~ BBIBS ~ Blue Bloods In Black Shirts

~ WTWIWIAGAFATOD-IOPHOTAOI-W-TMBU-OE ~ What The World Improvers Want Is A Globe As Familiar As Their Own Boudoirs – If Other People Have Other Tastes And Other Ideas – Well – They Must Be Uneducated – Or Evil

~ WRMTWIIV-AWMTOITTGITISR ~ What Really Moves The World Improvers Is Vanity – And What Makes Them Odious Is That They Give In To It So Readily

~ TTI-PPAB-AAAFTFOSOV ~ The Truth Is – Popular Politics And Bubbles – Are Almost Always Frauds That Flatter Our Sense Of Vanity

~ DWB-WTPDTDIFETBDT ~ Deception Works Best – When The Person Doing The Deceiving Is Fool Enough To Be Deceived Too

~ MTIAHIAE-IOATBAPOCRBOP-ATFR-OTP ~ Moral Thinking Is Actually Highly Intuitive And Emotional – It Only Appears To Be A Product Of Careful Reasoning Because Of People’s – After-The-Fact Rationalizations – Of Their Preferences

~ ITRATA-F-CTM-TMTTCUWOR-O-WMTTTAI-B-TAUTSTO ~ If The Reasons Are Taken Away – Few – Change Their Minds – They May Try To Come Up With Other Reasons – Or – Want More Time To Think About It – But – They Are Unlikely To Switch Their Opinions

~ TMIHWAWB-B-UHWIE ~ The Mob Is Happy When A War Begins – But – Usually Happier When It Ends

~ AWEBTOPD-WTTTHAGR ~ And What Extraordinarily Bad Things Ordinary People Do – When They Think They Have A Good Reason

~ TWOTWHTPNITDA-B-ITCDOTE-IWNIFWDTPOTW-IWT-SLF ~ The Worst Of The Witch-Hunting Took Place Not In The Dark Ages – But – In The Clear Dawn Of The Enlightenment – It Was Not Illiterate Fools Who Drove The Persecution Of The Witches – It Was The – Semi-Literate Fools

~ FNINN ~ Fake News Is Not New

~ WDTBTAGT-TTTITDTMOT-CBTWDFTFWDWI? ~ Why Do They Believe That A Government That – They Think Too Incompetent To Deliver The Mail On Time – Can Be Trusted With Delivering Freedom To Foreigners Who Don’t Want It?

~ WGP-AALOI-PMCTTS-A-MWWBOFQ ~ Without Government Propaganda – And A Lot Of It – People Might Come To Their Senses – And – Most Wars Would Blow Over Fairly Quickly

~ TNCATEOAEAWI-A-REAOTTPAATB ~ The Negative Consequences At The End Of An Effort At World Improvement – Are – Roughly Equal And Opposite To The Positive Aspirations At The Beginning

~ T-U-ITTWRAE-IEURY-BYKI-YADSTFNORTTIWED ~ That – Ultimately – Is The Trouble With Running An Empire – It Ends Up Running You – Before You Know It – You Are Doing Suicidal Things For No Other Reason Than That Is What Empires Do

~ PDSTNTMOWTTFG-FGWSAA-WATTPUIITB-EIIKT ~ People Don’t Seem To Notice That Much Of What They Take For Granted – Future Generations Will See As Absurd – Whatever Allows Them To Puff Up In Importance They Believe – Even If It Kills Them

~ AWAPS-DAD-AQFB-F ~ As With Any Public Spectacle – Deceit And Deception – Are Quickly Followed By – Farce

~ ITIOTWKATSOC-IITTC-TIIG-TIIF-BRIID ~ If There Is One Thing We Know About The Sentiments Of Crowds – It Is That They Change – Today It Is Greed – Tomorrow It Is Fear – But Rarely Is It Doubt

~ TPWH-WI-I-FAR-OWCNK-WMWTR-WI-W-WSB(IOO)-B-AT-WOTTTAI ~ The Perfect World Hypothesis – What Is – Is – For A Reason – One We Cannot Necessarily Know – We Might Want To Replace – What Is – With – What Should Be (In Our Opinion) – But – At Least – We Ought To Think Twice About It

