{"id":13782,"date":"2015-10-24T18:17:59","date_gmt":"2015-10-24T23:17:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=13782"},"modified":"2015-10-24T18:17:59","modified_gmt":"2015-10-24T23:17:59","slug":"hobsons-choice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=13782","title":{"rendered":"Hobson’s Choice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hobson’s Choice<\/a><\/h3>\n

More than two months have passed since the August \u201cflash crash.\u201d Fragilities illuminated during that bout of market turmoil still reverberate. