Ox, I generally agree with what you write. A more correct assessment would simply be more cynical, and that I find a sad truth. I believe you give G more credit for understanding than he ever really had. He was a one trick pony, who stumbled his way out of the 87 crash by waving the liquidity wand and, like a drunken fairy, his vanity and prurient need for adulation never let him put it down. [Keynes never said there should be an end to the business cycle, that ‘goldilocks’ was the economic nirvana. He outlined a method of alleviating despair in periods of overly severe adjustment. (At least that’s how I read him.) The Keynesian Synthesis is corrupted monetarist double speak, something Keynes would have fought if he had not died so young, yet he is remembered for it and reviled for what he never really advocated.]
The Fed has become an addict of its own ice nine, and the banking system nothing but dark of the night tweakers. The Fed may be in business for itself, but it is turning the country into the very place we fought a world war to crush. Once again cynicism does not change fact, though it makes it easier for the knowledgeable to grab their junk from the kid. But like Queequeg, even the most practiced harpooner understands it portends the carving of one’s own epitaph. And the even more cynical? What is the point when lasting through is for nothing more than the right to a place in the boat that drifts on an empty sea long after the drama has played itself out, unless Bokononism contains the final truth. ;) |
