Zombie News Nation

In 1949, the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) enacted the Fairness Doctrine.  This policy did two things.  First it required broadcasters to commit a portion of their air time to presenting controversial issues considered in the public interest.  Second it required these presentations to allow for contrasting viewpoints.  They didn’t need to have equal time.  The counterpoints just needed to exist.

In 1985 FCC then-chairman Mark Fowler, a former Reagan Administration attorney and campaign staffer, released a report stating that the Doctrine violated free speech and hurt the public interest.  In 1987 under then-chairman Dennis Patrick, another former Reagan Administration official, the FCC voted 4-0 to abolish the Fairness Doctrine.[1]  According to the Commission, enforcement by the government to require contrasting viewpoints was an intrusion and violated the free speech rights of the press.[2]

Congress, at the time controlled by Democrats, protested.  A couple months before the 1987 FCC decision, Congress tried to make the Doctrine law of the land, but Reagan vetoed the legislation.  A Democratic Congress tried again in 1991, but Bush I killed that as well.  (Years later in 2005, Democrats again tried to restore the Doctrine, but a Republican controlled Congress killed that.)

By the mid-1980s, say 1985, you had the Big Three: ABC, NBC, CBS (as well as PBS).  In cable, there was just CNN.  Aside from the Big Three anchor news broadcasts, the major investigative journalism programs then were CBS’s 60 Minutes (launched 1968), PBS’s The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour (1975), ABC’s 20/20 (1978) and Nightline with Ted Koppel (1980).  The anchors reported the news under the stricture of the Fairness Doctrine, and the investigative programs generally steered away from politics.

The only political news commentary programs in 1985 were NBC’s Meet the Press (launched 1947), ABC’s This Week with David Brinkley (1981) and CNN’s Crossfire (1982).  I should note, not a year after the Republican FCC chairman publicly stated that the Fairness Doctrine should go away, Fox Broadcasting launched, becoming the fourth commercial broadcast network in the US.

In time, with the Fairness Doctrine now gone, things started to change.  In 1992, Reliable Sources launched on CNN.[3]  In 1994 Politics with Chris Matthews launched on America’s Talking.[4]  Two years after Matthews was up and running, in 1996, the Fox News Channel launched with its headliners, The O’Reilly Report with Bill O’Reilly and Hannity & Colmes.  And in 1998, Fox News launched Fox & Friends.[5] 

Somewhere around here going forward, politics started to become increasingly disagreeable.  Around ~1992-94 several controversies surrounding President Clinton had come into the mainstream.  House Republicans led by Newt Gingrich made a “Contract with America” committing to several initiatives if they achieved a majority of the House at the 1994 mid-term elections.  Which they did and, in 1995, Republicans took both houses of Congress away from Democrats for the first time since 1956.

We ended the 1990s with the embarrassing sex scandals involving Clinton.  And started the 2000s with a Presidential election whose result a large portion of the nation felt was illegitimate at the time. Going forward we grew angrier with a prolonged prosecution on the “War on Terror”, which included invading and occupying a nation that we maybe never should have.

So with this 1990s-forward backdrop of politics growing uglier and the most personal since maybe the 1960s, enter the 21st Century of political news commentary.  Adding to the 1990s-launched stalwarts, in 2003, MSNBC launched Countdown with Keith Olbermann and HBO launched Real Time with Bill Maher.  The Glenn Beck Program on HLN launched 2006[6].  MSNBC launched Morning Joe with Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski in 2007.  In 2008 we got The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC and Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN.  In 2009 we got The Ed Show with Ed Shultz on MSNBC; State of the Union on CNN[7].  In 2010, The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell debuted on MSNBC.  In 2011, MSNBC launched PoliticsNation with Al Sharpton, Up with Chris Hayes, Martin Bashir, Now with Alex Wagner; and Fox News launched The Five.  In 2012, MSNBC launched The Cycle.  In 2013, MSNBC launched All In with Chris Hayes.[8]  And if that isn’t enough for us, CNN is bringing back Crossfire this year with Newt Gingrich and others.[9] 

None of that includes various daytime (e.g. The View) or late night Leno, Letterman, Stewart, Colbert, et al often chiming in on politics with various degrees of “not-so-subtlety”. And I haven’t even mentioned talk-radio.

