"When misguided public opinion honors what is despicable and despises what is honorable, punishes virtue and rewards vice, encourages what is harmful and discourages what is useful, applauds falsehood and smothers truth under indifference or insult, a nation turns its back on progress and can be restored only by the terrible lessons of catastrophe." … Frederic Bastiat


Evil talks about tolerance only when it’s weak. When it gains the upper hand, its vanity always requires the destruction of the good and the innocent, because the example of good and innocent lives is an ongoing witness against it. So it always has been. So it always will be. And America has no special immunity to becoming an enemy of its own founding beliefs about human freedom, human dignity, the limited power of the state, and the sovereignty of God. – Archbishop Chaput

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Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Investors' Attitude: "What? Me Worry? Why?"

Given all that is transpiring across our global economic and financial system, the degree of utter complacency in the US equity markets is astonishing. Looking at the Complacency Index, my name for the Volatility Index or the VIX, one would think that there is hardly a care in the world.

All of this has a somewhat surreal feeling to me. It is almost as if the entire investing community is in a state of denial. It seems to believe that the "all powerful demi-gods" aka, the Central Bankers and monetary officials, are able to suspend the impact of excessive leveraging and exorbitant indebtedness.

"Yeah, things are not very good right now, but no worries. If things were to go from bad to worse, the officials will throw open the bar and we can all think from the freshly spiked punch bowl. Go back to sleep and wake me if there is really a crisis".

I don't know whether to laugh at such an attitude or weep that we have degenerated into this.