I added 5% lines to each one to show where we are. The Dollar is down 2.5% while pretty much everything that’s priced in Dollars is up 5% and that’s our normal 2:1 ratio of market to Dollar moves with commodities, like oil, typically taking it to extremes. Can it last forever? Probably not – it never has before but, for some reason, people love to believe this time is different even though 500 years of market history might suggest otherwise (and, if you count trade markets then it’s thousands of years of history).
Speaking of history, I mentioned to Members yesterday that even the Pharaohs knew that you had to keep the slaves happy and fed once upon a time but "this time it’s different" and our current Congress doesn’t seem to have read their bible or they’d know that it is, in fact, the Government’s RESPONSIBILITY to care for the people during years of famine – if only the fools hadn’t squandered our surplus in the years of plenty… Oh well, it’s only been 5,000 years – maybe next year we’ll be able to vote for people who get it.
The bible is meant to pass on certain lessons so that people will, hopefully, learn not to repeat the mistakes of those who went before them. After the bible, there were many fine books written on many, many subjects and, generally, they also helped us advance the cause of civilization but then, about 30 years ago, something went wrong. Suddenly, you didn’t have to be right to publish a book anymore – your point of view did not need to be correct or even accepted by serious academics. Suddenly, in the 1980s – not only could everyone have their own opinion but they could get it published as if it mattered. The internet and blogs have made matters worse because now, even the small barrier of the effort it took to do desktop publishing has been torn down and now there are so many opinions in the world that you can’t even separate fact from fancy.
