Bearish News

Just watch:

Unfortunately, I don’t think you can blame this display of political idiocy on selection bias. The dolts featured in this clip are astrophysicists compared to the average American, who bases his vote on who he’d rather play Edward 40-Hands with.

Americans know almost nothing about economics, which affects every single day of their life. And what they do know is usually wrong. Inflation is good. The Fed saved the world. Government spending helps the economy. Pulling demand forward somehow creates a long-term benefit. Americans, including nearly all mainstream economists, believe this garbage.

For these and other reasons, I’m more and more convinced that our chances of correcting the system before it breaks are small. The whole cycle of spending and corruption reinforces itself in a way that’s very hard to break. By all means, we should try to enact change. But we should damn well be prepared for sub-optimal outcomes, which are the most likely ones. Precious metals remain my favorite way to do so.

Jim Rogers starts addressing the “not very smart” Mr. Bernanke at around the 7:30 mark.

Nassim Taleb, author of The Black Swan, a book that predicted (a) financial crisis in the near future and sold over 3 million copies, published in 2007, has endorsed Ron Paul for president. Makes sense when you think about it. Considering Ron Paul warned of the housing bubble in 2001. And one of his intellectual influences, Ludwig von Mises, godfather of Austrian Economics, predicted America’s Great Depression in the early 1920′s.

Taleb is one of the more logical economic voices in the punditshphere, which explains why he hasn’t been on CNBC lately (as is awkwardly discussed in the clip, below). Please do watch:

I first watched this documentary in 2009 shortly after it came out. It’s reached 9.9 million views on Youtube today, so apparently the message is resonating. About an hour and a half long & worth it: