Fortunately for us, when our immune system identifies a cancer cell, the cancer cell can't demand to be saved by threatening to kill the entire system. You see the irony here, of course; the cancer cell will destroy the entire organism/system if it is spared, so its threat to bring down the entire system if it is eradicated is pure self-serving artifice.

This is a precise analogy for the "too big to fail" banks in the U.S. and the Eurozone: once again we are hearing the heavy-breathing threats that a systemic bank failure would destroy civilization. The truth is that preserving the cancerous banking system will inevitably bring down the entire system, so the only way to preserve the global economy is to eliminate the financial cancer now, before it triggers systemic collapse.

The best way to understand this is to consider the economy as a system. All sustainable, stable systems require a free flow of information: multiple pathways of communication, experimentation/mutation and transparent feedback. This essential activity generates the low-intensity instability of volatility and fluctuation.

A system which suppresses information and the low-level instability of dissent and negative feedback thus suppresses the information the system needs to remain stable. Suppressing dissent, facts, transparency and feedback inevitably destabilizes the system. It is ironic, isn't it, that the suppression of dissent, facts and transparency creates the surface illusion of stability, but it is only a facade. Beneath the surface, the lack of information and low-level fluctuation/volatility builds up system instability which is suddenly released as non-linear, chaotic volatility and collapse.

What Europe, the U.S., China and Japan have now are leaderships that substitute lies for fact, obfuscation for transparency, artifice for feedback and propaganda for communication. The essential negative feedback of dissent has been choked off, leaving only self-reinforcing positive feedback loops in the system, feedback that inevitably leads to runaway collapse.

In a financial example, when the negative feedback of short positions is banned, then there are no buyers left when the selling begins. The selling cascades, triggering more selling, which then feeds more selling until the bid disappears entirely.

In Europe, the political and financial Elite is preserving the Status Quo with artifice and lies. This can only lead to non-linear systemic collapse. Beneath the surface, they are manipulating, intervening, propping and pumping, but preserving a terminally unstable system with more lies and intervention is impossible.

The only question left is how much longer the system can wobble unsteadily before it finally collapses in a heap of depreciating euros.


My "On the Edge" interview with Max Keiser is now online. Fortunately for me, Max keeps the ball rolling and succinctly summarizes my rambling. Good fun in Paris--thank you, Max and Stacy, for the opportunity to spend some time with you.

If this recession strikes you as different from previous downturns, you might be interested in my new book An Unconventional Guide to Investing in Troubled Times (print edition) or Kindle ebook format. You can read the ebook on any computer, smart phone, iPad, etc. Click here for links to Kindle apps and Chapter One. The solution in one word: Localism.

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