When our Founding Fathers crafted our Second Amendment rights to keep and bear arms, they were dealing with mostly a mix of flintlock, smoothbore muzzle-loaded muskets.  They certainly were aware of the notion of radical technological advances in weapon lethality.[10]  But did they have fully-automatic weapons or perhaps the RPG in mind?[11] 

Consequences, intended or not, can sometimes get out of hand, and not be in the public’s best interest.  Like the murkiness of firearm availability for the few insane who seek to harm us. Like repealing the Glass-Steagal Act.[12]  Like eliminating the line-item veto.[13]  Like Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission.[14] 

And like abrogating the Fairness Doctrine.  Now I know that I’m starting to sound like I support a nanny-state, Big Brother puppet-mastering the media.  I don’t. I want it free.  But anyone who’s ever read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, understands that an unbound lack of guidance can lead to some horrific circumstances.  Thus our monster, the present state of news media commentary.

In 1985, we had a mere three news commentary programs whose primary or major focus was politics.  Two of those only aired once a week, on weekends.  Today by my count, we have almost 21 mostly daily, fully committed political oriented news commentary programs bathing us all week long in a 24-hour cycle.[15]  That sounds like – great, variety is good, right?  But it’s not really variety.  Nearly all these programs are the focus of just two or three sources.  Just two or three editorial departments, where I posit at least two have clear political agendas.

Five of the commentary programs were launched in the 1990s.  Three by right-leaning Fox News.  One by left-leaning MSNBC, one by CNN.[16]  Sixteen were launched in the 2000s+ (including the three cancelled).  Two by right-leaning Fox News (one of which cancelled).  Two by CNN.  And twelve launched by left-leaning MSNBC (albeit two cancelled).

Fox News programming consistently draws larger audiences than MSNBC or CNN (combined).  My guess about that is, people with conservative points of view only really have one place to go, whereas much of the rest of news media offers either a rather left-leaning perspective, like MSNBC, or at least let’s just call it a non-right, neutral perspective like CNN, et al.  Therefore the various shades of liberal-leaning viewership are diffused across a small handful of options, whereas all shades of conservative-leaning viewership are concentrated toward only one.

And that’s kind of the point.  These programs have just become go-to places to be told how to think. They don’t exist to provide information about controversial issues considered in the public interest.  They exist to sell advertising.  They do that by attracting eyeballs.  They attract eyeballs by appealing to our preformed ideological biases.  Unchained now from having to present any credible opposing voice in their content, aside from the occasional weak-handed one, to create enough of an appearance of balance (or perhaps attempt to discredit someone that might suggest what  I am) without ever undermining their narratives.

Their only consequence is losing eyeballs by appearing blatantly disingenuous.  But would their audience ever really see it that way if they are only really there to receive the narrative that supports their world view, which sustains their ego?  To disavow the source of your world view of its credibility, is to admit your own world view lacks credibility.  Is to threaten your ego. And that, according to Eckhard Tolle, for the unconscious mind, is equivalent to threatening death. 

So it's a seductive, and thus lucrative, draw.  These certainly more askew news commentary programs have become nothing more than mills that provide talking points for two opposing tribes that either don’t really want to use their minds and think for themselves, or at least have become lost trying to.  They feed a citizenry that now “informs” itself by steering toward the program that best affirms its beliefs – the co-called “confirmation bias” theory (as pointed out to me by a friend the other day).

What we have now is a society whose people don't really have much interest in understanding a point of view that differs from their own.  We are becoming a self-radicalizing nation.  And for those younger than me by perhaps just a decade, the only thing they’ve been exposed to regarding public political discourse is often intellectually dishonest, loud, sometimes nasty or off-putting, and presented for the most part in only one each of two directions.  We are building a generation that understands politics to be the art of being disagreeable, rather than the art of compromise.[17] 

This will either indoctrinate us in, or repel us from, all form of political discourse.   And reasonable discourse is important to have, if we would still like to be a representative democracy.  It weakens our foundations if we all become programmed to either go to our corners and have a tantrum, or instead simply tune-out in disgust.

We’re always going to have our politics, and our sometimes strong beliefs with them.  That should be OK.  But I would hope that we all strive to understand the issues, using a diversity of credible ideological sources, to arrive at conclusions then that we can truly call our own.

Because nowadays, I can’t remember the last time I had a discussion with friends on pressing issues, where it was not abundantly clear to me that they were simply parroting the spin of their favored pundit (read, party).  And if you don’t sound like their favored pundit, either their ears clog up and they start talking louder, or they just move on because they think you are the one who is intractable.

It’s like trying to talk to a zombie.  And all zombies really want to do is eat your brains.

