I gotta say I find you a lot more fun in the investing forum.
Right now, I'm at a Kansas City Market Outlook event with a few minutes before the next panel kicks off, so I'm going to start replying, but probably won't finish soon. I'll also report on anything of interest I hear. FYI, I'm looking at this company for work.
I'm skipping the first two items, the livestock and grain market outlooks, but am planning to sit in on the energy markets and global outlook a bit later on.
(---Okay, next day, that was an interesting event. I did manage to make it for the grain market outlook and it was really interesting, as were all the risk-analysts reports.)
Crete, I think you would have fit right in. The audience was mostly commercial and co-op hedge-desk operators. Sons and daughters who grew up with their hands up a cows backside and hauling fertilizer with granddaddy. Now they stair at screens and manage futures contracts.
I was a fish out of water, but I was received well.
Best moment was goading the the sponsoring company's chief economist into as much of a "fed-rant" as he permitted himself.
I also spent a bit of time getting to know a couple co-op traders. Great people.
But anyhow...
You're throwing out a lot of ideas and assumptions about the state of the world here, some I "kinda" agree with -- assuming I understand what you're getting at -- and some I'd definitely want to challenge.
I'll wait to address your first point, well really your first two points since you connected them:
Both those sentences seem just obvious -- to me as much as you, I suspect. But how that gets hashed out in the next 3.5, 10, or 50 years -- well I sure as sht can't say. More on that in a bit.
Moving along.
So, I think most people get what you mean by this, and I think for the most part they'd all agree. Me too.
I'm far from sure I know exactly what all that means right here and now.
I've read some books, like the
Lords of Finance that do a pretty good job of documenting central bank shenanigans. Would you agree we've seen worldwide Sovereign Debt Explosions before? And I don't think that's all you're saying, but then you said a lot of things.
If so, then looking back at previous SDEs can be instructive. Let's also keep in mind your comments about technology's accelerationist effect on rate of change.
One factoid I've latched onto recently was the idea that around 130% debt/gdp seems to be a tipping point. In the sense that once that happens the fed begins to lose control of both the facts and the narrative.
Add to that that we're looking at an interest expense of ~115%, and we may be in for a major economic spasm.
Will this be worse than 1987, 1929, or 2008? I don't know.
I do suspect that we'll see the same thing if that's so, the Fed will re-institute the last playbook and begin stimulating,
And here I think you're right about the technological acceleration.
At least as far as I see it, the fed created a couple new technologies over the last two-three decades, quantitative easing, new ways to monetize debt, operation twist, etc. Some of these did serve a limited purpose, but we all know once the technological genie escapes, we're never rid of it.
It also seems obvious that these tools create problems of their own. Problems that the tools that created them are incapable of solving. So new tools must be created to solve the new problems, and so on.
Add to that the complexity of the modern market state and the evolution of modern societies -- going from classically liberal to post-modern -- then throw in current geopolitical trajectories and we seem to have become unmoored from the assumptions that guided the world since WWII.
Most of this has been hashed out in the NWO thread, so I won't repeat it here.
There's also a brave new world of narrative manipulation, primarily through social media that the fed (among others) has been refining since at least Bernanke (think, "forward guidance"). I'd go so far as to say forward guidance is a technically advanced, perhaps qualitatively different form of the kind of jaw-boning that ruled official communication back before and during the time you and I became adults.
One interesting question to me is does the technology (narrative manipulation, new fed tools) just accelerate more or less natural market cycles and events, or does it fundamentally change the reality?
In other words,
is it really different this time? Or just faster. Or does the quantity "speed" have a quality all its own?
That's a big can of worms I won't go into here, but one thing I do know is this:
The folks who are celebrating "Yay, things are different this time!" are usually trying to sell me on FOMO.
And the folks who are deploring "Woe, how different things are this time!" are selling me FEAR and RAGE.
Interesting times for sure.
Last couple of things. You made a prediction of 3.5 years in respond to my post recalling the collapse of Rome taking 400 years. Maybe I was a bit glib, but I think the there's some truth there: "of the time and the hour no man knows" seems to apply here.
Are you prophesying a Rome-style decline and fall in which an entire society collapses in on itself in 3.5 years?
I imagine that's an overstatement of your position, but maybe not. If it is an exaggeration, then on what scale and at what speed?
How will the world be surprisingly different in 3.5 years?
How should we prepare for whatever it is?
(Detroit has given the best answer to the question I've seen on this site, but maybe you have too and I missed it.)
Personal note: it may be the fact that I know I'm not prepared that causes me to not take your arguments -- as far as I understand them -- seriously. I do hope I've at least demonstrated I understand them.
I've got a different set of assumptions based on my own life and understanding of the world. I like to think I'm seeing things clearly, but also know that's only something to be aspired to, never achieved in this life.
I do think we're on the verge of a seismic "Fourth Turning" type shift. I think the world will look very different from what it looks like now.
I also believe there are bets and positions to be taken in the markets and in our households and neighborhood that can shield us from at least some of the coming shocks while we look for new opportunities. I believe if and insofar as America is to be saved, it has to be saved at the local level first.
I also believe participating in the national rage-fest doesn't seem to be the best way to achieve those ends. Not that I'm immune, by any stretch.
Of course, I may be too old and not around long enough to live through what's coming next, unless it happens a lot quicker than I expect (granting that what's next is in some sense already happening).
I also have a real apprehension that I may not want to live that long. I pray for my kids' sakes, and I hope to keep working to make sure that's not the case.