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When Confidence Crumbles
Once again we awake to an array of seemingly contradictory news and reports across the spectrum. Whether it be Ebola, the financial markets, or just plain ordinary life in general. It seems everything is once again in turmoil.
The issue at hand is migrating from worrisome to darn right alarming. And that’s not counting the general public at large. That speaks directly to the very one’s trying to re-establish confidence.
Today, what was once presumed as “a troubling situation in competent hands.” Now appears more inline with the space between “in” and “competent” being a typo.
The confidence in the people who are supposedly, as well as supposed to be “in charge” is doing more than just dwindling. It’s crumbling in Humpty Dumpty like fashion. For no matter how they try – it too may never go back together.
Once confidence wanes, or is lost, regaining it can be just as monumental of a task than the actual crisis itself. In particular it’s in the manner of reflexive or reactive assumptions that are communicated, along with conflicting assertions made by the very people trying to instil it – that diminish it. For it too can not only feed upon itself as not helping in real-time, but rather, hurting any and all credibility moving forward.
Sometimes no amount of “rights” will affect the one impression held by the public which you made wrong. Once it’s lost sometimes no amount of words seems to help. In fact, more words can actually make matters even worse. Sometimes – much worse.
This in turn is the exact tipping point where politicians, academics, et al find themselves not only up against a rock and a hard place, but also looking down the hillside where torches and pitchforks are advancing up the once presumed impassable slippery slopes.
The more they try to calm the public with words or speeches, the less anyone listens. For they believe they knew (as well as still know) all they needed earlier. And all of that has been shattered.
In other words: All that was told to them prior acts as the very foil as to not believe anything else. Regardless be it the truth – or not.
A great example of this paradigm can be found in Taleb’s book, The Black Swan:
“When you develop your opinions on the basis of weak evidence, you will have difficulty interpreting subsequent information that contradicts these opinions, even if this new information is obviously more accurate.” -Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007-Random House)
Here is where things get unusually uncomfortable for both those in the positions of leadership, as well as those that are supposed to follow their guidance. For when it’s shown what you’ve told proves out to have been nothing more than an exercise in how well one can spin the specious? They wont believe you – even when you speak the truth. And there in lies the explicit danger.
Nothing in recent memory is showing just how precariously close we are in an outright confidence crisis than the memes being unraveled in dramatic fashion today.
One need look no further than the financial markets to get a dose of reality where the contagion of both Ebola as well as The Federal Reserves omnipotence is disrobing for all to see. And the picture isn’t pretty.
Suddenly what many would describe as “out of nowhere” the markets fell wiping out a years worth of gains (and for some individual stocks far more) in a matter of weeks. And for others – just days.
Then with what mirrored this “out of nowhere” interpretation; the markets bounced and rallied. But (and its a very big but) rallied to where? Higher? As in back to new all time never before seen in the history of mankind new highs as had been the case every other time? Nope.
It would seem the “Fed’s got your back” meme now means – only so far. Because what was demonstrated by anyone that cared to truly look was it was nothing more than jaw-boning for effect. And how long its effect lasts is truly up for grabs. Maybe months, maybe weeks, maybe hours, and maybe – it’s already over.
The only thing that stopped the markets from what many could see as the precipice of an outright calamity was the revelation from St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank President James Bullard with a comment where he interjected his view, (I’m paraphrasing) “The Fed. should consider delaying the end of its QE program to halt a decline in inflation expectations.”
Suddenly the markets in a headline reading, algo fueled, HFT tsunami released wave after wave of stop running buy orders sending stocks rocketing higher in such a dramatic fashion it was touted as one of “Wall Street’s best days in years.”
All because of a great economic report? A great earnings report? A great _________ ?(fill in any economic indicator you like here) Once again sorry, but no.
It was all initiated because someone at the Fed. posited in public that maybe QE should continue. All I can say to that is welcome to your new “economic indicator.”
However this indicator says more about the reality of the markets today than the picture of confidence and stability they keep trying to convey. What’s at issue is; this won’t work when it’s no longer believed by the algos, let alone anyone else.
Truth is the machines can and will be fooled – but only for so long. For it doesn’t take a programmer to realize words from a non-voting member means little more than the cause or effect of a one day headline. For unless Ms. Yellen says it – it’s now yesterdays news. Regardless of how newsworthy or market moving it seemed at the time.
