"Complex systems that have artificially suppressed volatility tend to become extremely fragile, while at the same time exhibiting no visible risks. In fact, they tend to be too calm and exhibit minimal variability as silent risks accumulate beneath the surface.
Although the stated intention of political leaders and economic policymakers is to stabilize the system by inhibiting fluctuations, the result tends to be the opposite. These artificially constrained systems become prone to 'Black Swans' — that is, they become extremely vulnerable to large-scale events that lie far from the statistical norm and were largely unpredictable to a given set of observers.
Such environments eventually experience massive blowups, catching everyone off-guard and undoing years of stability or, in some cases, ending up far worse than they were in their initial volatile state. Indeed, the longer it takes for the blowup to occur, the worse the resulting harm in both economic and political systems."
Nassim Taleb, The Black Swan of Cairo, Foreign Affairs 2011
"Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and caldron bubble.
Cool it with a baboon's blood,
Then the charm is firm and good."
William Shakespeare, Macbeth
“The narcissist devours people, consumes their output, and casts the empty, writhing shells aside.”
Sam Vaknin
"Through a set of economic policies designed to bail out and subsidize failed and often tainted corporate enterprises, while actively promoting a false sense of confidence to support those policies, the public has become exposed, by those very people entrusted to protect them, to dangerously high levels of hidden counterparty risks. The cautionary functions of the media, the political class, and the regulatory bodies have been routinely directed, distorted, and even silenced for the benefit of a highly compromised and increasingly self-serving elite.
And this corruption has begun feeding on its own momentum, resulting in increasingly blatant examples of deception, distortion, and outright theft. This is crony capitalism, and its deadly credibility trap."
Jesse, April 2012
Stocks took an early dive on the higher than expected labor costs and lower productivity.
But,never fear, they recovered in the afternoon and finished solidly in the green.
The Dollar rallied on expectations of a more hawkish Fed.
Gold and silver took a dip and then bounced back to nearly unchanged into the close.
Another tranche of gold bullion left the Hong Kong warehouses.
Russia and China and a few other central banks have been stockpiling gold bullion pretty heavily since about 2006.
The paper claims to physical bullion leverage in the West is estimated to be greater than 100 to 1.
Don't expect the Douleur rentiers to go quietly into that good night.
Have a pleasant evening.
There were some additions to our extended family yesterday, in God's loving kindness and tender mercies.