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[1] The FCC typically has five commissioners.  There was one vacancy at the time.  By law, no more than three can be from one political party.  At this vote, two were Republicans, two Democrats. 
[2] Such opinion was later affirmed in the courts. 
[3] It is supposed to be commentary about the press, but it really goes all over politics too. 
[4] A cable news channel spun from NBC.  It failed two years later, and Matthews took his show to CNBC.  By 1999, he was on MSNBC as Hardball with… 
[5] I don’t think too many would argue with me that it’s basically a news opinion show, thinly dressed up as a digest. 
[6] It moved to Fox News in 2009. 
[7] At first with John King, but by next year with Candy Crowley. 
[8] Steve Kornacki took over Up with… 
[9] It was ended in 2005.  With him on the right is S.E. Cupp who left MSNBC’s The Cycle.  On the left will be Stephanie Cutter and Van Jones. 
[10] The breech-loading rifle was just coming out in the 1770s, and it dramatically increased rate of fire; rifling its accuracy.  They just weren’t abundant at the time because they were too expensive to mass-produce. 
[11] Fully automatic features on light assault firearms and rocket propelled grenades are illegal. So are nuclear bombs, and privately-marketed weaponized drones (however I think sharks with laser beams attached to their heads are still available).  But I hope you get my point. 
[12] In 1999, which allowed commercial banks to combine with investment banks.  This allowed the riskier investment taking investment banks to source cheaper commercial bank deposits as funds that did not appropriately price risk.  Thank you, Clinton, and a Republican controlled Congress. 
[13] In 1998, which requires that Bills must be signed into law in their entirety, regardless of how jam-packed it is with completely unrelated fetid, pork-barrel earmarks.  Thank you, a Supreme Court dominated by Republicans. 
[14] Of 2010. Which eliminated restrictions on independent expenditure endorsing political candidates, made by corporations, associations or labor unions. 
[15] This excludes Beck, Olbermann and Dylan Ratigan which have since been cancelled.  It also excludes Rick Sanchez’s Rick’s List, which didn’t last a year after he was canned for racist remarks. 
[16] No one leans more right than Fox News.  But CNN, if left-leaning, isn’t nearly as bad as most of MSNBC programming.  So I’ll call them “non-right” neutral.  And I think Morning Joe is the only MSNBC programming that is actually even-handed. 
[17] German economist and sociologist Max Weber coined “the art of compromise” in a 1919 essay.  But I think he was just channeling Germany’s first chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who said politics is “the art of the possible” sometime in the 1870-80s I guess.

Groovy Jobs Update

There’s only about 800 important things going on this past year, but let’s just focus today on a cornerstone of our society – its economic sustainability… aka Jobs.

To review, in the Great Recession (circa 2008-09) we lost 8.7 million jobs.  About 3½ years after the end of job loss, we have now recovered 6.7 million of those jobs.  So 2 million to go.  Last Friday, we reported adding 162 thousand jobs in July.  The average monthly for the last three months was 175 thousand; for the last six months was 200 thousand; for the last twelve months was 190 thousand.

Going forward, let’s use 175 thousand per month (because I said so).  That means we will make up the remaining 2 million jobs lost in a little under a year from now… Call it June 2014.  Given that, it will have taken almost 4½ years (from the end of job loss) to recover all jobs lost in the Great Recession.  The average recovery time from end of job loss of the nine preceding recessions of the post-WW II era, I calculate, was one year (ranging 9 to 21 months).  So this recovery appears on track to be 4½ times longer than your run-of-the-mill recession.

And that’s just to get back to a point we already got to in what will have been almost 6½ years earlier, come June 2014.  Aside from recouping the jobs lost, we will also have needed to create jobs for natural growth of the labor force in that time.  Before the fall (end of 2007), the employed civilian labor force numbered 146 million (let’s forget about the then unemployed, because the rate was ~4½%, about as close to full employment as we’ll ever get).  The overall civilian labor force had been growing about 1¼% annually in the two decades before 2007 (roughly at population growth).  But going forward, let’s slow that down to 1% to be a bit conservative, yet still accounting a little for a slower-growing, older America.

That’s about another 9.8 million jobs we should have created from 2007 to mid-2014, on top of the 8.7 million we finally will have made back from February 2010 (the recession’s bottom in terms of job loss) to mid-2014.  So in other words, in order to ever affect a real recovery from the recession, we need to have created a grand total of 18.5 million jobs through mid-2014.  11.8 million to go.  In less than one year from now.

