled and fascinated. How could the authorities let this go on for four years when after three months it was an obvious stalemate!?!? The "wastage" - lives lost per month in just routine operations - was 30K for the allies. So maybe by early 1915, one side might say to the other ... 'One of us will win, but not until we are both near dead from exhaustion. This isn't a good investment of time and lives.' But they say to themselves, just one more push and I will topple the enemy. Niall Ferguson likes to cite WWI as a prime example of a black swan.
What does this have to do with modern finance?? You know ... I am taking losses, but there will be a bounce and I will use that to get out. I will just print a little more money, and that will get us by. Wiemar Republic catastrophe??? Nah. We are smart, modern and have credit default swaps to preempt that very untoward course of events. This is all just a bad dream from which we will awake. Just one mor stimulus and things will get better. Now lets see if we can't top the Battle of the Somme and get more than 20,000 killed in the first day. Run those presses baby. Gives those homebuyers $8k and tell them to go over the top when the whistle blows. Just one more surge in Afghanistan. Don't let the folks back home know about the body count - er ah persistently high unemployment.
Marc Faber is saying that we will have a significant war in a couple of years. Financial instability tends to stop economies and people get hungry.
BTW: I am not a dove. But I do recognize that there is a right and wrong way to engage the military, and there is the notion of cutting losses. Important in investing as well. |
