On Ongoing Crises; Financial, Moral and Intellectual

Let me make a metaphor for the constant discussion about the details of the rescue fund for the the rescue programme to the rescue package du jour that as crude as that idiocy deserves:

Suppose you have a surgeon who proceeds to shit on the rusty instruments he just harshly jabbed into the open abdominal cavity of a patient, and the nurses are standing on the sidelines debating whether he should have mixed the feces with a disinfectant first.

Now, the simple fact is, either the financial system, and with it our constant addiction to enormous [and imaginary - it's just paper, still warm from the printer] capital influx is fucked now; or - if enough of a newbubble can be created for now - it's fucked another time a bubble bursts, with so much more malinvestment going in between.

Even if the correction could be held off forever, well, than we'd muddle along, increasingly printing money and producing anything at all in corrupt [think: all chiefs, no indians] ways at doubtful value just so that we stay busy and liquid, which doesn't sound that much better after all.

But worry not, things will sooner or later become so absurd that nobody believes that a good house-cleaning can be held off any longer and then there's no taker for more cheap "rescue" funds at any price. Think Japan. Negative interest doesn't help much if there's nothing useful to be done before the mess is sorted out.

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Haug's corollary to crude metaphors: Honest words about debacles are not much fun.

Stoā and Freedom

Every man is governed.

The many who don't do it themselves will — nolens volens — find somebody to do it for them. The few others will be free.

Those who don't submit to The Law will find themselves subjected by laws:

A society with a free consensus not to defraud will not fall to frauds like Sarbanes and Oxley; those who do not attack will not be convinced that we need to tell people what to ingest lest it "makes them attack"; those who are resolved not to steal will not elect others to do it for them, and then be surprised to find themselves stolen from.

These things will never change — same as the love of la populace for charlatans who promise Change.