The Greenspan Put

The "Greenspan Put" is alive and well. The Greenspan Put is the term used to describe the FED's wonton use of interest rate cuts to bail out industry any time there is a perceived threat of tightening credit. For how much longer can this work? I suspect we could get another 10 years out of the Put before we run out of room. The question is, then what? When the Pound is worth 3 dollars and the Euro 2, and US short term rates are at zero, what will happen. That' s the road we're on folks and somebody in government better do something before we get there. Like every heroin addict admits, it was a great ride until rock bottom. But once you hit rock bottom there is no going back.

Our president and how we got here

When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental — men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost... All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.Baltimore Sun
(July 26, 1920)

-H.L. Mencken