Quote of the day—Matthew Piepenburg

By 1997, I had graduated from a steady, iconic and expensive list of higher educational institutions which emphasized critical thinking, objective data, historical context and basic math.

But had I told a single professor back then that one day we’d see the simultaneous occurrence of Treasury Yields at 1.35%, and an “official” YoY CPI (inflation) growth rate of 5.4%, and an S&P reaching all-time highs above 4000, despite negative annual GDP rates, and consumer sentiment tanking, it’s likely they’d ask me to return my diplomas.

Why?

Because everything I (and all the rest of us) had been taught long ago was that rising risk assets reflect healthy economic growth, vigorous natural demand and a robust confidence in continued productivity and hence free-market price discovery.

That, at least, was the “reality” that nine years of secondary (post high-school) education gave me before I began my first toe-dip into the public exchanges (i.e., asset bubbles) of 1999.

Nothing I learned in school was “real” and nothing about our current moment in time has even the slightest resemblance to anything remotely characterized as natural, free-market or fair-price-driven.

Nothing. Not even close.

Matthew Piepenburg
September 14, 2021
Nothing is Real: A Visual Journey Through Market Absurdity
[Emphasis in the original.

We live in interesting times.

Prepare appropriately.—Joe]

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5 thoughts on “Quote of the day—Matthew Piepenburg

  1. Yes. Macro-econ models are all wrong both ways. That is, all of the different mainstream models of macro are wrong, and each of them are wrong in virtually all details. Steven Keen is one of the few who may be mostly right, but he’s mostly ignored by the MSM and the business media.

    Much of their total wrongness stems from Keynes, whose theories though inaccurate were useful to the recently formed central bankers of The Fed.

  2. When was the last time one heard the truth from big government? About anything?
    And were surprised that the big business end would be any different? Or the big media?
    They’ve moved themselves to the point that they no longer need us. So why keep us around?
    People think slavery was bad. Were all about to find out what it’s like to be Irish in the potato famine. Go watch the movie, Black ’47. Fiction, But a good portrayal what it’s like to be starved to death by overlords that see you as a net drain on their purse. And no longer care if you live.
    The economics model used today is and always has been a racket. Just a controlled one to keep up appearances. They obviously no longer feel the need to do that.
    Why would they kill us, were their workforce? Being the famous last words I believe.

  3. We all knew this well beforehand, but I think the key line in the piece is “…when the truth is a threat, feed the masses fear, anger and lies instead….”
    It’s pretty obvious that’s where we are now…..

  4. “Nothing I learned in school was ‘real’ and nothing about our current moment in time has even the slightest resemblance to anything remotely characterized as natural, free-market or fair-price-driven.

    Nothing. Not even close.”

    Yup, and most of our influential politicians, economists, media pundits, scientists, deans of education, and other primary influencers, have been similarly “educated”. Whether one is aware of it or not, he just described one form of what is properly known as Jesuit Theatre, an evil that has been foisted upon us in myriad ways for generations. The global response to COVID and the resulting failure of thousands of small businesses is another notable example. But no one will take any of it seriously enough to make any difference because no one wants to be ostracized as a “conspiracy theorist”.

    We learned well this basic concept after W.W. II, and then forgot all about it, convincing ourselves that saying the words “never again” could in itself have some form of preventative power behind it. “Never again” we said, while embracing the same “Progressive” or “Liberal” theology that led to it. German citizens living downwind of the death camp crematoriums were often in denial about it, and one can readily understand why. How, after all, could your own government be perpetrating such extreme and unmitigated evil? It’s unthinkable, and so therefore it has cover within our own minds. It’s beyond the average person’s ability to comprehend, and THAT, quite simply, is how it is allowed to flourish in plain sight. We even sometimes look at the perpetrators, or at least the enablers, as great and compassionate people, selflessly dedicated to “The Common Good”, or to “Saving the Planet” and so on, ad infinitum. We look up to them, envying their title, position, and stature, and we covet the attention they get.

    And so it is that we can come to something approaching a full realization of what’s been happening under our noses only after the fact. Only long after the mass destruction has run its full course do we begin to realize that A does indeed lead to B. And then, in the aftermath, we sing “Happy Days Are Here Again” and forget about it. History is then re-written, couched within some other paradigm (like the Nazis were the “far right”, for example), it gets taught in all the schools, and all the major media echo it, and so the evil is free to resume under a slightly different banner. Then it happens all over again, right under our noses, just as before. Only a final, divine intervention can ever stop the cycle.

    • Perhaps you misunderstood the author’s point. It’s not that what he was taught was wrong. It is that the current economic climate is a façade created by politicians manipulating the currency supply and the unnatural distribution of that currency.

      His professors either did not imagine or did not bother to teach all the ways to build economic castles out of cards because for the world’s politicians to build such castles would be extremely “short sighted” (being far too kind in my characterization of them).

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