Some Delayed Thoughts On Kanjorski's Interview

Many people have written me with thoughts on Kanjorski's lack of traditional political evasiveness as demonstrated by his C-Span interview. Whereas most are opinion based, and the last thing Zero Hedge tries to do is change people's opinions, one thing seems to be evading most. And it is the fact that capital markets now have the capacity to (self) destroy in a matter of hours if not minutes, once a Gladwell-esque Tipping Point type of self-preservation meme becomes dominant. This is not insightful per se, or rocket science either, but it is cautionary as the market seems to have significant optimism embedded in what D.C. will be leaking over the next 48 hours. As optimism quickly transforms to realism, and maybe outright disappointment, it is feasible that people will push the withdraw cash button again, leading to another electronic bank run, and this time not even the implicit government backing of the reserve fund will stop be buck from breaking.

Scouring the blogosphere and "reputable" media over the past week, the prevailing thought is that the government is in a Catch 22: For any plan to be successful it has to be simple, transparent and to the point. That, however, is an impossibility due to the fact that not even Wall Street can visualize all the far reaching impacts of the combination of a concurrent stimulus bill and financial system overhaul, which implies that by design any proposed plan will have to be contextual, complex and consistently transformational, as evidenced by how the TARP morphed thru two and a half iterations. It is easy to throw taxpayer money at a burning economic flame. However, to use a medical analogy, wanton use of the $$$ printing press products will merely fight the symptoms, not the underlying cause.

And as many angry readers will immediately interject with "So what should we be doing then?" I will address that promptly... I really have no clue. To paraphrase David Faber earlier on CNBC, it is not in my paygrade to propose a solution. And in all honestly, I have no clue what could possibly work at this point. Many have shared their thoughts on how the problem can be fixed... (for most use http://www.google.com/, another proposed by Phil's stock world today) I have read lots of these ideas, and still do not believe that any of them will be effective, either uniquely or in combination with other proposals.

Alas, the U.S. has dug a very deep hole, and while it has a shovel, it is also in the hole... we can dig deeper but how do we dig our way out?