“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.”
--Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1871):
Water-boarded with Kool-Aid
Throughout this lurching disaster the pressure to capitulate to the madness of the status quo has grown inexorably. Some of the most intelligent market skeptics of our time: Ritholtz, Rosenberg, Roubini, to name a few, have been held down and force fed Kool-Aid from a fire hose. It was either capitulate or become obscure and irrelevant, likely losing any chance of gainful employment. The lamestream media demands obedience from its gallery of bukkake whores. The robo-pundits of our day gladly submit to the terms of the agreement, for fear of being banished from bubble-vision forever. Those that remain staunchly skeptical are derided as "stopped watches" and "perma-bears", but most of all they are assiduously ignored. "We're way past all of that doom and gloom, this is 2015 after all, not 2009".
Nouriel Roubini: Aug. 12th/2011
"you cannot keep shifting income from labour to capital without not having an excess capacity and a lack of aggregate demand. And that's what's happening...every firm wants to survive and thrive and thus slashing labour costs even more. My labour costs are somebody else's income and consumption. "
Nouriel Roubini's 2014 forecast is uncharacteristically rosy: Jan. 9th/2014
"The contrarian, who stayed bearish for most of the recovery, is optimistic about U.S. markets, predicting that “the Federal Reserve’s exit from quantitative easing will be slow, keeping interest rates low.”
Nouriel Roubini: Aug. 12th/2011
"you cannot keep shifting income from labour to capital without not having an excess capacity and a lack of aggregate demand. And that's what's happening...every firm wants to survive and thrive and thus slashing labour costs even more. My labour costs are somebody else's income and consumption. "
Nouriel Roubini's 2014 forecast is uncharacteristically rosy: Jan. 9th/2014
"The contrarian, who stayed bearish for most of the recovery, is optimistic about U.S. markets, predicting that “the Federal Reserve’s exit from quantitative easing will be slow, keeping interest rates low.”
Pseudo-intelligence: For Sale To the Highest Bidder
Therefore, as we see over and over again, raw intelligence is no match for delusion. Intelligence or should I say "cleverness" can be easily manipulated and molded to achieve desired outcomes. Without discipline, intelligence is malleable - for sale to the highest bidder. Discipline is the highest form of intelligence, and only discipline can stand up to mass conformity. So non-reinforced intelligence went under the bus a long time ago in this disaster, torn asunder by extraordinary delusion and then trampled by the madding crowd. People get what people want - easy answers to difficult questions.
Therefore, as we see over and over again, raw intelligence is no match for delusion. Intelligence or should I say "cleverness" can be easily manipulated and molded to achieve desired outcomes. Without discipline, intelligence is malleable - for sale to the highest bidder. Discipline is the highest form of intelligence, and only discipline can stand up to mass conformity. So non-reinforced intelligence went under the bus a long time ago in this disaster, torn asunder by extraordinary delusion and then trampled by the madding crowd. People get what people want - easy answers to difficult questions.
Intelligence is no match for delusion. Delusion is no match for reality
Nevertheless, as human beings have found out countless times in the past, delusion itself is no match for reality. Always fashionably late, reality trumps delusion, and therefore, by logical extension, reality crushes self-ascribed "intelligence" like a fucking tin can. Self-deluded pseudo-intelligence is the bug and reality is the windshield.
Bug prepare to meet windshield.
