DoD Black Budget
Noah estimates $50 billion.
Unemployment Numbers
Don’t forget to tack on graduating college kids.
They Were Us and We Were Them
Emphasis mine:
This point is key. There’s a real tendency to Other subprime mortgage holders. They are idiots, crooks, dupes, minorities, single mothers, easily mislead, liars and criminals, etc. But right here, 28% of all mortgage foreclosures, and 60% of subprime foreclosures, are from people who started with a prime mortgage. Those are the Us – good credit scores, 20% down, pay the bills on time.
The Security Phantom
Good. It’s about time we started disconnecting the idea of security from the military (albeit excruciatingly slowly). That phantom connection has cost billions of dollars and has taken thousands and thousands of lives.
Economists Circling the Drain
Unable to wrap their minds around Taleb, economists are flailing into a laughable pile of insular logic. This dribble is indicative of just how unable to cope that ‘profession’ is.
Taleb’s point (or anyone worth listening to nowadays) is that the system needs a fundamental rethink. It is throwing up errors in every domain we can look for indicators within. Business as usual and traditional stop gap measures aren’t good enough. If we can change the basic assumptions, we can experience a controlled crash. However, if we continue relying upon a defunct set of ‘professionals’ (wrong economists, thieving bankers, corrupt politicians – that entire elite strata) for answers, solutions, and insight, we’re headed for a hard landing.