Bleeding Edge

Austerity rocks…

Stimulus gives rocks…

Crisis presents an opportunity…

Go figure what’s a Man to do….

Vaclav Havel, an old friend of mine who has moved on to the Spirit world, once said this: “Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness, nothing will change for the better in the sphere of our being as humans, and the catastrophe towards which this world is headed – be it ecological, social, demographic or a general breakdown of civilization – will be unavoidable… The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and in human responsibility.” He was not speaking out of turn… but really he had seen this coming of monumental changes.

And it appears that we are being pushed right along this path whether we like it or not.  We are moved along the conveyor belt of history kicking and screaming, fearing what’s on the other side of the baggage carousel.

Well — am here to report what’s what…

On the other side, there is nothing more – nothing less, than the arrivals terminal of understanding what continuous flex is all about. Because – same as the Universe – our own lives are in a state of constant flex. Yet we are only too certain of the opposite. We crave stability. We crave the security of sameness. We seek comfort in the opposite of change. In business we call it steady sameness.

I call it lameness.

Because in essence we tread in the unknown. Every day, every minute of our lives we don’t know what forces are gathered to darken our skies. And we are fearful. Who can blame us?  That fear is all too real and well founded when you look at our karmic record. Because the root of all of our evils visiting us — is our own thoughts & actions. We act in a certain way, and yet we expect a different reaction than the one our own actions warrant. We sow the seeds of destruction and yet we expect synthesis. We speak ill of others and yet we expect to be well thought of. Our thoughts and deeds simply don’t jive up. It’ an anomalous condition. No wonder it’s causing us panic attacks of stress, embedded with fear and steeped in anxiety…

And where the majority looks, the economy follows because we are all economic agents like nodes of a neural network and thus define our reality. Like the lemmings only with ban accounts and trading equities.

Ultimately — We do deserve what we get. Because the Universe and Life are just hosts. And in every turn we receive our just desserts. No more no less. Not in a vindictive God the Punisher kind of way – but in an educational fashion. Do this stupid thing right now – receive appropriate punishment – learn the lesson. Hoping that you’ll remember it and don’t need to repeat it. That’s how the Physics of energetics work, roughly. All of our actions are rooted in thought. And the reaction we receive from the world has started at the quantum level well before we lifted the finger to initialize the deed that will certainly cause us pain. It has started at the moment of Thought coherence.

Become conscious of this and you’ve mastered LIFE…

Become cognizant of this and you’ll rule the world…

Become adept at this and you might jut rule yourself….

This is a big lesson and one we need to constantly remember as we clumsily weave our own lives to last. Because today even our basic senses inform us of the diminishing steady-sameness of our environment. Yet we still fight against it. This in turn constantly erodes our belief in the governing structures of  our society, with the end result that we lose our mooring and flounder in the deep, mainly because the governing moorings fail to provide this increasingly elusive bargain with time that we all seek.

And still we hold on for dear life.

So we embark on a treacherous journey along the shores of a black river clutching at the reeds afraid of being wept away. And here we hold on perilously close to drowning, filling our bodies and minds with poisonous toxins, anxieties, stress, cancers or worse. Yet we hold on with the skin of our teeth – only to be carried headlong through the rapids – when we enter into the seeming benefits of this Faustian deal: We simply bargain our Life away. Because we easily trade our most precious jewels — our human rights. For example to get Stability – we give up our Freedom of Thought. To get Security – we give up our Freedom of Speech. And to get Strong government to protect us from Change – we give up our Freedom of Being.

Nice bargain if you can stand it. We give up all of our treasured human birthrights, far too easily. Because by giving up our own Self Determination we already lost the Energy of our own lives. We assigned it to someone else…

And in return what do we get? Really nothing to write home about. We get to be lame. Now lameness admittedly might not be what’s cracked up to be. But it surely ain’t a human achievement, unless you are a perpetual wanker.

I am frankly stunned by how many banker-wankers out there run the Economies of our world’s leading countries and how so many Wall Street and City fools feel that the transition is underway to a healthy economy — only if we do this, and that, or the other…

It is mind boggling how many of the top market decision makers, our richest Business people, and best of breed financial analysts, have got great faith that Ben Bernanke, or George Osborne  or Shinzo Abe and his new Bank Governor Kuroda, can pull the monetary tablecloth off the table without disturbing the dishes.

Those who hold this view fail to understand that the United States same as England and Japan are caught in a stimulus trap from which there is no easy exit. And whether we call it austerity, or stimulus or even monetization like Japan’s Abenomics applied starting today — we are all in the same banana boat and better know it.

Because first: How on earth can the Fed or the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan, wean their economies off from stimulus; when the stimulus IS the economy?

