Addicted to the Apocalypse

purch

Once upon a time, walking around shouting “The end is nigh” got you labeled a kook, someone not to be taken seriously. These days, however, all the best people go around warning of looming disaster. In fact, you more or less have to subscribe to fantasies of fiscal apocalypse to be considered respectable.

And I do mean fantasies. Washington has spent the past three-plus years in terror of a debt crisis that keeps not happening, and, in fact, can’t happen to a country like the United States, which has its own currency and borrows in that currency. Yet the scaremongers can’t bring themselves to let go.

................there are two remarkable things about this kind of doomsaying. One is that the doomsayers haven’t rethought their premises despite being wrong again and again — perhaps because the news media continue to treat them with immense respect. The other is that as far as I can tell nobody, and I mean nobody, in the looming-apocalypse camp has tried to explain exactly how the predicted disaster would actually work.

It’s actually awesome, in a way, to realize how long cries of looming disaster have filled our airwaves and op-ed pages. For example, I just reread an op-ed article by Alan Greenspan in The Wall Street Journal, warning that our budget deficit will lead to soaring inflation and interest rates. What about the reality of low inflation and low rates? That, he declares in the article, is “regrettable, because it is fostering a sense of complacency.”

It’s curious how readily people who normally revere the wisdom of markets declare the markets all wrong when they fail to panic the way they’re supposed to. But the really striking thing at this point is the date: Mr. Greenspan’s article was published in June 2010, almost three and a half years ago — and both inflation and interest rates remain low.

So the next time you see some serious-looking man in a suit declaring that we’re teetering on the precipice of fiscal doom, don’t be afraid. He and his friends have been wrong about everything so far, and they literally have no idea what they’re talking about.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/25/opinion/krugman-addicted-to-the-apocalypse.html?ref=paulkrugman&_r=0

TruckerT

I've been saying almost exactly that for years! Those guys are just like the rest of us - they just make it up as they go along.

A more apposite example might be the recent divided opinions about George Osborne's austerity programme. Nobody actually knows, even now, whether or not (or when) the programme might be able to be judged a success or a failure, but there has been no shortage of well-funded economic authorities coming up with different estimations of our economic well-being on a more-or-less monthly basis.

The difference between all these gurus (and that includes bankers and politicians of all persuasions) and the rest of us is that on the whole they are not much affected by whether or not their predictions turn out to be correct. To all intents and purposes, they are an all-powerful cartel - it is the rest of us whose fortunes fluctuate (ask the Greeks, or the Iberians).

TruckerT

dryhat

Having the world's reserve currency and the biggest military to back it up will only get so far and last so long.

Loughton_Monkey

dryhat wrote: »

Having the world's reserve currency and the biggest military to back it up will only get so far and last so long.

Absolutely.

I thought it was common knowledge that Goldmann Sachs, in conjunction with the 'new world order' will join with a reptilian super-race and destroy the economic world as we know it. Mankind will be saved by a tiny majority of forward thinkers who forsaw this happening and rescued humanity by inventing Bitcoin.

So Bitcoin users are safe. But I can reveal that there is an alternative strategy that will save us all. The only trouble is that apparently we can only find it by taking out a subscription to Money Week.

In all recorded history, no country has ever recovered from the financial position we find ourselves in today. No government has ever been able to reverse this trend. No emergency action has ever come close to a solution.

This inescapable problem has only ever had one outcome: financial collapse.

Believe me, we don't make this prediction lightly and we have no interest in trying to scare you. We're simply following our research to its logical conclusion.

I don't know what that 'logical conclusion' is, because I am too cynical to pay my hard-earned to a bunch of charlatons to find out their conclusion. I suspect it is something like "Buy Bitcoins".

I'm sure, Dryhat, that when meltdown finally comes, and that you are one of the elite class of super-rich, and all but a few of us have died of starvation, you will notice us sitting in empty shop doorways holding a packard "I used to be a rich boomer but failed to invest in bitcoins." you will chuck us the odd Satoshi or two to buy a centilitre of gin to go into our tonic water.

TruckerT

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

Absolutely.

I thought it was common knowledge that Goldmann Sachs, in conjunction with the 'new world order' will join with a reptilian super-race and destroy the economic world as we know it. Mankind will be saved by a tiny majority of forward thinkers who forsaw this happening and rescued humanity by inventing Bitcoin.

So Bitcoin users are safe. But I can reveal that there is an alternative strategy that will save us all. The only trouble is that apparently we can only find it by taking out a subscription to Money Week.



I don't know what that 'logical conclusion' is, because I am too cynical to pay my hard-earned to a bunch of charlatons to find out their conclusion. I suspect it is something like "Buy Bitcoins".

I'm sure, Dryhat, that when meltdown finally comes, and that you are one of the elite class of super-rich, and all but a few of us have died of starvation, you will notice us sitting in empty shop doorways holding a packard "I used to be a rich boomer but failed to invest in bitcoins." you will chuck us the odd Satoshi or two to buy a centilitre of gin to go into our tonic water.

LM, I take it that it's break time for bar staff at the comedy club.

TruckerT

Loughton_Monkey

TruckerT wrote: »

LM, I take it that it's break time for bar staff at the comedy club.

TruckerT

True.

"Teabreak over. Back on your heads!"

Bye for now.

dryhat

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

I'm sure, Dryhat, that when meltdown finally comes, and that you are one of the elite class of super-rich, and all but a few of us have died of starvation, you will notice us sitting in empty shop doorways holding a packard "I used to be a rich boomer but failed to invest in bitcoins." you will chuck us the odd Satoshi or two to buy a centilitre of gin to go into our tonic water.

Of course I'll chuck you the odd Satoshi.

But you'll have to get yourself a Bitcoin wallet first...

http://bitcoin.org/en/choose-your-wallet

macaque_2

If the financial bail outs (QE and artificially low interest rates) were turned off tomorrow a lot of property would be transferred from multiple home owners to young people looking for house to live in. The difference between 'the end is nigh' and 'opportunity' depends on your starting point.

Loughton_Monkey

macaque wrote: »

If the financial bail outs (QE and artificially low interest rates) were turned off tomorrow a lot of property would be transferred from multiple home owners to young people looking for house to live in. The difference between 'the end is nigh' and 'opportunity' depends on your starting point.

Most of us are starting in the real world. Where are you starting from?

TruckerT

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

Most of us are starting in the real world

Is that the World at One by any chance?

TruckerT

Loughton_Monkey

TruckerT wrote: »

Is that the World at One by any chance?

TruckerT

'fraid not. Don't often listen to it. Unless in the car, because that's tuned into Radio 4 and have forbidden Mrs LM ever to change it [she wouldn't know how] to the much more down-market Radio 2 tripe that she tunes her own car radio to. On the odd occasion I drive her car, I set it to Radio 4 in the hope of bringing her more out of the gutter but she always turns it back. It took me about 15 years to wean her off Radio 1 for god's sake!