Fixing Things

When there's a problem to be fixed, we naturally approach it with caution. We don't want to make things worse, and we don't want our efforts to be for nothing. Hence, we take the required time to think things through before we act. Only when things are urgent do we apply a quick fix, and it's rarely meant to be final. It's meant to give us the required time to fix things properly.

Any trained engineer will tell us this. Furthermore, there's a saying among engineers that if it isn't broken, then don't fix it. Engineers understand and respect complexity. They keep their meddling down to a minimum.

All of this is intuitively understood by most people. However, there's a class of people who gladly mess around in things they have little to no understanding of. These people are typically incapable of taking care of even the simplest thing at home. Yet, they are never lacking in confidence when it comes to truly complex issues, like climate, medicine and national economy. In these matters, they think themselves competent to the point of mastery.

These are the politicians of the world. While they would be reluctant to change a light bulb at home, they have no trouble issuing decrees about sustainable energy, decease control and the economy at large. They hand out subsidies and they tax people with no worry about waste and inefficiencies that they create in the process.

There are no less than two green politicians in my family, and I often wonder how they know so well that the climate is a problem that needs fixing, and how they know so well what the solution must be. My guess is that they listen to sales pitches from various corporate entities, and that they pick and choose their solutions based on this. For some reason, they think that this will fix whatever real or imagined problems they come across, be it climate change, the plague, or the economy.

The more intelligent among politicians must realize that they have no idea what they are doing, and that their business isn't really about fixing things, but about money and control. The idea that they are fixing things and that they can control things are merely excuses for grift.

This is why honest people tend to leave politics almost as soon as they enter. Only those who find it acceptable, or even exciting, to trade in favours, remain in politics. Hence, we end up with a thoroughly corrupt and incompetent elite that does whatever it pleases, and rather enjoys messing things up, especially if there's a quick profit or a future reward to be had.

But none of this can cover for the fact that politicians are meddling with things that are much more complex than anyone can comprehend. They are like the Sorcerer's Apprentice. They see a quick and easy hack, and they go for it. But without any real understanding of what they're doing, things are bound to get out of hand. Only yesterday, I saw a double masked individual carrying a coat rack as protection against the virus. Mental illnesses are on the rise, including eco-anxiety. The economy is out of whack, with inequality skyrocketing, and it's all due to political meddling.

What happens when the true horrors of this meddling shows its ugly face, we don't know. But two things are certain. It will be messy, and politicians will do like the apprentice. They'll panic and then pretend they had nothing to do with it.

Politicians fixing things

By Ferdinand Barth - Goethe's Werke, Public Domain, Link

Is That a Prince I See in the Distance?

Here's the picture I'll post on Facebook on May 1.

Is that a prince I see in the distance?

It's of my stepdaughter on our balcony, and it contains several references to traditional May Day celebrations. Her white blouse is a reference to the May Queen and the flowers are a reference to spring celebration. The picture also contains a reference to a series of paintings made by Eilif Peterssen on commission by Constance and William back in 1903.

Gujamar's song. Foto: Signe Dons

Some of my family members may pick up on that reference, but even if they don't they'll get the message, and so will my other Facebook friends. We celebrate May 1 the traditional way. All the references are of the Mediterranean, of tradition and of flowers. Not a single reference is given to the labour movement.

Paid in Gold

The comment section under Zerohedge articles is a good place to pick up on the Zeit Geist. It's a place where ideas are exchanged among like minded individuals.

A comment that got my attention today was by an individual who's having his house painted. Instead of denominating the contract with the painter in dollars, it was denominated in gold. The painter is to get two one ounce gold coins for his troubles.

The motivation for this, shared by the house owner and the painter, is a concern with inflation. They are sceptical to the dollar, and prefer for this reason to do business in gold. Furthermore, this type of payment is private. It's up to the painter to declare this as income, loss or not at all. It's easy to imagine that the house owner got a discount on the dollar price for this reason alone.

It appears then that gold is already starting to circulate in the economy.

Gold eagle

Public Domain, Link

Two Masks and a Coat Rack

Out on my walk today, I came across a guy wearing two masks: A cloth mask that covered his nose and mouth, and a surgical mask that had slipped below his nose, making the cloth mask all the more visible. As if that wasn't enough, he carried a coat rack like a spear in front of him, and I was absolutely delighted at the sight. The world has gone mad and the eccentrics are coming out in force.

Coat rack

By The Living Room from Kenmore, WA 98028, United States of America! - SOLD: Pottery Barn wrought iron coat stand/umbrella stand, CC BY 2.0, Link

The Opposite of Marxism

Marxism is a philosophy based on two main ideas:

1. Nothing should be private to anyone
2. Everything is a struggle between two opposites

Given this definition, the opposite of Marxism would be something like this:

1. Everything should be private to everyone
2. Nothing is a struggle between two opposites

From this, it's easy to see that the opposite of Marxism is not Fascism as most Marxists claim. Fascism is merely a variant of Marxism, and a more realistic one at that because all things are naturally private in the first place. There is no collective will. Will resides in individuals. Therefore, any collective must be ruled by a club of private individuals.

Fascism is thus defined as:

1. Everything should be private to some individuals, but not others
2. Everything is a struggle between groups and/or individuals

This is why far-left and far-right groups love to fight each other. Whatever the far-left proposes, the far-right opposes. It's all a battle, aimed at control. However, the battle is not one centred on ideas, because the ideas expressed by Marxist always decay into Fascism when tried out in real life, and the reasons for this are obvious.

The first problem with Marxism is the idea that things can be anything but private. How exactly are we to determine the private thoughts of others? How do we avoid secrets? How do we deal with individual preferences? All of this would require a continuous stream of confessions into a collective that again must judge the information by divulging all private thoughts pertaining to these secrets. The process would be never ending, and hence, a comity of experts must be installed, which constitutes the first tenet of Fascism. 

The second problem of Marxism is that the world is not a black and white place. The world is endlessly complex. No conflict is ever precisely like another. Hardly any conflict involving more than two individuals is a strictly two sided issue. A Marxist comity must therefore deal with complexities far beyond the black and white imagined in theory. Groups must be divided and sub-divided. Privileges and duties must be dished out accordingly, and the resulting order of things becomes the second tenet of Fascism, a never ending conflict between groups and/or individuals.

Marxism is not attainable in practice. It's a pipe dream that decays into Fascism. So the opposite of Marxism is by necessity also the opposite of Fascism, and that opposite is Liberty.