~ TPWWTFTIOYAATPWIATMI ~ The People Who Want To Force Their Ideas On You Are Always The People Whose Ideas Are The Most Idiotic

~ HBAAMCTTTATAF ~ Human Beings Are Always More Complicated Than The Theories About Them Allow For

~ Y-SPAMTETVBIT ~ Yet – So Powerful Are Myths That Even The Victims Buy Into Them

~ TTOJ ~ The Tao Of Jones

~ WRSTO-BEED ~ We Repeat Slogans To Ourselves – Because Everyone Else Does

~ BSAFT ~ Black Swans And Fat Tails

~ FT-ETLSFOTNCOETWTTPTEFAIOC ~ Fat Tails – Events That Lie So Far Outside The Normal Course Of Events That We Tend To Push Them Equally Far Away In Our Consciousness

~ BSOMMCTWT-TANTROTAOLOSE-BTROTMOE-AEIOSE ~ Black Swans Occur Much More Commonly That We Think – They Are Not The Result Of The Addition Of Lots Of Small Effects – But The Result Of The Multiplication Of Effects – An Exponential Increase Of Small Effects

~ COTB-FITRT-H-I-O-I ~ Complexity Overwhelms The Brain – Forcing It To Revert To – Habit – Instinct – Or – Intuition

~ WPTTW-WTACITHOTM-A-HTATTC-AQDT-ANOTIEM ~ What People Think They Want – What They Actually Choose In The Heat Of The Moment – And – How They Afterward Think They Chose – Are Quite Different Things – And None Of Them Is Easily Measured

~ WAFNJBTROTU-BE-BTUOOOEM ~ We Are Fooled Not Just By The Randomness Of The Universe – But Equally – By The Unpredictability Of Our Own Emotional Makeup

~ NOIGNEGNEB-IINEOST-IIS ~ Not Only Is Globalization Neither Entirely Good Nor Entirely Bad – It Is Not Even One Single Thing – It Is Several

~ FDB ~ Fin De Bubble

~ TBSH ~ The Buck Starts Here

~ TMDT ~ The Million Dollar Trailer

~ T-MLNTFMSTBTBATMWS-OTWPTLM-BTNMLRMTB-ATHAJTMF ~ Traditionally – Mortgage Lenders Needed To First Make Sure That Both The Borrower And The Market Were Solid – Or They Weren’t Prepared To Lend Money – But The New Mortgage Lenders Rarely Met The Borrower – And They Had Already Judged The Market Foolproof

~ SN ~ Speculation Nation

~ NTBIO-TBBWMLBNS-B-TWNTM ~ Now That The Boom Is Over – The Baby Boomers Will Most Likely Be Net Sellers – Because – They Will Need The Money

~ TMOTMOAB-D-TI-T-E-E-P-B-WO-A-WU ~ The Mother Of The Mother Of All Bubbles – Debt – That Is – Traded – Extended – Extruded – Pressed – Bottled – Wrung Out – And – Wadded Up

~ OGITWTHOTETFCIFW-DWGAS-‘TP’-P-TDRDRAA-TAI ~ Our Guess Is That When The History Of The Early Twenty-First-Century Is Finally Written – Derivatives Will Get A Special “Tipping Point” Place – They Don’t Really Disperse Risk At All – They Aggregate It

~ WTBFP-YCBSIWBTMMWLTH ~ When The Bubble Finally Pops – You Can Be Sure It Won’t Be These Money Men Who Lose Their Homes

~ F-LBR-DNCW-TMRI-WTMMIHMIGT-ITBTILT ~ Financiers – Like Bank Robbers – Do Not Create Wealth – They Merely Redistribute It – While The Mob May Idolize Holdup Men In Good Times – In The Bad Times It Lynches Them

~ NGTFFTF ~ Never Get Too Far From The Facts

~ NBWEEIRTB ~ Never Buy What Everyone Else Is Rushing To Buy

~ DAAG-TA-IOU-IBTWBD ~ Dollars Are A Gamble – They Are – IOUs – Issued By The World’s Biggest Debtor

~ RHIOR ~ Rot Has Its Own Rationale

~ RISTOW-OMWFOD-NTOWA ~ Reason Is Slave To Our Wishes – Our Minds Work For Our Desires – Not The Other Way Around