oldgustav –

The market has gained 1000 points amid a return of confidence. Who is confident of what? I would say that 1000 point rise shows the confidence of those in the market that there are great oportunities for them to profit some more. Why would they think so? Well why wouldn't they? Look at their situation. They have been given over three trillion dollars by various governments to play with. The debts and losses they had made, have been taken from them at face value, given government guaranteed insurance to protect them and allowed to hide the rest in accounting rule changes.

The market shows that those speculating are confident they are going to make more money for themselves at lower risk than ever before. I'd be confident too.

But does nay of this rub off on us? Well no. We are left having to pay for all that free money. They are profiting but we borrowed and now – NOW – not when the market recovers but NOW – we have to start finding the money to repay what we borrowed. That means cuts. That's the deal. We give them money and we suffer the cuts.

The plan was that unfait though this is, it would all be all right because the 'recovery' would take hold before these new debtsa got too big or the pay-back too crippling. Only it hasn't and the banks have said quite clearly it won't any time soon.

The losses are still coming and there is another wave of them to come. What they call a policy for recovery I call the construction of a vice which is now tightening.

This is not a sufficient response to your questoin. So if you don't mind I'd like to think about it carefully and offer a better more considered thought in a day or so.

But what I do not understand therefore is where the renewed confidence in the stock market stems from. It's around 1,000 points higher that this time last year – so does that not suggest that the worst is over, confidence has returned and it's business as usual for all but a small minority?

How does your 'doom and gloom' theory – sorry but that's what it is, correlate with what is being presented as the end of recession, investment restarting and an overall rosier picture that 12 months ago?

Very good analogy! The one with spinning plates.

You are right when you say the instable ones should be left to crash, if I continue the analogy. But I fear the reason why our governments keep throwing our futures down the toilet just to keep those plates spinning isn't just merely because they'd do everything to defend the system as it was and as it served us all so well. Or at least so they thought.

No, I think they do the spinning thing because they are (conciously or unconciously) scared to death. Let's face it, there's no way to clean this mess in an orderly fashion. Even as it is, with all bail outs etc., I fear there's quite a good chance words like "martial law" become a part of our everyday vocabulary in not so distant future. I could speculate further where that would lead, if it were to become true, but perhaps I'm just being pessimistic…

Anyway, my point is that the ruling elites either suspect or maybe even downright know, that letting the instable plates fall wouldn't only negatively affect their usual ways, but would most probably wipe out our Western Civilization (big word, I know, but then again…). At least in a way we know it. And that would mean wiping them out as well.

So our Masters keep doing their gimmicks in desperate hope that by some mirracle they will in fact work, despite they know just as well one can't make a cake out of crap. But as in theory there is a chance greater than zero, that tomorrow the sun won't rise, there's also a greater than zero chance you will evade the Apocalypse if you do anything when you know doing nothing will bring it on for certain. They are doing the senible thing, right?

Well, as much as I fear we have not even seen the worst yet (and by that I mean not only financial and economic mayhem, but serious political crisis and ultimately physical violence as well!), I tend to agree with you, Golem. All these bailing out sorcery would have to be stopped at once! There would be bloodbath, but as I'm pretty sure the sun will rise tomorrow just as it has been rising for the past few billions of years, I'm also pretty sure the bloodbath will come anyway. So we might just as well deal with it sooner, rather than later…

…or maybe I just need a good night's sleep… 😉