Liberty fully acknowledges the fact that all things are private. Every individual is unique, and any grouping is merely superficial. There's no special value attached to skin colour, gender, social status and so on. It's up to us to deal with this complexity as best we can, and cooperation rather than conflict is encouraged by expanding our private sphere to include that which we create ourselves and that which we possess. Anything else results in endless conflicts, with Fascism as the end station.

Liberty

Cultural Marxism

Wikipedia makes the claim that Cultural Marxism is a far right conspiracy theory, and that it doesn't exist in reality. That's an odd claim, considering that Marxism is an ideology that goes far beyond the purely economic. Marx wrote on all aspects of life, including family affairs and schooling, and all avowed Marxists acknowledge this. This fact is covered in this article by the Mises Institute. However, we don't have to dive deep into political theory in order to recognize Marxism, both in culture and in the economy.

The two basic ideas that together form the Marxist world view is that nothing should be owned privately, and that all of history is a battle between opposing groups. From this, Marx proposes the establishment of institutions like central banks and public schooling. He also embraces the idea that the working class must rise up against the capital owning class.

What Marx completely ignores is the many subtleties in the real world that demonstrate that things are private by nature, and that there are rarely only two sides to a conflict. Marx ignores the self employed entrepreneur because such people are both labourers and capital owners. He simply assumes that these will be dispossessed, and that the class war will be a clean fight between two easily identifiable opposites.

This type of black and white thinking permeates Marx's thinking, and is the reason none of it makes any sense when held up against reality. It also explains why his followers are so eager to create black and white divisions, and why they hate the little entrepreneur more than they hate the big capital owners.

Step one towards a Marxist revolution is always the creation of a black and white world. The ambiguous and uncommitted must be destroyed. Hence, we get all sorts of phony opposites. Everything becomes a political struggle, be it the weather or the colour of our skin, be it school curriculums or mask wearing in public. Not a thing is up to the individual. Everything is to be voted on and fought over.

Cultural Marxism is in this way easy to define. It's Marxism applied to aspects of life that are not economic. To engage in such discussions is to engage in Marxist thinking, even if our position is one that is considered right-leaning. Being fiercely against mask wearing is as Marxist as being fiercely for it. The non-Marxist position is to allow people to choose for themselves. Liberty is the opposite of Marxism, and Liberty doesn't dictate mask wearing one way or the other. Liberty let us choose for ourselves. That's why I've come to the conclusion that the whole mask wearing thing is best approached from an angle of ambiguity.

Us against them

By Pedro Ribeiro Simões - Flickr: "Geração à Rasca" Demonstration, CC BY 2.0, Link

Zeitgeist in Flux

My wife came across a man with a cane yesterday, so there's someone out there who has either thought of this on his own or has been inspired by someone else.

Also of note is a flurry of ideas being shared in the comment section of Zerohedge. Some suggest we should all dress up as thugs. Others point out the recent illegality of wearing a mask. Others still are searching for overall strategies to cope with the totalitarian impulse that has been unleashed with the plague as an excuse.

While this is too little to judge where things are headed, there seems to be a shift in attitude. It's no longer about being pro or anti masks. It's about liberty. We want to make up our own minds. We don't want others to tell us what to do. Our liberty is not something that others can infringe on simply by being vocal or in a majority.

Walking with a cane is one way to display this argument. Whether we're for or against masks is not central. Rather, it's the message that we do as we please and we don't care what others think. We want to be left alone. We reject the Marxist idea that one group can coerce another group into complying with a certain set of rules. We don't identify with any particular group.

Once we realize that this is not about masks, but about Marxist divide and conquer, we find a way out of this mess. We simply refuse to identify with one group or another. We change our minds frequently, and we do as we please.

I for one don't mind if others go around with their masks drawn above their noses. Heck, I may even benefit from it. But that doesn't mean that I must comply myself, and this applies to all things. I don't care if others believe in global manmade warming. I don't care if they think kids should be taught gender identity at school. I'm not paying much in taxes, and I teach my son to ignore gender identity. Why should I take any side in this?

This us against them idea that permeates public discourse is stupid, and I refuse to take part in it. What do I care what others believe? Now that I've started to think more along these lines, I see division everywhere. Just now, there was news on TV about pro and anti mask demonstrations. How stupid isn't that? Nobody benefits from this nonsense beside the Marxists, always eager to turn everything into political strife.

The idea that everything must be resolved through politics has been around for so long that many now assume that it must be so. However, it's easy to show that it doesn't, and it's my hope that these early signs of rebellion is the start of some swift and devastating anti-Marxist change in Zeitgeist. All that's required by us is to show the world around us that it's none of anybody else's business what we do, and the whole Marxist argument falls apart. If we all do our bit in giving this a push, we may see the future develop into something very different from that imagined by the Marxists.

A man with a cane

Whales and Dead Cats

Tesla made a profit last quarter. However, it was not from selling cars. What brought them into the black were subsidies and sale of Bitcoin. That's interesting because Elon Musk made a stir when he announced that he had been buying Bitcoin back in early February. Subsidies received from US taxpayers had been directed into the purchase of hundreds of millions worth of Bitcoin, thereby making Tesla a Bitcoin whale. It's not clear how this can be seen as an environmentally friendly, but that's where a large portion of tax funded green subsidies went.

Also of interest is the fact that Tesla was a net seller of Bitcoin during the last quarter. It means that Bitcoin acquired before early February were sold into the latter part of the quarter. That was a period when Elon was tweeting how much he loves Bitcoin. From Elon's tweets, one would think he was accumulating Bitcoin. But he wasn't. He was selling them and his tweets were made to entice people into buying what he was selling.

With Bitcoin up around 100% from early February until the end of the quarter, Tesla made a killing. However, Bitcoin hasn't looked too healthy since its latest peak on April 14, which begs the question. What is Elon doing? He hasn't tweeted much about Bitcoin lately, so he might be accumulating, or he has sold Tesla's entire holding. Either way, we won't know any of this for sure before Elon either tweets something positive about Bitcoin, or he's forced to make his position public in next quarter report from Tesla.

None of this should come as a surprise. Elon is a salesman. He hustles government for subsidies, and he hustles the public for money, either through investments or sales. Anyone under the impression that Elon is some kind of visionary engineer is deluding themselves, and what we've seen this past quarter proves this beyond any doubt. Elon engineered a classic pump and dump, and he did so shamelessly in the knowledge that his followers would once again buy his products and services.

As for the latest spike up from recent lows in the Bitcoin price, it remains to be seen what comes of it. We're so used to Bitcoin falling by as much as 30%, only to take out new highs a few weeks later, that the latest price action has hardly received a mention. The general assumption is that this is merely one of so many pull backs, and that we'll see new highs in a few weeks. However, I wouldn't bet on it. There's something unconvincing about this latest up move. It looks like a dead cat bounce.

The problem for small investors is that we don't know what the whales are doing. Is Elon planning a new pump and dump, or is he selling Tesla's last Bitcoin? Only Elon knows. He's in charge of the game. Everyone else is merely placing bets in a rigged casino.

Elon Musk

By Duncan.Hull - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

Reading and Writing Theory

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American philosopher with a practical and down to Earth view of reality. He encourages us to do stuff and read stuff, reflect on things, note things down, and then follow up with further experiments. Much of Emerson's writings read like a handbook in how to read and write theory.

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

When reading and writing theory we must neither be too timid and respectful of others, nor too full of ourselves. The goal is neither to learn everything that others have come up with, nor produce the one and only solution to everything. Rather, we're in search of explanations that can help us navigate the world. We read, write and experiment in order to hammer out a theory for ourselves that we can use in the present, and also use to make further discoveries and further progress for ourselves and others.

Theories are frameworks for action, including further reading and speculation. They are not facts, and must not be confused with facts. We must pay attention to this distinction when reading theory. In fact, the most enjoyable part of reading someone's theory on a subject is often the facts tossed into the story as supporting evidence. These are facts that we can check for ourselves, and that we must keep in mind when developing our own particular angle on things.

We use facts to determine the validity of a theory. Any theory that breaks with observed facts can be tossed out. Any theory based on some theoretical construct must be treated with suspicion. Such theories can act as inspiration, but they must not be taken too seriously.

There's a whole range of theories on optics that break with the fact that light diffracts exclusively at the exit of a prism. There's no diffraction of light at entry into a prism. All theories on optics that break with this fact can be tossed out, and any attempt on our part to make a theory of our own must explain this phenomenon.

In astronomy, there are theories that talk of the Oort cloud as if it is an established fact. However, the Oort cloud is a hypothesis. It cannot serve as fact. Likewise, we have black holes, dark energy, curved space, big bang, and an expanding universe, all based on a combination of observations and theory. They are not facts. The facts are the observations, raw and untreated. The red-shift, the raw images, the detected signals. Those are the facts that must be explained, and it is in this context that we should read other people's theories.

We must also be weary of observations that seem excessively precise or convenient. The Higgs Boson was confirmed in an experiment designed expressly to find it. Some of Einstein's predictions have been confirmed in experiments similarly designed to return positive results.

There's no reason to toss out theories that don't fit the most precise and convenient results of experimental science because the real world is a messy place. All sorts of factors combine to produce noise. There are external factors inherent in the world itself, and there are psychological and political factors.

When Halton Arp discovered that quasars are closer to us than their red-shift suggests, he concluded that the red-shift of quasars is due to their young age, rather than to their recession speed. But if red-shift can be due to factors other than recession speeds, all sorts of things would have to be recalculated. A lot of people would find themselves in error, having based their work on the presumption that all red-shifts are due to recession speed.

Halton Arp's finding was a direct threat to a lot of people. He was therefore labeled a heretic and dismissed from his position as astronomer. That's contrary to the reward granted to those who can confirm current dogma. They get a promoted. They win prices and all sorts of positive attention. Needless to say, we get a lot more confirmations than proof of error. Inconvenient facts are simply ignored.

This doesn't mean that we should dismiss all modern findings as too precise and too convenient. Some findings require less precision than other findings. Some are used directly in modern engineering. Others are not. Findings that are used directly in engineering can't readily be dismissed. But findings that are taken into consideration, but not used directly, can be dismissed as not sufficiently conclusive.

Another aspect of theory is that it can be useful even if it turns out to be in error. Theory directs attention towards certain aspects of reality that can in turn be investigated.

Einstein explained a lot of observed facts with his theory. He even made some predictions that turned out to be true. His theory was in this respect useful. It encouraged astronomers to look for things to confirm his equations. However, no amount of confirmation will ever prove that space-time is curved. It merely demonstrates that equations that treat space-time as curved have a better fit to reality than those that treat space-time as flat. But there are other ways to get this type of curvature. If there's an aether, we get similar results by treating the aether as something that vary in composition and density relative to where massive bodies are located.

One way to separate facts from theory is to read fringe theories, because authors of such works must not only defend their positions, they must also point out the error in established theories. I found this useful when I was looking into economic theory. It was enlightening to read books on Austrian economics because the authors keep pointing out errors in established theories. Not only do they defend and explain the Austrian School of thought, they gave me insight into Marxism and Keynesian theory as well.

Similarly for science, it can be enlightening to watch YouTube videos by the Electric Universe, and to study Stephen Hurrell's work on dinosaurs and James Maxlow's work on expanding planets. Fringe science must constantly be defended from orthodox views, and authors do this by pointing out oddities that are ignored or passed by in silence by more established scholars.

Furthermore, there's no point in studying every theory in great detail. Once we get the general idea, we can leave it at that until we have reasons to study certain aspects in greater detail. We don't need to read Das Kapital in order to have an informed opinion about Marxism. We don't need to read Einstein's papers in order to know his basic ideas.

It's not important to know everything in detail. What's important is to have a good overall understanding of the world so that we can take advantage of what we know, and navigate efficiently towards an even better understanding. To do this, we need to do what Emerson suggested. We need to act, read and think, and we must make it a habit to note down our thoughts and discoveries as we go.

This is not an idea unique to Emerson. Rather, it's an observation that he made about men he admired. It's a habit that comes naturally to anyone determined to figure things out. Emerson recommends it because it's a recipe for success.

If we go through life without ever noting things down or thinking about them, we can only act according to instincts. We'll typically agree with whatever a majority of people agree with. We'll live our lives according to traditions and habits. We'll invest in what's popular, and we'll do what we're told. The result of this will be mediocre at best, and much around us will appear strange and unpredictable. Things will seem to happen for no reason at all.

However, if we pay attention to details, note things down, and make it a habit to predict outcomes of current events, we're likely to achieve above average returns on our investments, and we may even come up with a theory or two of our own, well supported by facts and perfectly useful for further thinking and elaboration.

Nature tamed

More Gold Suppression

As noted by Doug Casey a few years back, safety deposit boxes are becoming increasingly hard to come by.  There's a global banking trend in which safety deposit boxes are no longer made available to the public.

I for one was told to find alternative storage for my valuables back in 2018, so I can confirm what Casey had noted for himself. I can also confirm that my bank closed this service at a time of increasing demand. There was a noticeable drop in vacant boxes over the years that I used their service. The bank didn't abandon their safety deposit boxes due to any lack of demand. The motivation for closing the service was almost certainly political, and a recent move by Portuguese authorities confirms this.

From now on, everyone with a safety deposit box at a bank will be monitored. Every visit will be noted down in a database, easily accessible by bureaucrats. It will thus be easy to detect patters that may indicate transactions in the parallel economy. Monthly visits may be interpreted as related to salaries. Visits happening in conjunction with purchases of real-estate, would indicate shadow payments. The authorities may then choose to audit suspicious individuals.

Another disincentive to using safety deposit boxes has thus been added, and gold suppression has thus been notched up some more. However, the effect is unlikely to be what's hoped for. Trust in authorities is in decline. People will not move their valuables into paper equivalents. Rather, they will be moved into private storage. People will realize how easy it is to store valuables safely in private, and a trend may develop in which savings are taken out of banks altogether.

My wife and I have reduced our exposure to banks to an absolute minimum. We have no significant bank savings. We have also pulled out of paper assets. Our savings are entirely in real-estate and metal kept privately at a secret location. Furthermore, I know of three individuals who are doing the same. In my circle, a trend has already been established, and it may spread. It simply feels better to be directly in charge of our savings. For that reason alone, it's likely to become increasingly popular in face of increasing surveillance and regulations.

Sovereign

By Heritage Auctions for image, Mary Gillick for coin - Newman Numismatic Portal, Public Domain, Link

Toning Things Down a Notch

I decided to tone things down a notch today when I picked up my son from music class. I left the mask of the beast in my pocket and put on a regular mask instead. Apart from that, I kept my outfit unchanged, and I retained my deliberate and self-assured style of walking. The goal was not to become approachable, but to be less obvious in my distaste for mask-wearing rules. I don't know the other parents, and I don't see any reason to be explicit about my views towards them.

Mask of the beast

The effect of this minor change in style was enlightening, and I think I'll stick to it from now on. I will only put on the mask of the beast in the off chance that someone tell me to pull my mask up. I can do this slowly and deliberately by putting the mask of the beast on top of the one under my nose. Double-masked, I can go over to the offensive individual and ask how I can be of help.

There's no reason to use the mask of the beast for any other occasions, because it turned out that I'm just as menacing looking with a regular mask as with the more explicit mask of the beast. People moved aside on the sight of me, and the parents by the door of the school shuffled to the side, with one eying me the way one would eye a dangerous animal in a jungle. I did nothing apart from taking up a relaxed and confident pose. There was nothing directly menacing about my presence. I greeted everyone with a polite good afternoon. I even pulled up my mask to cover my nose. Yet, the effect was there, and I rather enjoyed it.

Never mind the club, I'm just standing here waiting for my son

Leaving a Legacy

The difference between fame and legacy is that fame has to do with ego, while legacy has to do with impact. People can be famous, and yet leave very little in terms of legacy. Furthermore, legacy can be negative. As an example, we have an entire class of politicians that rarely leave anything but destruction in their wake. At best, they undo something stupid that some previous politician did. The list of famous individuals who's legacy is dubious at best is long.

On the other hand, we have individuals who leave a legacy, but who themselves have become forgotten. Nobody knows the identity of the inventor of the wheel, but his or her legacy is monumental, and the same is true to a lesser degree for all other un-named inventors through our ages. They are either forgotten, or merely mentioned in passing.

In between these extremes, we have individuals like Emerson who's both famous and a person with a legacy. Interestingly, Emerson's fame is merely anecdotal, while his legacy is very much alive. I was influenced by Emerson long before I decided to read two of his essays, and had I never read his essays, I would have been no less influenced by him because his influence has taken root in our culture. Emerson's legacy is much greater than his fame. Emerson may one day be forgotten, but his legacy will still be around in libertarian thinking and culture.

But Emerson was not the original source of all his expressed ideas. He was influenced by others just as much as we are by him, and some of these other thinkers are now largely forgotten. One of the people mentioned by Emerson is Swedenborg whom I never would have heard of if it wasn't for Emerson. In respect to Swedenborg, Emerson is like an amplifier. He picked up a fading signal from the past, processed it and amplified it, and passed it on as legacy.

And Swedenborg wasn't the original source of all of his expressed ideas either. Those too were picked up and amplified. All sorts of unnamed people have influenced Swedenborg in his time, including his mother and father, brothers, sisters and friends. Thus, there is today a culture consisting of a multitude of ideas, mixed and matched and processed into legacy.

An interesting aspect of this process is that good ideas tend to be amplified over time while bad ones fade into obscurity. Bad ideas may have great initial impact, but they fade quickly. Good ones, on the other hand, may have no greater impact than to stay in the family for a few generations before being suddenly amplified by an individual like Swedenborg. His great grandmother may have made an interesting observation at some point that others in the Swedenborg household kept alive as family history until the great Swedenborg picks up on the idea and notes it down. A few generations later, Emerson amplifies again the idea by further observations and thinking. Legacy is thus progressed through time as ideas, picked up, processed and amplified. Bad ideas come and go, while good ones stick.

To leave a legacy, all we have to do is to be a source of inspiration for our nearest. Being a good person is important, but we must also be wise. We must not only love others, we must love ourselves, because the wise person lives a life worth emulating. To the extent that we make missteps, as we all do, we must incorporate this as part of our wisdom so that others can benefit from our mistakes.

As an example of legacy in the making, I would like to mention my son in Drammen who recently bought $100 worth of an obscure cryptocurrency that a friend of his had cooked together at home. My son wouldn't have bought any of it if it hadn't been for the fact that this was a friend. He bought the tokens as much out of sympathy and charity as for gains. However, his timing was extremely lucky. In the space of a week, his tokens went from $100 to $5000.

At this point, my son decided to mention this to me, and as it happened, I had written a post on this kind of speculation a few days earlier, so I was well prepared to say something sensible about it. When faced with a gain in something that's sure to go back down to zero at some point, we must take money out while the going is good. I suggested specifically that he pull out $200 of his gains. After all, a 100% profit booked and banked in one week is reason for celebration, and celebration requires harvesting.