We’re watching this play out and how it may portend to events coming here in the coming days with another once reliable headline market moving wordsmith, ECB president Mario Draghi.
Mr. Draghi’s market moving line of “whatever it takes” seems now to be taken by the markets in the vernacular – “What-e-ver.” For the markets in Europe are also showing signs of great unease. (Personally if I hear that supermodel Gisele wants to be paid in anything but euros? All bets are off!)
Now there are a great many people both here as well as abroad suddenly paying attention and watching their money vanish in a fashion unseen since that which shall not be named. i.e., The financial crisis of 2008.
Today many of the so-called “smart crowd” are finding themselves once again in the all too distant past of near forgotten question and answer debates with clients reminiscent of that period.
Customers will sit with expressionless faces as they wait through the never-ending platitudes of, “Invest for the long haul; This is a buying opportunity; If you loved them at the highs you should love them even more now; Stocks are on sale!” etc., etc. Only to then hear that dreaded response that chills their blood faster than a margin call on Monday: “Sounds great…Can I have my money now?!”
I would bet dollars to doughnuts a vast majority aren’t going to take the chance let alone have the confidence as to just let their “money ride” once again. Regardless of how much “confidence” one wants to shout into the camera on a trading room floor.
Just as previous outflows show – nothing will change their minds. Many never came back to begin with, while those that still remain will themselves be looking for the exits.
And that alone poses extreme difficulties for the market as a whole in the coming weeks and months; let alone years.
Add on top of this? The never-ceasing contradictions availing themselves daily when it comes to Ebola.
It has gone from “Don’t worry, we got this!” to “Who’s got it and where?” to now “What do you mean I might get it?!!!” The confidence around this whole containment facade has crumbled so fast it’s a wonder it stood at all.
In less than a week we have gone from contained to now verified reports the actual agency responsible for that assurance of containment not only dropped the ball, but actually gave reassurance to first responders in direct contact with the first ever documented patient with Ebola on U.S. soil permission to travel via commercial air.
As much as the moniker “you just can’t make this stuff up” fits, add too this the surreal news where another of these individuals (one that actually handled samples) is now traveling aboard none other than – a cruise ship!
Officials have been falling all over themselves and answering questions with such contortion twisting phrases it would make a carnival worker blush. (that irony is not lost on me)
It is also absolutely ironic and jaw dropping that the very officials in charge of containing the spread of such a deadly disease who have stated over, and over, and over again that “banning travel or entry onto U.S. soil is not helpful in helping containment” is finding that every country they ask for permission to use their air, ground, port, whatever flat-out says: No!
Can one imagine what it must be like for the well over 1000 passengers and crew aboard that ship now put back out to sea knowing full well they were not only forbidden from disembarking for fear of contagion, but rather they now have to turn around and sail back aboard that very ship along with the possibly infected passenger!
What happens to all those people once they return? And how is this ship’s arrival going to be portrayed in all the media upon that arrival?
This will shatter people’s perception of confidence if the television news follows that white cruise ship into port in any way reminiscent of the way they followed the white Ford™ Bronco down the freeway.
How does one think this looks to all those that believed (or at the very least fooled themselves into believing) “The way to ensure containment is by not isolating us from it. That’s why we need not restrict air travel or anything else that could help inoculate us from spreading it within our own population.”
Just when you think it can’t get more Keystone Cops-like we wake to just the latest version of “are you kidding me?”
In a show of what was touted as “helping to instil confidence” it was announced the President via an executive action created the position of an Ebola Czar naming Ron Klain to that position.
Forget the left-right politics of this. That’s not what I’m talking about. What is glaringly, mind-boggling, absolutely surreal about this appointment is in the fact that by all accounts and reports he has no medical, healthcare background.
What is also being reported is that he was picked because in effect – he’s nothing more than a political insider. But rest assured he can get things done because: he knows how Washington works. Again “are you kidding me?”
In my opinion what’s needed right now if there was any chance for building on any remaining credibility or confidence would to have at the very least chosen someone channeling both the demeanor as well as the military uniform with all the accoutrements of former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop.
