More haunting even than the terrified screams of lambs being led was the silence that followed their slaughter.
Such was the searing pain of relentless recollection for FBI agent Clarice Starling, the tortured lead played to Oscar perfection by Jodie Foster. In an agonizingly whispered scene that has forever left its imprint on the minds of horrified audiences, we hear the bleating of Starling’s long-dead tormentors.
Clarice’s hushed revelations to Hannibal reveal a desperate act by her young orphaned self. Unable to bear the horror, she’s running away from the bloodbath of spring lambs being slaughtered and her cousin’s sheep ranch. Desperate to do something, anything, she struggles to drive them from their pens to freedom: “I tried to free them…I opened the gate of their pen – but they wouldn’t run. They just stood there confused. They wouldn’t run…”
A recent, reluctant re-viewing of the film, only the third in history to win the “Big Five” Oscars, Best Picture, Actor, Actress, Director and Screenplay, fed fresh food for thought. The image of captives rejecting their freedom brought to mind another flock of corralled and stunned lambs — bond market investors. They too have been given the opportunity to escape their fate. But so many choose instead to stay. Such is the reality of a world devoid of options, with time ticking ruthlessly by.
Against the cynical backdrop of bulls and bears manipulating data to plead their case, Salient Partners’ Ben Hunt’s insights stand out for their indisputability. In his latest missive he points to one chart that’s incapable of being “fudged,” to borrow his term – that of U.S. household net worth over time vis-à-vis U.S. nominal gross domestic product. Suffice it to say we’re farther off trend than we were even during the dotcom and housing manias.
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