With $4800 still invested in the cryptocurrency, there's no need to add any more. My son must not let greed cloud his judgement. But he mustn't let fear get in his way either. The trick is to find the right balance, so I suggested he write down a strategy for himself. There should be due consideration for all eventualities, and the aim should be to pull out as much profits as possible. He should also look into buying gold coins with his profits as a way to book future profits.

This conversation with my son left me happy, not just because he had a lucky strike, but because I had some words to share with him. There's legacy going from one generation to another. I've picked up signals myself, many from my own family, and this I've processed and dealt with as best as I can, precisely with the intent to pass it on to future generations.

My father is a family history buff, keen on dates and names and the like. He has mapped out my heritage all the way back to the 17th century, both on his side and my mother's side. He has written four short compendiums, including anecdotal facts about the people mentioned, and I have enjoyed every one of them, not so much for the names and dates, but for the anecdotes and stories. All sorts of stuff has happened, some of it grand and splendid, and other things dark an terrible. To think that I'm a descendant of all of this is delightful. It's also quite enlightening, since there are characters in the stories that I very much relate to. I can also see where some of the legacies have originated.

My father's mother had a strange habit of always talking about Norway as a backwards and inhospitable place. Turns out that one of her great grandfathers was a shipping magnate with operations in the Mediterranean. This guy made a fortune for himself, working closely with a Greek ship owner. Even to this day, there's a peculiar longing to the Mediterranean in my family, and now I know why.

There's also a branch of my family that managed to stay rich and powerful for many generations on end, which explains my obsession with wealth preservation and investing. Then there's the dark story of my mother's granduncle who shot both his father and his brother for reasons that can only be described as insane. So that's where I got some of my paranoid qualities from.

All of this is legacy. This explains both personality and family culture. What we pick up on and develop into our own story depends on these two factors, as well as outside influences by friends and people like Emerson. As for myself, I'm impressed by the wealth preservation of my ancestors leading up to Constance. I'm impressed by a longing for the Mediterranean, and I'm impressed with the disregard for artificial rules and regulations expressed by ancestral land owners who operated very much as sovereign kings on their own turf. Influence comes from all sides. I'm substantially influenced by Constance's husband William, but I don't share all that much of his personality. He fails to impress me in the personal way that others do. While his achievements were substantial, I'm not one to emulating them.

My father, for reasons I haven't figure out until recently, has been very influenced by his other grandfather, a brilliant engineer and the inventor of one of the components used in explosives even today. But he had little business sense, so why this great admiration? It must boil down to personality. My father is an engineer. He too made inventions. His autoline systems are still used on board fishing boats, and just like his grandfather, he has little to show for it in terms of money. All the risk and profits were taken by the company owners. Just like his grandfather, my father didn't take any chances. He didn't invest any money into what he was developing. Instead, my father held onto his inheritance from Constance and William, the source of my family fortune, which I'm very happy that my father managed without loss.

Constance and William

Av Gustav Borgen – Norsk Folkemuseum: image no. NFB.49970, via digitaltmuseum.no., Offentlig eiendom, Lenke

Agreeing with Ralph Waldo Emerson

I've now read two essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson, the first one on Nature and the second on the American Scholar, and I find myself fully agreeing with the man. He says things that I could have said myself. His metaphysics is very much in tune with my view of things, and his love of the individual is also something I wholeheartedly agree with. He even talks of the sovereign man, something I keep mentioning myself.

He's also very frank and direct about what matters and what doesn't. He wants us to think for ourselves. It's not who we are in the established hierarchy that matters, but what we figure out on our own, either by reading or by experimenting, observing, and living. He detests people who merely parrot whatever people have said before them, and he wasn't fond of people who don't trust their instincts either. He would have been appalled by the level of self doubt and blind obedience to authority that's being hoisted onto young people these days. He would have identified it as puritanism of the worst kind.

Another interesting thing about the man is that he keeps telling us to put aside any book that bores us, and he identifies a problem with style and form that's fun to read about because he must have known that his style would become as tiresome in the future as he found older books to be tiresome himself. The solution to this problem is to rewrite everything in the style and form of the day. Not word for word, but in the context in which the ideas are still current. What's important is not the words themselves, nor the names of the authors, but the ideas.

With Emerson now coming across as strangely quaint in language and style, it's interesting to see that I've nevertheless been influenced by him precisely because people have done what he suggested. My thinking has been influenced by people who have rephrased Emerson. They have added and subtracted, and expanded, but never deviated completely from the core idea. The sovereign individual that trusts his instincts and does what he pleases is very much alive in libertarian literature today. I never read a word of Emerson until about a week ago, yet I was already influenced by him because literature is full of references to his ideas.

Emerson would have been delighted to hear this. His name now more or less forgotten except in some history books, but his ideas widely known and rephrased for a new era. That's exactly what he had in mind when he wrote his essays back in his days.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

By User:Scewing derivative work: 2009 - Ralph_Waldo_Emerson_ca1857.jpg, Public Domain, Link

Double Think Requires Two Excuses

I find myself sometimes shockingly slow at figuring out stuff. It's taken me for ever to figure out a consistent and coherent way to deal with the mask mandate. However, things are falling into place.

My first mistake was to think that people would be opposed to the mask mandate as such. I keep thinking that people care about their liberties even though it's clear that they don't. People care about conformity. They like to obey authorities. Anyone thinking that this will somehow change is kidding themselves.

My second mistake was to think that I need to be an example for others. By showing everyone how nice it is to go without a mask, they too will want to go without a mask. But that's not true. Given a choice between fresh air and blind obedience, most people prefer obedience.

Finally, I keep making the mistake of thinking that majorities matter, even though I've long since given up on democracy. I keep thinking that we have to somehow create a movement, but that's not true. All that matters is that we have friends and family that we can trust. Everyone else can burn in hell or live in mask mandate nirvana. Who cares?

The point is not to create a movement, but to live free, and the best way to do this at the moment is to dress up like a thug.

Me as a thug

Ever since I started dressing this way, I've been left alone. No-one seems interested in stopping me in the streets to point out that my mask has dropped below my nose. Furthermore, I don't mind the mask as long as my nose is free to breathe fresh air, so I'm not desperate to see the mask mandate being retracted. I can sustain this dress code as long as it takes. As far as I'm concerned, my predicament has been resolved.

The key insight was this: Instead of opposing the rules, we can embrace them, and expand them to their ultimate conclusion.

Wearing a mask used to be a punishable offence in many jurisdictions. It was illegal, and for good reasons. However, policy makers have nevertheless pushed ahead with their mandate, and the natural first reaction to this was for liberty loving people to oppose it. But why not do the opposite? Why not take advantage of this new liberty that has been introduced, namely the all clear to dress up as a thug?

One reason for apprehension is that it looks weird. There's something awkward about suddenly coming out in the streets looking like a thug, especially when we've spent a lifetime making sure we look friendly and approachable. We need to come up with an excuse, just in case someone asks us what the heck we're doing. In fact, we have to come up with two excuses, because the mask mandate relies on a great deal of double think. But luckily for us, that's not so hard to do.

When approached by friends and family, we tell them how this whole situation is a special kind of opportunity. We're exploring the thug in ourselves now that we are allowed to do so. There are also advantages. We're keeping people at a distance. No-one is eager to point out that we're wearing our mask incorrectly. Being a thug is fun. It's well worth trying. People shouldn't miss out on this once in a lifetime opportunity.

We can of course be candid and open about our scepticism towards the mask mandate as well. But we don't have to start out by saying this, and if we're addressed by a friend who might believe the official narrative, we're better off not mentioning the virus at all. It's all about laws and regulations, and how we like to experiment and have some fun in life. It's a joke of sorts. It's all fun and games.

In the off chance we're approached by strangers, we have the other story that we can tell. It's all about social distancing. The mask of the beast tells people to stay away. 6 foot away to be precise. The cane we carry is useful as a tool to measure the required 6 foot distance. As such, the stranger is standing too close. We may insist on more distance. Our nose poking out above our mask was a slip up, and it wouldn't have mattered if the stranger wasn't so reckless as to step up close to us. And of course, I wear my sunglasses on rainy days to protect my eyes against the virus.

There's no lack of insanity that can be piled on top of the stranger, and the wonderful thing about it is that the stranger must admit that it's true, no matter how insane it sounds.

Social distancing tool

Demoralized Police

I'm starting to like my life as a Norman thug. It's an entertaining exercise in social signalling that I wouldn't normally have had the opportunity to play around with. After all, how often in life are we encouraged to dress up like masked avengers? When were we ever encouraged to take that step from being friendly and approachable to being scary looking and unapproachable? Menacing behaviour is in some jurisdictions a crime, yet it's a free for all at the moment. We can go way further towards menacing than we could only a few months ago, and I think it's an opportunity we should all take advantage of.

I'm certainly glad I've taken the opportunity to push the envelope as far towards unapproachable as possible. It's fun, the dressing up, the determined walk, the menacing grip on my umbrella or cane. People shy out of my way. Yet, there's not a single thing that anyone can object to. The mask is mandatory. The sun glasses are legal. The umbrella is also legal. Walking briskly is legal, and there're no rules against carrying our umbrella like a club, or write some slogan on our mask.

Norman thug

In my experimenting, I've found ambivalent signalling the best kind of signalling. There's no point in being openly for or against mask-wearing rules. Rather, the goal is to make other people wish for the good old days when friendly and approachable still was a thing, and have them go to bed praying that no-one is so crazy as to make this mask wearing thing permanent.

For maximum effect, I wear my mask of the beast just below my nose. That way, no-one can tell if I'm for or against the mask mandate. The mask may have slipped. Who knows? The only way to find out would be to approach me and ask, but no-one has. They seem to prefer to keep a polite distance.

Mask of the beast

I also carry a few spare masks in my breast pocket. That signals compliance and a certain level of helpfulness. Anyone lacking a mask can get one from me. All they need to do is to ask politely, and I will be more than willing to give one away.

To further muddle the picture, I'm as polite as can be. I don't deliberately bump into people. I excuse myself when appropriate, and I greet people I know in a friendly manner. If anyone is under the impression that I'm somehow dangerous, they're jumping to conclusions based on prejudices.

Here again, we can take advantage of some of the political correct nonsense that we've been told over the years. My nine year old son captured it perfectly the other day when he told me that we mustn't judge people by their appearance. Someone looking like a brute may actually be a nice guy. However, I promptly set my son straight. I told him that if someone looks like a thug, chances are that the person really is a thug. Conversely, if someone looks like a nice old lady, that's probably because the person is a nice old lady. Very rarely do we get these things wrong, and to start doubting our judgement is to go down a dangerous path of self doubt.

But this self doubt is now so prevalent that we can take advantage of it and dress up like brutes without anyone ever daring to point out that we may scare people by our appearance. After all, who wants to admit to everyone that they are full of prejudice, thinking that we are brutes just because we dress up as such?

This political correct nonsense is also taught to police officers. That's why I can walk past police agents without being approached. They prefer to ignore me. Normal social interaction in which a police agent would make a friendly remark about toning things down a bit is no longer possible. They are trapped. They're not allowed to trust their instincts. They must enforce rules to the letter, but must not step out of line when it comes to judging people by appearance.

This is hardly the life most police officers signed up for. Their childhood dream was to protect people's liberties and properties, not chase people around for not wearing their masks while ignoring evidence of impending anarchy.

Yesterday, my wife and I drove past the spot where we were apprehended the other day for being too far from home, and sure enough, there was a police car parked there. However, the officers were merely sitting in their car with doors open. They looked uncomfortable where they sat with their masks properly in place.

Being told to enforce nonsensical laws while at the same time being attacked as racist and evil is somehow making police officers reluctant to do their job with the sort of enthusiasm and flare that is required to be effective. Who would have guessed? But there's a simple way out of the mess. There are private sector jobs for those who want to protect liberty and property. Being a police officer isn't the only way to earn a living in that business. I suspect the main reason police officers aren't resigning in droves is that they would have to accept lower pay. But if things continue on the path that we're heading, a step down in income may be a small price to pay for peace of mind, and a job that makes sense.

Private security guard

By Robbie Sproule from Montreal, Canada - Flickr.com - image description page, CC BY 2.0, Link

A Man With a Club

My son and I came across a man carrying his umbrella like a club this morning on our way to school. He was wearing his mask correctly, so he's an ally of our local super hero. However, I was nevertheless pleased to see him. Things are heating up. There's an uneasy feeling of mistrust, and people are starting to dress and behave accordingly. I for one, have not been stopped by hobby fascists since I started dressing up like a Norman thug. The other guy might have had similar experiences, only the other way around. I'm sure he too is better off with his club.

