This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Mollycoddled
From the Slope of Hope: I've been puzzling over the peculiar reaction the market had on Monday to the savage attacks that took place in Paris. Never would I have dared imagine that assets across the board would excitedly zoom upward following this brutal mass killing in one of the most beloved cities in the world. It just made no sense.
This morning, as I was doing my usual 5:30 a.m. walk of my big dogs, it dawned on me: the market rallied because it knew it was going to get pampered. Over the past several decades - - and the last seven years in particular - - the market as a whole has been trained by the central banks and national governments of the world that Big Daddy Is Going To Make Things Better, and that if bad things happen (like Long Term Capital Management, or the Internet bubble bursting, or AIG going up in flames, or the twin towers falling, or civilians in Paris being mowed down by automatic rifles) then the paternal overseers that are ostensibly our leaders will give us a kiss, put a band-aid on our boo-boo, and make it all go away.
Let me digress by introducing you to this gentleman:
A chubby old dude shaking hands with a Marine, right? Well, this is Mr. Jack Lucas. Let me tell you a bit about him.
In the summer of 1942, World War II was heating up, and young Jack wanted to join the fight. The problem was that he was a 14 year old kid. He was a tough-looking hombre, though, so without even asking his mother, he went off to the Marine recruit depot, lied about his age, and was shipped off to Parris Island.
Although he did superbly well in training, he grew weary of not getting involved in any actual fighting, so he went AWOL in early 1945 (a reward was posted for his capture). He sneaked aboard a boat and told an officer who he was. Instead of arresting him, the commander allowed him to stay, and Jack turned 17 years old (the age he claimed to be when he originally signed up) while at sea.
A few days later, the craft landed off the coast of Iwo Jima. He and three other guys got on to the island and, hunkered down in a trench, they were attacked by Japanese. A grenade fell near them, and Jack Lucas threw his body over it. Observing a second grenade nearby, he grabbed it and shoved that under his body as well. (I think most of us would admit doing this would not be our first instinct). He quickly pushed the grenades into the volcanic ash beneath him, and they exploded.
His buddies were certain he was dead, and they got the hell out of there, but, incredibly, Jack survived the blasts. He was evacuated to a hospital ship and was sent back to the United States. He underwent 21 different rounds of surgery, and the doctors deliberately left over 200 pieces of metal in his body (meaning, among other things, Mr. Lucas could never pass through an airport's metal detector without some serious explaining).
He was, at the age of 17, award the Medal of Honor by Harry Truman...........and then he went back to finish freakin' high school. He went on the other military adventures later in life, including an instance in which neither of his parachutes deployed (he survived, naturally). So the old fellow you see above was a complete badass.
Contrast that with today's college students who are whining and screaming about "micro-aggression" and are all worked up that the victims in Paris are getting all the limelight while their bitch-fest has been shunted aside as uninteresting.
Indeed, I had never heard the term "safe space" until just a few days ago, but apparently it's a big deal these days. From what a gather, it's a zone in which free speech is completely forbidden, for fear of hurting the feelings of some special snowflake. For instance:
Two-spirited? I feel out of step with the times, I must say. And then there's this:
I could look up cisgender, but I'm not going to bother. You can just consider me "questioning", which apparently entitles me to visit the aforementioned safe space.
And let me be clear about something: I am anti-bullying, pro-civil-rights all the way. But, sweet Jesus on a cornbread muffin, people, don't you think this is all a bit much?
The way college students are demanding to be mollycoddled aligns perfectly with the attitudes
of investors as well. They simply will not tolerate any meaningful down-move in the market, and the central bankers have pandered for so many years to this kind of thinking, they simply keep doing the same things month after month, year after year. The equity markets have become the ultimate "Safe Space" for adults.
Thus, after the Paris attacks, the knee-jerk reaction (which lasted only moments, and was actually quite sensible in a normal world) was to sell everything except gold, which itself got bid up nicely. The collective mind, however, knew that the succubus Janet Yellen and her kind would swoop in and let equity investors suckle at the dangling teats of fiscal accommodation, thus eradicating any true price discovery and any risk for the soft-as-downy-fur traders out there.