Why this position wasn’t demanded to be filled first before a calling for anything or anyone else has not been lost on a great many.
As bad as this blunder is in the ever-growing list of missteps, I believe there is one that shakes any last remaining confidence right into the abyss.
For one doesn’t need to know anything more than when a press conference is called by the President as to make an available photo-op session for the press to use as to help quell any and all questions or concerns. The one thing you do as your first duty as the newly appointed “Czar” is to show up!
For the picture of the President there alone without him regardless of the room being filled with others speaks more than the words conveyed by the picture itself – It screams volumes so loud one can’t ignore them.
You can be confident in that.
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Let them eat each other
October 28, 1929 was an abject lesson in loss of confidence...
Yeah, we're a shell of a nation.
FINE somebody knows about some program
knukles..
It all falls apart when confidence cannot be restored.
It will happen soon...It will happen rapidly.
We are at that point.
It is not that the US Government has lost its credibility. It is that the US Government has lost it AUTHENTICITY.
For instance today it was announced that FIFTY People were released from supervision as a result of their contact with Thomas Duncan, America's Ebola Patient Zero.
Good news, right? Oh...And I do believe that it is true...Fifty people were released.
But the ENTIRE TRUTH is that there were over ONE HUNDRED placed under that supervision in the first place..(What happened to the other Fifty?)
They spin the news in order to manipulate the people. They are not authentic.
Now just how can I have confidence in that?. Can you?
The books do not reconcile.
Sometimes a crash results in a SPLAT rather than a BOUNCE.
Amerika and Obala are an evil f**king zato joke and don't forget the wookie, Hunter Biden and Jarrett. Joke cuntry with idiots brainwashed by TV.
they are making plans for their getaway
All my oligarch clients will be in Florida within the next two weeks.
I will let you know whats being planned,if anything, because I will surely be
asked to assist.So far its still quiet.
Good man.
just don't join them when they start to sacrifice the baby
perhaps it would be more wise of you to simply have a coded message for us, such as:
"I am glad I completed my Bucket list when I did"
or a very simple, but clever, message:
Refer to this video
"What happens to all those people once they return? And how is this ship’s arrival going to be portrayed in all the media upon that arrival?"
Listen,
Are you long LAKE too?
OH!
Ain't it funny how MEXICO wouldn't let them dock...
Just a guess the boat comes back one passenger short.
I lost Con-fidence long ago, in the Machine.
When I began to see the Con.
JFK, MLK, RFK, OKC, Waco, 9-11, WMD, Sandy Hoax, Boston Hoax etc
"When Confidence Crumbles"
The ponzi of fiat and power collapses.
An American, not US subject.
"Caution: The collapse is closer than it appears."
Fingers crossed. Lots o folks screaming bullshit. Can we sing together is the question?
Kum-bay-ahh, my lord, kum-bay-ahhh
It just kinda falls flat in the face of the overwhelming poop that seems headed for the propeller...
DaddyO
Host: On the lighter side of things, it seems that the crew responsible for the demolition of the Old Bailey wanted to give the old girl a grand, albeit improvised sendoff. Although the demolition had been planned for some time, the music and the fireworks were, according to the crew chief definitely not on the schedule.
We’ll be right back.
+1 for great quote. It's been too long since I watched that film, but maybe it'll give me some optimism to watch it again this week.
As I recall, C. Everett Koop was a renowned pediatric surgeon. Can't fake that. And C. Everett Koop looked the part.
This fat fuck czar that Obola just appointed is nothing but the Winston Wolf of political whorin', AND doesn't even show up for his own big pow wow.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk8n-I53Ib8
Sensing calamity, Obola limited himself to five hours of golf yesterday.
Any round even near approaching 5 hours has become tedious, painful, boring, despicable and unpleasant. Regardless of the company.
All those mulligans take time when you have to keep sending Secret Service back for more balls.
Knukles,
So your saying the game essentially takes on the attributes of the person playing the game for that length of time.
His version of fiddling while Rome burns?
The new ebola czar makes his living as a political 'fixer', that should tell you all you need to know.
My confidence is percolating.
What ZH'ers could not do.
Putin, ISIS, Ebola, Drought and Economic Collapse are doing.
Stymie the bastards.