If this continues, people will stop remarking on other people's choices, and we'll end up with a more polite society.

Also this morning, my son and I passed a police constable who's posted next to a building sight. He's been posted there for a few days now, so I've passed him several times already. When I do, I make a point of having my mask drawn up correctly, and to walk in a particularly deliberate and semi-threatening manner. The visual effect intended is that of a man on his way to somebody's house to smash up things and generally create havoc.

After some apparent curiosity by the constable the first two times I passed him by, he's now pretending not to see me. There's nothing he can do. Apart from registering some hostility and general unease, there's nothing to report. However, this is not mere curiosity, because my behaviour together with that of other club wielding characters, is indicative of a decay in government order. Patrolling the streets is no longer a job exclusively done by police officers. There are vigilantes out and about, and if politicians don't soon change their tunes, these vigilantes will end up wielding more authority than the police.

A man with a club

Mismanagement of Risk

Egon von Greyerz is one of my favourite prophets of gloom and doom, not least because I believe him to be right. We're going to see an implosion of the current monetary system, and only those with hard assets and a minimum of debt are going to get through the mess relatively unscathed.

There's too much debt and too much risk in the system for this to end any other way than badly. Even a tiny market move in an unexpected direction can result in giant losses. That's what we get for having $2.3 quadrillion in debt and derivatives, all balanced on top of a few trillion in equity.

This is not a new insight. I wrote about this a year ago, and as predicted back then, an awful lot of dollars have been printed in order to keep the system from falling apart. But this hasn't fixed anything. An even larger amount of dollars will have to be injected into financial markets next time we have a hick-up, and this will go on unabated until the dollar is completely destroyed.

Worthless paper money

By Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-00104 / Pahl, Georg / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, Link

Dangerous Strategies

In the world of finance, there're quite a few strategies that appear to be sure winners, but are in reality traps. Some of these strategies appeal to risk takers, but others appeal to the cautious, so we're not safe from falling into these traps simply by virtue of being cautious. What gets us in trouble is not so much our appetite for risk as our ignorance.

Risk on its own is not a problem as long as it's correctly calibrated relative to reward, and herein lies the key to our understanding or ignorance as the case may be. We may for instance think that a strategy that yields an above average result 90% of the time is a sensible and safe strategy. However, this information is useless on its own. Without knowing what happens in the 10% of cases when we don't win, we have no way of telling if the strategy is sound or not.

Were we to learn that in the 10% of cases that we lose, we lose everything we've invested, we may conclude that the above strategy is a terrible one. After all, we're sure to loose everything at one point or other. However, we're still not in a position to say much for certain. All we can say is that we should never go all in because that yields a 10% chance of total loss. But how about putting some money into the scheme? To make such a decision, we need to know the final piece of the puzzle. We need to know how much we win during the 90% of above average gains.

Were we to learn that the typical gains during a winning streak is above 100%, then having some money in the scheme makes sense as long as we pull our gains out every now and again. If the gains are below 100%, the scheme is in fact a sure fired loss over time, no matter how we approach it.

If we're cautious, we will only invest a small part of our money in the above scheme, and only if we feel the reward is well above 100% during good times. If we're more tolerant of risk, we may accept a return only a little above 100%, and we may want to put more of our savings in it. But only the ignorant would stay in all the time without ever taking out any of their gains.

With this in mind, we know that those who hold onto Bitcoin without ever cashing in any of their gains are sure to lose everything at some point. Bitcoin isn't going to be around for ever. Being technology, it's already old. It's not likely to be around for another ten years. It may even have topped out at this point, and subtle changes in investor behaviour indicate that this is the case. There's a special type of fool entering the Bitcoin market, ready to buy every dip going down.

This fool has been taking note of the fantastic rise in the price of Bitcoin and come to the conclusion that this thing will be around for ever. Thinking himself clever, he has also noted that Bitcoin can lose as much as 80% of its market cap and still bounce back to new highs. All that's required for him to make a small fortune is to wait for a good entry point, and then start accumulating.

This is the bag holder that typically arrives late in a cycle, and we know he has arrived because the latest peak in search interest for Bitcoin arrived late. It wasn't before Bitcoin started falling from its top that search interest took off in earnest.

Bag holders are lining up to buy whatever the whales are dumping, and their determination to stay with their misconceived strategy is likely to get them into a lot of trouble. Not only will they lose a lot of money, they will lose out on opportunities elsewhere. They may well lose a decade of opportunities and savings, a loss that few will ever recover.

Whale

By Michaël CATANZARITI - by Michaël CATANZARITI, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Super Villain Meets Super Hero

My son and I went out for a walk today. It was too hot for a coat, so my only anti-mask symbols were my Mask of the Beast worn under my chin, my cane, and pilot sunglasses. However, that's all that it takes to keep the hobby fascists at bay. Nobody stopped to tell me to pull my mask up.

I was disappointed to see a clear increase in compliance with the mask wearing rules. The latest waves of propaganda and threats from the halls of government have staved off what looked like imminent collapse in compliance, at least for a few more weeks. I could almost smell the stench of fear and mistrust, with everybody eying everybody else with suspicion. In the eyes of many, I'm no doubt a villain for daring to poke my nose out above my mask, and one man may have noted me down as not only a villain, but a super villain.

A black guy living up the road, near Marquês, has always been a bit of an eccentric. Impressively tall and handsome, he likes to strut around in pimp outfits, sometimes pink, and other times white. However, he has recently taken up the habit of dressing up more like a super hero, with a blue cape and yellow overall, and it was him wearing this outfit that my son and I came across on our walk today.

The super hero, walking in the same direction as we did, eyed us from across the road. With his face mask correctly worn, his allegiances were immediately understood to be with government, and there was immediate tension between us. He, the super hero, and I the super villain were about to battle it out in the streets of Porto.

After keeping an eye with me for a while, the super hero crossed the street to walk immediately in front of my son and I. He walked deliberately slow to force some kind of response from me. However, I was not in the mood for an all out battle. I crossed the road to the other side with my son at my side.

Seeing that I had escaped his reach, the super hero took a few steps out into the road to make another crossing. But he changed his mind. He remained on the other side of the road, and soon after, when my son and I took a left turn, he continued straight ahead towards Marquês. So it appears that my outfit works fully as intended. Not only am I keeping hobby fascists at bay, even super heroes get cold feet.

Neither I nor my son found this episode in any way uncomfortable. Not even the indirect confrontation made by the super hero's approach concerned us. Had there been a confrontation of some kind, it would no doubt have been purely verbal, and probably quite entertaining at that. After all, how many times in our lives do we get to verbally battle things out in a super hero super villain setting.