There is no free lunch, however, although it's easy to understand after all this years why one might think otherwise. But if parents protect their kids too much, never letting them stand on their own two feet, you wind up with a guy in his mid-30s still living with his parents and trying to find himself. Such a man will, in fact, ultimately fail, because he was never allowed to grow up (and I daresay would have had his ass kicked all over the yard by 14-year-old Jack Lucas).
So, too, will equity markets. They have been mollycoddled into a state of moral flabbiness. If in 2008 all support was taken away and the market was forced to cleanse itself as God intended, we would on this very day be enjoying true prosperity and be many trillions less in debt. As it is now, though, we have to simply wait it out, anticipating the day when equity "investors" finally realize that the safe space around them has disappeared, and there's no brave soul around them who is going to throw their body on the grenades tumbling down around them.
- advertisements -






Really great story. Thanks.
i
Sometimes you have to muscle in and make yourself your own little free speech safe zone.
After all, they aren’t handed out willy-nilly to just anyone these days. ... You have to matter first, then you get to freely vent.
~ DC
meanwhile today university female students demand the right to dress as prostitutes in UCD Dublin otherwise know as 'slutwalk' supported by the male gay students,http://static3.demotix.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/a_scale_large/...
the slut on the right III mean student??? has a nice set of knockers, the west is fucked.
The University of Vermont held a three-day retreat so students who “self-identify as white” could confront their own “white privilege.”
“Examining White Privilege: A Retreat for Undergraduate Students Who Self-Identify as White” took place last weekend, November 13-15, and was “specifically for white students.”
“How does whiteness impact you?”
According to the university, the self-identifying white students who attend the retreat will come to “recognize and understand white privilege from an individual experience” and have the opportunity to “conceptualize and articulate whiteness from a personal and systematic lense as well as the impact of white privilege on the UVM community and beyond.”
The self-identifying white students also tackled tough questions such as “What does it mean to be white?” and “How does whiteness impact you?”
The university website features testimonials from past attendees of the retreat, who praised the way the event was a “safe space.”
http://www.campusreform.org/?ID=7006
I think most safe places must be underground because people seem to look for them with their heads in the sand.
Re-institute the draft...
Standard Disclaimer: Because those snowflakes aren't good for anything else, are they?
All that "free speech zone" shit was started by George W Bush who didn't like it when people showed up and protested his war games, especially silly people like Cindy Sheehan, whose son died in Iraq for absolutely nothing. W only wanted supporters to line the streets for motorcades. Long live conformity and safety (and right wing fascism)!
>and right wing fascism
Because "left wing" fascism doesn't exist in your world, does it?
Do we all get a participation trophy for commenting on this excellent post...(wink, wink)
You're my FAVORITE reader!
Awwww,Tim...(BLUSH). I'm all tingly...lol
Wall Street and the banks/corporations/insurers sure are being mollycoddled.
The kids? I think they have too much time on their hands.
Somewhere in the 9th circle of hell, Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Pol Pot are sharing a hearty laugh.
I dont agree. More likely the treasury dept of most of SPX have standing orders to buy all dips to protect CEO options. Also the Fed is fucking with the futures market.
The only place that is "safe" is where there is free speech. Where free speech is repressed it is dangerous, these people are fucking stupid. We need an educational overhaul immediately, is there any intelligent life out there?
Probably, but you won't find it on a college campus.
liberalism is a mental disorder https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEwVcsHnf3o
WHAT, NO FREE BROCHURES??? FUCKING BULLSHIT!
No winners at games, trophies for everyone, stickers for good behavior...no wonder we've raised a bunch of pansies. They've never had to deal with real life.
let that special f#cking snowflake live in a 3rd world muzzie nation and find out what true dangers exist in the world - much less getting a real f3cking job and stop sucking off mommy's tit
Don't need to go that far, the south side of Chicago has been a free fire zone for a long time now......
All I would like to know is this, is the news--bullish, bullisher or bullishest? Based on that information, I'll buy, buy on margin or buy on margin + reverse mortgage my house + sell my right kidney.
And, oh by the way, screw this politically correct nonsense. Safe space? Safe space, this, fother mucker!!
All this is saying is our civilization, as it now exists, is doomed.If you live among the non-PC barbarians you are an evil, inbred, redneck, unlike all those special snowflakes. So party on as the ship sinks, because Saint Obozo and his band of merry morons will save you.....
Buy anything. If your investments go to hell, cry and you get a refund.