Did he say military uniform?? As in military dictatorship? I've been waiting for this to be floated by someone. Since the USA is now a banana republic I guess that would be the next logical step...
<<All that was told to them prior acts as the very foil as to not believe anything else>>
This is why central price fixing never works for a functioning economy. When central planners overplay their hand -- and given time, they always do -- then the public comes to know that the market isn't real. Then it CAN'T go down, b/c the only people left in the market are those who are picked for 'rescue' or to be 'winners'. So all the 'losers', or 'unrescued', stay out of that market and the 'winners' never leave. And the market can no longer go down, b/c the 'winners' who would then become 'losers' know exactly who's to blame: not the market, but the central planners. Meanwhile, producers go off and trade elsewhere among themselves. The only way to 'print' (or centrally plan) successfully -- for the long term -- is if that fact is NOT universally known. CBs publicly 'coming to the rescue' can only ever be the beginning of the end of that market as it exposes that it's not based on anything real but the guesses or conspiracies of a few fallible humans.
<<What is also being reported is that he was picked because in effect – he’s nothing more than a political insider. But rest assured he can get things done because: he knows how Washington works. Again “are you kidding me?” In my opinion what’s needed right now if there was any chance for building on any remaining credibility or confidence would to have at the very least chosen someone channeling both the demeanor as well as the military uniform with all the accoutrements of former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop. Why this position wasn’t demanded to be filled first before a calling for anything or anyone else has not been lost on a great many. As bad as this blunder is in the ever-growing list of missteps, I believe there is one that shakes any last remaining confidence right into the abyss.>>
Heh, not sure that was much of a surprise here at ZH or on other alternative financial blogs, but as to the general public, who knows? It could be anything that gives the game away. It might be a random small dog that reveals the man behind the curtain. But that such revelation must occur -- in any centrally-planned market -- is inevitable. It wasn't nature; it wasn't magic; it was just that fallible little human behind the curtain standing right there, picking winners and losers in the market, and s/he picked you for a loser, producer; and at that point producers spot the scam.
Producers won't willingly entrust their labour or financial future to a market that they suspect is 'rigged' or otherwise made unpredictable by being divorced from real production. When the jig is up, people will take their production back until they can sell it into a market that bears some relevance to their actual product. Otherwise, it becomes impossible to produce b/c impossible to plan costs and profits.
These markets are all a big confidence game. Lots of paper being shuffled around and everyone's 'rich', but where's the beef? Con games may last awhile, maybe even a long time, but they never end well. When enough people spot the scam, the con is up, and any good player knows to be well out of town before that happens.
Goldman Sachs is in charge and I blame them.
Well, poor Alan Greenspan lost confidence in the banksters.
Meanwhile, we all lost confidence in the Fed.
As a result we all lost confidence in the Congress, not that it was ever high.
Then the public, not used to taking anything seriously anymore, elected some absurd pretender as resident of the United States.
So the MSM can no longer be trusted worth a damn.
The borders of our country are no longer being defended at all.
Our putative allies on Europe are comatose or worse.
Our own "president" refuses to seek to produce more oil (and then brags about how wonderful it is to produce more oil when it happens in spite of him).
The Fed has taken control of our entire economy so no historic principles or statistics mean anything.
China is building ghost cities while their citizens are overpaying for real estate great and small all over the US - wait, I guess this is good news?
A bunch of Islamic wack jobs (but I repeat myself) are rampaging all over the middle east and displacing our own pet wack jobs where it comes to oil, much less politics, and all our president can do about it is shout, "Fore!"
The likely candidates for president next time around are an elderly woman who has hit her head once too often, and who knows which white-shoe country club type.
What's not to be confident about?
That's right.
And it's not some cycle or anomaly either because this shit has been going on for a long, long time; and keeps getting worse.
Yeah I suppose, that's life, in an average year, yet looking backwards it's hard to find anything in the last 50 years that looks this warped.
Oh, and did I even mention ebola and the clown squads "fighting" it?
Or that I put my iPhone in the microwave to recharge it, and it hasn't worked right since?
Don't ya just love stream of consciousness articles, salted with italics, and peppered with bold? Trying to understand this article requires a V-8 engine extrapolated to 8 axes, each piston a portion of the brain needed to understand one of the discontinuous/disconnected concepts discussed. I applied the Readability Index to this article (http://www.readabilityformulas.com/free-readability-formula-tests.php) and came up with: Based on 8 readability formulas, we have scored your text: Grade Level: 9; Reading Level: fairly difficult to read. I applied my index, and came up with: Shit.
Totally agree. What a bunch of juvenile rambling.
Some things are better left unwritten.
.
The post immediately above sucks crocodile cloaca.
Plugging your post into the same analysis at your aforementioned website...twice...as I had to get to that 150 word minimum limit your results were as follows:
Based on 8 readability formulas, we have scored your text: Grade Level: 10 Reading Level: difficult to read. Reader's Age: 14-15 yrs. old (Ninth to Tenth graders)I also applied my index and came up with "Prostate Gland Fluid Secretion"..for your critique.
This was expected as you are so spineless and such a contortionist that you employ your ability to autofellate.
Sorry. This website is for adults. Now go and suck your own dick.
How unusual your criticism is, perhaps even groundbreaking.
The collapse of confidence started when the modern "printing press" became rampantly used...a sped up pre Enlightenment circumstance. The web started filling the memory hole quickly...the con in confidence game requires controlling information and by extension, the narrative, the frame, and/or the parameters of debate. That's over...and just like with the old royalty and Catholic Church, it's game over for some and a complete reality shift for those able to adapt to survive.
These issues WOULD have been "handled competantly by the authorities" just 20 years ago...or so you'd of been told and the great majority would have believed. It's not the events...it's not even a difference in the abilities of these particular elites relatively...it's just technology clashing with ideas whose times have come.
Collapse of confidence is by design, for at he destruction on confidence in the system associated with the destruction of morals and faith conducts the loss of confidence oil one-another. The curtains are getting readied for the pull back.
Another excellent post at Soul of the East:
http://souloftheeast.org/2014/10/18/occidental-affliction/
Dear Mark,
In 1907, there was a market crash called the panic. The economy, and the stock market, which was at the time a reflection of the economy recovered fairly quckly.
That panic, instigated by none other than J.P. Morgan himself set the stage for the passage of the Federal Reserve Act.
By the time the next bubble burst, the newly-created central bank had facilitated a crash so much bigger than the panic of '07 that the nation could not recover. So, October 1929 saw wealth evaporate into thin air on a scale never seen. It was a duesy!
It's harder to say when, this time, but around October 2007 another evaporation event began. The reason it's harder is because 'student of the depression' Bernanke and outright thief Henry Paulson jumped in and kept their cronies liquid.
Anyway, the economy has never recovered from the '29 crash. The markets did recover, but the distinction I'm trying to make here is that the market and the economy are two distinctly separate things.
There's people in this world who work to produce things of actual value, they comprise the economy.
Then, there's the class who seeks to gain from gambling on, or regulating and taxing the aforementioned economy. That's what I call the market and those who enable it.
It's a simple fact that if the market class grows large enough, it consumes all of the economy class.
Then what?
Confidence,
That is quite the brush. YET, when such lines on how confidence is down to that "X" factor? That unto itself is the process. SO, to what degree have you lost confidence in your family or your friends? Remember: The layers are those realities which CAN bring down a Regional to a Western Society.
Good to see what you are still doing Tyler.
Cheers,
Pens,
Tall Tom,
Not only does the USFEDGOV lack authenticy they lack authority and legitimacy, this being the case you nor I nor any citizen is legally required to obide them or their rediculous demands.
The sooner that people begin to ne'er stand that and act accordingly the sooner that we as a people can regain control of our country our government.
How is it that Iceland can jail bankers and restructure and e cannot? What is inherent to their culture that we lack to accomplish this?
Morality?
Political will?
Iceland has demonstrated both and is applaudable in that.
Maybe there still remains a small glimmer of hope.
Confidence? I am very confident that there will be many surprised people very shortly. They will be so completely surprised that their ideal world that they have been sleepwalking through, daily, has suddenly vanished... POOF! Gone... and as much as I'd love to see their dumbfounded expressions, when it really hits home, I'm hoping to be well outside of the cities by then.
When the final collapse comes, sheeple will, at first, not understand. When the masses start fearmongering and panic spreads THEN it's game over. It's in the making, it's coming.