So this is how it will play out in a fear based scenario where it ends up being a nightmare with blood on the streets… because according to the banker-wankers, the trick Bernanke must actually perform is to pull the table out from beneath the cloth, leaving both the cloth and the dishes suspended in air. Something like Cloud computing… without the cloud. Not too difficult a feat if you are a yogi incarnate, but maybe asking a bit much from the Beard… They simplistically reason thus: What would happen to the Treasury market if the Federal Reserve, by far the biggest buyer and largest holder of Treasury bonds, became a net seller? Who will be there to keep the sell off from becoming an interest rate spiking rout?  It may sound absurd to those of us who remember the economy before the crash, but our new economy can’t tolerate “sky high” rates of four or five percent. What would happen to the housing market and the stock market if interest rates were to return to those traditional levels? The red ink would flow in rivers. With yields rising and asset prices falling, how long would it take before the Fed reverses course and serves up another round of stimulus? Not long at all. So basically any talk of an exit strategy is talk. Not only can the Fed not exit, but it will have to delve further into the stimulus abyss. While doing so, the Fed will continuously insist that the exit lies just behind an ever moving horizon. It will repeat this mantra until a currency crisis finally forces a painful exit. Unfortunately, the longer the Fed waits to exit, the more painful the exit will be. But trading long-term pain for short-term gain is the Fed’s specialty. In the meantime, Wall Street watches in uncomprehending stupor as the economy settles deeper and deeper into the stimulus trap. Can someone be so stupid and in such denial at the same time?

In a not fearful and not banker-wanker scenario – one based on the abundance of human ingenuity and long held positive embrace the change you get scenario, things look positively hopeful: Money is the lubricant of the economy and the more money runs through the system the better it s for all concerned. After all Economies are giant marketplaces that specialize in the transaction business – imagine a giant market place that connects buyers and sellers so they can more efficiently transact. And the glue keeping the whole thing together is trust and the lubricant of this marketplace is MONEY. So the more money the Fed prints and digitizes and throws in the economy same as the Bank of England and Japan the better. Get it? Inflation is not such a bad monster when you manage to avoid fear and embrace it. It actually disappears when embraced and you just look at your own shadow. That is a big lesson for the banker-wankers out there, but there you have it. The are minions steeped in fear and not to be allowed to operate heavy machinery because they tend to crash under the illusion of giant monsters chasing after them. We have to go beyond our comfort zone and move on to a place of discomfort and in some cases go all the way to the panic zone — just in order to effect this change and stimulate growth in our economies. Rain money from the sky. No problem. We need Growth. We need stimulation hoping that it will lead to euphoria and eventually an orgasm. That is the only way… to get out of our emotional and economic morass. More salubrious lubricant/money in the economy,  leads to more sex in the marketplace, and in turn clears the cobwebs and chase the spiders away… in a free for all.

That’s where I’ll throw my lot behind too. Screw ideology. Thought are meshed into actions and into behaviour. Because where you look is where you go. So look at these two opposing ideological approaches and Go figure what course your economy must be in. As a leader you have to make hard choices. As a Chancellor you have to make wise choices. And as a human being you must get laid to continue the species. So now you know your way. Go Ahead…

Don’t forget the lubricant…

Yet after this simile of fecund Spring time LIFE art large,must say that  I applaud the Fed’s stimulus actions and Bernanke’s acumen because they are the needed medicine. After all, he seems to have the magic skills to pull it off with Obama on the ready to help leverage Public Mandate and Government Policy into an Executive mandate.

Now Japan starts doing this same magic trick with gusto — as a newfangled policy. And if you are in Tokyo or Osaka these days, please don’t carry an umbrella, because they might start raining down money from the helicopters. But that’s still old fashioned  stimulus taken to a new extreme. Japanese are famous for that. Think bubble tea. It’s a free for all with plenty of lubrication. The results are positive short term yet slightly unpredictable long term — but they taste great, feel good, and make people happy. They also formulate hope for Japan because they have to get some growth soon — else they hit the same brick wall Greece and Cyprus have hit sooner rather than later…

And our favourite is Old Blightey. Here is the country where economic theory is surely suffering a crisis of consciousness. Having replaced Sir Mervyn King for an Abenomics supporter in the Bank of England while George Osborne preaches austerity, is some kind of schizophrenic record. Yet it appears unequivocally British. Will it work?

As I recall Quadrophenia worked great. Sold many records and went top of the charts. So why not this?

A bit of an identity crisis mind you but it smells like stimulus time to me… tainted though by ideological overtones and that makes it sinister.

Never waste a good crisis, is the lesson of the day.

Three views of the same side of the coin in different places of the world shared amongst the strongest three currencies out there. Three great countries doing best they can to address this systemic crisis. And with practice they become more creative and hopefully more successful.

And with the renminbi doing the same rounds too we are keen to watch the races.

Much like the proverbial submarine races, this is too early to call but it’ not a zero sum game. All Are Winners. Really all are winners and especially the spectators. And even their girls are winners as I discovered early on when as a young lad, I invited lovelies to watch said races in Hood canal…

Well Done.

That’s what’s gonna take to achieve lift off and get some growth.

And as my old friend Vaclav used to say the time is NOW:

“Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness, nothing will change for the better in the sphere of our being as humans, and the catastrophe towards which this world is headed – be it ecological, social, demographic or a general breakdown of civilization – will be unavoidable… The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and in human responsibility.”

Me thinks we’ve entered that zone.

No need to be afraid anymore.

Inflation fears are for wimps and pussies.

We are better than that.

Yours,

Pano

PS:

I wanna close with these words from a savvy investor from a few hundred years back:

“Those who seek safety and stability at the expense of Freedom — deserve neither…”

-Ben Franklin