That should have been about 356 thousand jobs each month since early 2010 through mid-2014.  Again, last month we banged out 162 thousand and have been recently running around 175 thousand.  The average for the recovery-to-date has been 164 thousand.  Basically any way you cut it, this recovery-to-date is running at or below half of what is really required to ever truly recover.

Playing with the numbers some more, to achieve a pre-recession economic environment of almost full employment (4-5% unemployment) - which I admit is a lofty goal - you need to run from here at about 300 thousand jobs a month, every month, for the next five years.  We would have to suddenly double what we’ve been doing, and hold at that rate for another half decade, making any true recovery take 11½ years from initial decline.

The Great Depression took 13 years (4 down 1929-33; 9 up 1933-42) to get back to an unemployment rate that resembled pre-1929 stock market crash.  With most of that recovery occurring in the last few years due to war-time production and draft (e.g. 1939 was 17-19% unemployment, 1941 was 10-14%, by the end of 1942 it was below 5%).  But they lost ~25-30% of jobs at the worst point, where we lost 6.3% of jobs in our current Great Recession.  Nowhere near the 1930s, but still over twice the average of all post-WW II recessions.

So we’re at 7.4% unemployment presently, down from 10.0% peak.  If we keep running at the rate we have been, it is unrealistic to believe that we are going to see anything that looks pre-recession “normal” for several years more.  This would be a world of something more like 6.5% unemployment at best for the foreseeable mid-term (which means you can take your finger off the "sell treasuries" button now).  Unless we get job growth more like 200-250 thousand per month, consistently.

Which I believe is now actually around the corner.  But let me just stay glum, because it's often comfortable to wallow on the soft pillow of misery - if for no other reason than it's familiar.  The last time we drifted chronically at 6.5-7.5% unemployment was in the 1970s.

Ahhh… The ‘70s.  Really good music (mostly).  Really bad fashion statements.  Totally un-PC sitcoms.  Other than this chronic economic malaise, today looks nothing like the ‘70s.

• Other than persistent energy issues: Gas shortages v. $3-5/gallon at the pump…

• Ugly protracted war: Vietnam v. Iraq/Afghanistan…

• A government that’s getting outted for poking around where they maybe shouldn’t be: Watergate v. NSA surveillance overreach, FBI secret wiretapping of the press, DEA overreach, IRS political party targeting…

• And fibbing to the public: Pentagon Papers v. highly likely something in what I just mentioned already in the last point…

• Government leaks: Ellsberg v. Snowden…

• Drug epidemics: Heroin, coke, pot v. prescription drugs, and, well, pot…

• Protest in the streets: May Day riots v. Occupy Wall Street…

• Armed, dangerous creeps: Son of Sam, Manson v. Newtown et al, Ariel Castro…

• Terrorism: IRA, Palestinians, The Weather Underground, RAF, PFLP, hijackings, bombs in US airports and DC government buildings v. Boston Marathon, Benghazi, shutting down ~20 embassies…

• Iran: Revolution v. nukes…

• Dirty wars: Operation Condor v. drone strikes…

• Whitey Bulger: Not really working for the Feds v. definitely not working for the Feds…

Aside from that, SO NOT the ‘70s.  Peace.

US Debt Update

So you may have been focusing on all this “fiscal cliff”, “debt ceiling” mumbo-jumbo.  It is all about something very huge and pressing.  It’s about how we pay for the ability of our everyday life to go forward.  Right now, every other social issue – gun laws, immigration, marital unions, et al – is subordinate to this, in my view.  Because if we don’t fix our financial issues, there won’t be any society left to speak of.

The situation, to date:  The Federal government has not passed a budget in over three years.  Spending remains out of control.  Our debts continue to dangerously accumulate.  The world markets haven't reacted yet, but nonetheless look on in disbelief at our irresponsibility.  Continued in this manner, one day not too long from now, markets may no longer be “OK” with all this.  And then it’s too late.

For our Federal government’s fiscal year 2012 (ended September 30), it collected $2.4 trillion in revenues.  That was mostly from individual income taxes (46%).  The rest came from payroll taxes, like Social Security and unemployment insurance (35%) that we and our employers pay, as well as corporate income taxes (10%).  All the rest (9%) comes from excise taxes (sales tax on stuff like alcohol, tobacco and gasoline), customs duties, estate and gift taxes, as well as income from our central bank.

