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Owning up to being wrong!

Over the past few weeks the truth has been largely absent from the American political scene. The truth is what you want it to be; Illegal voters was the reason Trump lost the popular vote, Obama spied on Trump etc etc.

It is the new normal in a way that politicians will understand; Trumps' sin is that he's gone "full retard" -- politicians lie, its the nature of the beast! Policy is complicated and people want simple answers to complicated questions, and are impatient for results, they don't understand how government functions -- they probably don't understand how a company works either!

Most politicians will use "little lies" to make their supporters happy, the difference with Trump is that he has no check and balance -- he says that the number of Americans at the inauguration was greater than under Obama -- and he will not change his mind confronted with irrefutable evidence to the contrary. Its not that he's shameless he just doesn't care!

This morning there was a funny article in the NYT about a letter that 50 conservative economists wrote to Ben Bernanke about the impact of QE1 (Yep a long time ago) that not only would the US have high inflation but that the currency would fall against the rest of the world. NONE of the 50 economists ever admitted that they screwed up (there has been very low inflation and the US dollar is very strong).  Some of these guys are about to be rewarded with very nice government jobs

My point is this, we have reached a new normal, spokesman for Ryancare say that healthcare is available to all Americans (so is dinner at Messa Restaurant in NYC -- if you've got a couple of grands available...[BTW NYC's most expensive restaurant]).  Saying its available is meaningless, but also irrelevant to those politicians.  Their objective is elsewhere, and so the little lies to achieve their intended goals.

I've been told that I am slow at recognizing my own mistakes:


  • Greece will be out of Europe in two years -- deadline was 2015 (lost that bet)
  • French and German banks will be bankrupt -- thanks to ECB they're still here
  • Italy would be out of the Euro zone by early 2017
  • Cyprus would be out of the Euro -- got that way wrong
  • Hilary Clinton would be president -- wrong still cannot believe America picked Trump...

What I did get right is that there are fundamental imbalances that the world is ready to allow to persist, and that the ECB had no choice than to buy-up all the European banks's Greek and Spanish sovereign debt -- otherwise DB, SG and others would be gone by now. Years ago a top trader told me that the market can be "wrong" far longer than you can be solvable. A valuable lesson to anyone that considers that there are fundamental errors in a system.

So we have an American President that says complete falsehood and no one bothers to correct him anymore -- its become so common its not worth reporting, moreover, those who believe these lies would NEVER believe the main stream media anyway.

Bannon & Friends have no love for the GOP or for Congress (any shape or form) right now Trump has an opportunity to clean the decks (without interference) of all those real and perceived enemies. We are about to see purges of the civil service, for although the GOP in congress is against the budget it is to the liking of their constituency -- those real zealots who have no understanding how government function, and have zero interest in understanding. We are on the edge of a precipice and the government's check and balance are on holiday -- in "delusionalville"

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