Super villain

Playing God

And just like that, another wild speculation proves accurate. A third dose of the Pfizer vaccine is likely required in order to fight variants of the plague virus. The prospect of having to get three shots every year is being considered. What was a joke only weeks ago is now a seriously considered option. We must all replace our immune systems with one produced by Pfizer. Relying on God or Mother Nature to take care of us will not be tolerated for much longer. 

What we are witnessing is the end station of the false religion of science. What was meant as a tool for us to understand the world we live in has become a replacement for God. We are now to trust science without question, and take whatever medication is prescribed. To do otherwise makes us science deniers of the worst kind.

Those of us that still prefer Mother Nature over science are to be denied access to civil society. Only true believers are allowed to travel, enter pubs, go to concerts and so on. Proof of blind devotion to this new religion will come in the form of a vaccine passport.

Creation of Adam

By Michelangelo - See below., Public Domain, Link

China Going for Gold

A year has passed since oil prices went negative, with China ending up the big winner. They managed to have oil traders pay them to take oil off their hands, and I wondered back then if a similar move on gold was imminent, but with prices going sharply higher rather then negative. My advice was for people to buy some physical gold, just in case. But nothing much happened. Gold prices went up until August, then back down again. However, things are again looking interesting, and the latest move is again from China.

China has lifted restriction on gold imports. People in China can import as much as they want, and this is sure to increase the flow of physical gold into China.

This is a clever geo-political move because it puts pressure on the Dollar and western gold markets without being directly confrontational. All that China has done is to relax their regulations. It's a free market move that the West cannot very well complain about. However, it will accelerate the demise of the Dollar and drain western gold vaults. Anyone in China sceptical to the Dollar, or the Chinese Yuan, can now convert either currency into gold, and do this by direct import from the West.

Chinese authorities need not do a thing and the West must nevertheless show restraint, because the Chinese public will react impulsively to tension between the West and China by buying physical gold, and the West cannot afford to let even more gold drain out of their vaults and into the hands of the Chinese.

China is holding the West hostage to western manipulation of gold and currencies. China is calling the bluff, and there's nothing the West can do. The West must move quietly and carefully or risk a sudden spike in the gold price, with a corresponding drop in the purchasing power of Western currencies.

This fits well with the game plan I outlined in January. Western dominance over gold and currency markets is coming to an end. Gold will continue to move east, and its price will continue to go higher. With time, the Dollar will be replaced by the Yuan as a reserve currency, because reserve status is always dependent on gold, and with reserve status comes geo-political power.

Xi Jinping

By Palácio do Planalto - https://www.flickr.com/photos/palaciodoplanalto/47945730807/, CC BY 2.0, Link

Bitcoin Going Down will not Drag Gold and Silver Down With It

Bitcoin is continuing its ascent to new highs despite diminishing search interest and falling volumes. Also of interest is a reduction in momentum. New highs are only marginally above previous highs, and they are immediately met with selling. The overall impression is that of a stone tossed up into the air. We're nearing the top, and descent is soon to follow.

It remains to be seen if the current pullback will mark the beginning of the end for Bitcoin, but one thing is certain. That day will come, and the question then becomes, what happens to gold and silver as Bitcoin descends back to its fundamental value of zero.

This would be the flipside to my  post about Bitcoin's ascent to new highs, written back in February. My argument then was that Bitcoin cannot keep the price of gold and silver down simply by going up. The reason for this is twofold. First, there are the Bitcoin sellers who're likely to put at least some of their profits into gold and silver. Second, there's the fact that prices are more dependent on money-supply than relative estimates of worth. The current tsunami of newly issued dollars will send all prices higher.

We might draw from this that Bitcoin will never go down by much because of the current monetary insanity enacted by central bankers. However, not even an infinite supply of dollars can mask the fact that Bitcoin has no fundamental value. No-one desperately needs Bitcoin for anything. Faced with a choice between paying for soaring food prices and stacking Bitcoin, the stacker will buy food. There will be too few buyers of Bitcoin to support its price, and the price of Bitcoin will go down.

Based on this logic, we may claim that no-one can eat gold or silver either, so this too will see selling pressure in the face of soaring food prices. However, there's a big difference between Bitcoin and precious metals. Gold and silver have uses in jewellery and industry. There will always be someone out there looking to buy a gold ring for his fiancé, or buy some some silver for solar panels. Furthermore, prices of everyday goods are going up for a reason. The dollar is turning to junk. There's a constant need to push dollar prices higher, and a corresponding need to turn dollar savings into savings of some other kind.

With Bitcoin on its way down, producers of essential goods will turn to something else with their surplus earnings, and that something else is likely to be gold and silver because everybody knows that these metals have fundamental uses. There will always be demand for these metals. 

The result of this will be that prices for basic essentials like food will remain stable, or go down, measured in gold or silver. History has repeatedly shown this to be the case, and will no doubt prove this to be true once more.

Sovereign

By Heritage Auctions for image, Mary Gillick for coin - Newman Numismatic Portal, Public Domain, Link

Frogs in Hot Water

If we put a frog into tepid water, and then start to heat it up slowly, the frog will jump out. It will not get boiled as the saying goes. However, as a market analogy it's accurate. People will sit with their positions until the bitter end, especially if the decline is a drawn out affair. But this behaviour is not primarily due to complacency. Rather, it's based in a lack of strategy. With no clear idea of relative prices, one bet is as good as another. People with this attitude will hold onto their position for ever, no matter what.

This is rewarded in prolonged bull trends, such as the one we've seen in the US since 1980. Doing nothing but adding to stock positions has been a winning strategy. Every drop in stock prices have been opportunities to buy more. As a result, we have a lot of frogs basking in the hot waters of overpriced equities. Not a single frog has noticed that gold has been a better investment since year 2000. They are still sitting in the pool, delighting in ever-new record highs in nominal terms and unaware that prices are going down relative to gold.

This trend is likely to continue for several years to come, and I expect the frogs to remain in the stock market pool. They will continue to think that they are getting richer, while in reality they are getting poorer. Only too late will they realize that they were in the wrong pool.

A frog sitting on the handle of a saucepan

By James Lee FormerIP at en.wikipedia - https://www.flickr.com/photos/jronaldlee/4579611880/ Transferred from en.wikipedia by ronhjones, CC BY 2.0, Link