In the same period, the Federal government spent $3.5 trillion, creating its $1.1 trillion deficit.  Since 2009, we have run deficits over $1 trillion each year.  These ~$1-1.5 trillion deficits have been 7% (like present) to 10% of GDP.  In the seven years of deficits before 2009 (as we were in surplus before that), our deficits averaged 2.5% of GDP.  Since 1980 (but excluding surplus years and prior to 2009), our deficits have averaged 3.2% of GDP.

There are only a handful of nations that are running budget deficits higher than us (by ~1-3%) right now – Greece (effectively bankrupt), Spain (being bailed out), Afghanistan (not even really a nation, just a series of neighbors’ borders delineating areas that they would like to stay away from), Egypt (in sociopolitical upheaval), Venezuela (economy in ruins after overspending on social programs despite having vast oil wealth), Ireland (yet another failed one of the PIIGS) and Japan (in a now two+ decade depression) to name the notable ones.

So how much is too much?  When are deficits too large?  To understand that, we need to understand why a deficit matters, or doesn’t matter.  A deficit is our government’s budget shortfall.  What funding it can’t source from revenue, it must borrow (or print, effectively the same thing).  So a deficit is basically a proxy for the growth of our debts – if we’re short $1 trillion on budget, we basically need to borrow $1 trillion.

If we want, we could run a deficit (aka grow our debts) forever.  We just need that growth to be less than the rate of growth of our economy (aka GDP).  Over time, despite our debt’s growth, it will still be an ever smaller percent of our economy thus.  So deficits in and of themselves are not problematic.  Run in the aforementioned manner, they actually can give us a little competitive boost in what we can achieve each year v. other nations.

But when our debts grow persistently faster than the growth of our economy, we can get into trouble eventually.  Again, deficits beget debt.  Debt bears interest.  Very large debts, funded at high interest rates, can consume budgets to the point of oblivion – like what happened to Greece and many irresponsible others of the past.  Right now, in a very low interest right environment, we paid $360 billion of interest on Federal debt.  That is presently about one-third of our deficit.  It is an effective interest rate of about 2.3%

If our debts grow where they are projected to, over just the next five years (source: White House), a one percentage point increase in interest rates will add approaching $200 billion of extra interest burden on the budget annually.  And again, rates are presently at generational lows.  Any real improvement in the economy, any hint of inflation, any slight slip in the market place in terms of fearing our creditworthiness; each has the potential to send interest rates materially higher than just one percentage point from where we are right now.

For perspective, a $200 billion increase in interest expense from just a one percentage point increase in interest rates, given our now rapidly expanded debt load, would immediately consume the entire budgets of the Departments of Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Justice, State, as well as the EPA and NASA.  Combined.

With a two percentage point increase, the total interest burden would exceed all Medicare and Medicaid, or Social Security payments made by the Federal government (take your pick).  Not that long ago, interest rates naturally were about three or four percentage points higher than where they are now.  So this is not some unlikely, fictional landscape that I suggest.  We were there, pre-financial crisis, just a few years ago (just with far smaller debts).

Large debts ultimately become a trap for growth.  Japan for example is over 200% of GDP in debt.  It has for a very long time really low interest rates (and high savings rates, which also helps internally fund debt).  So they can survive the burden.  But with that debt burden, they cannot have normal, higher interest rates – associated with normal economic growth – as the interest burden would instantly destroy their budget.  So they are trapped into a very low growth, borderline deflationary environment just to keep their debt affordable.

And this is where we have been rapidly heading over the past several years.  Five years ago, our gross Federal debt outstanding was ~$8-9 trillion - ~65% of GDP.  Right now it is $16.4 trillion – 105% of GDP.  And again just to vividly underline,  until all those really great representatives we all elected get out of career self-preservation mode and start behaving in our interests, that debt is still bumping up an odd $trillion a year.  It is projected to top $20 trillion ~2016-17 (source: White House).  That’s a ~10-11% annualized growth rate.  Meanwhile, GDP (real) growth rates will have grown at ~2-4% annualized rates over the same period.

All else equal, when nations start to materially exceed 100% gross debt to GDP, markets get nervous.  They express their nervousness by demanding that that nation borrow from the market at a higher interest rate.  If the market loses all confidence in that nation’s ability to repay its debts, there effectively is no interest rate that will clear the transaction, and the nation no longer has any source to borrow from.

