"When swept out of its normal channel, life scatters into innumerable streams. It is difficult to foresee which it will take in its treacherous and winding course. Where today it flows in shallows, like a rivulet over sandbanks, so shallow that the shoals are visible, tomorrow it may flow richly and fully."
Mikhail Sholokhov, And Quiet Flows the Don
“For the bullshitter, however, all bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.”
Harry Frankfurt, On Bullshit
"This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper."
T. S. Eliot, The Hollow Men
As you have probably heard the Non-Farm Payrolls report was a mixed bag. There was a seasonally adjusted net loss of jobs, which was certainly unexpected.
But miraculously, the unemployment rate dropped, and the wages increased much more than expected.
Now how about that for a counter-intuitive set of data.
The markets were not sure what to make of it. They have of late been asked to digest quite a bit of what Harry Truman called bushwa.
We produce so much bushwa now that we are exporting the stuff, in the form of financial assets and obligations. We have even selected its high priests and exceptionally gifted practitioners as our organizers and leaders.
We are the hollow men, the hope only of empty men, hearts and heads filled with straw.
For Thine is the Kingdom, the power and the glory.
Have a pleasant weekend.