Along that path, real-world effects of being fiscally irresponsible begin to materialize.  Interest rates on everything skyrocket.  The nation will then desperately print money out of thin air in order to satisfy its debts.  As that process abets weakening its currency’s value.  Whether it prints or not, the markets lose faith in the value of its currency, and its value collapses.  Suddenly everything costs many times more to purchase.  Almost overnight, the entire economy grinds to a halt.  Social unrest explodes, and some medieval form of totalitarian rule must be installed until (if ever) the nation recovers from the catastrophe.

It sounds so draconian – so otherworldly from a modern-day American’s point of view.  But it happens to nations all the time when they collapse under their own ineptitude.  Just not to the US.  Yet.

Our interest rates are at generational lows.  Our dollar has not collapsed.  Yet we run Greece-like deficits and our central bank has been printing $trillions out of thin air for a few years now via their “quantitative easing” efforts.

So why have we been spared this fate thus far?  For a handful of reasons.

The first is, we simply aren’t really there yet.  Our debts are only now touching what has been generally regarded the “danger zone”.  But that’s not a very good reason.  That’s like saying everything’s OK because we haven’t hit that brick wall yet, one hundred feet in front of us, that we are driving 100mph toward.

The second reason is, our central bank the Federal Reserve has been in the market place now for some time buying that very debt it issues on behalf of the Treasury.  Just in case any other would-be buyers (China) start to lose interest.  Thus, it is artificially keeping interest rates lower than otherwise through this action.

The third reason is, the world led in so many ways by the US, is suffering still the deflationary effects of a mild depressive state after the acute phase of the ~2007-09 global financial crisis.  This has the effect of keeping global interest rates subdued (see Japan for the past two decades).

The fourth – and most important – reason is, the world simply has no place else to go with its money.  Unrisked wealth needs to be stored somewhere.  And it needs to be in some currency.  And that currency needs to be perceived as safe.  Safe from manipulation or restriction on convertibility.  Its proprietor nation must be perceived safe as well.  Safe from invasion or coup or social unrest or excessive corruption.

And the currency must be liquid and abundant.  Only the dollar and our treasury notes we issue to borrow are perceived safe enough, are large and liquid enough markets for the world to store so much value there.

Over 60% of the world’s surplus wealth (aka allocated reserves) is sitting in dollars, down from 70% over a decade ago, as the world explores places other than the “only” alternative of the post-World War II era.  What are the alternatives?  At most, the euro was almost 30% of allocated world reserves, but has since reversed (presently 24%), demonstrating to me that the world does not presently see the Euro Zone as a credible alternative to the US as a long term store of value.

The Japanese yen at their economic peak over two decades ago was almost 10% of world reserves (presently 4%).  That leaves places like the UK’s sterling or Switzerland’s franc.  Their economies just aren’t big enough to support the world’s nest egg.

What’s left?  Currency’s antimatter – gold.  Just not enough of that either.  China?  Forget about it.  Why don’t they tackle property ownership rights and freedom of assembly and speech issues first, before we actually start regarding their renmimbi as a safe store of value.  Until then, they are just a really big and only-recently-to-date financially successful grand experiment right now.

No other nation satisfies all the necessary criteria like the US does.  Even despite our present fiscal inanity.  The world is very much nervous about us, but they simply have no other place to go.  So for these very bad reasons, we can continue our very bad behavior far longer than any other nation on Earth would otherwise be allowed.  This is the bad lesson our elected representatives are learning.  The markets haven’t punished us yet for our do-nothing position, so therefore we can continue to do nothing.  Until, of course, we can’t.  But you don't want to wait until then.

In my view, the last time the world was in this position, was perhaps the 3rd or 4th Centuries AD.  When the known Western world had become defined by Rome.  Rome dominated, wavered, faltered.  Rome may have been hated, loved.  It didn’t matter.  It was the thing that defined the rest of the known world, for the rest of the known world.  After Western Rome ultimately disappeared, it ushered several centuries of dark times.  So the nation pretenders to our station should be careful what you wish for.

The point is, the modern world hasn’t been here before.  The US literally built this post-World War II modern economic world.  It remains its foundation.  And it is now becoming unbalanced as a result of excess ineptitude and corruption of its rulers.  The world does not know what to do with that.  So it just looks on, in a sort of hypnotic state of disbelief or denial.

Unlike Rome, I believe we’ll get this wet blanket lifted off us.  And underneath it as we speak is a finally recovering housing market, a secular domestic shale oil industry about to usher in a new economic boom and much more.  It is so obviously easy to be gloomy about everything over the past few years.  I turned optimistic a few weeks before the election.  And I stay that way.  Holding my breath.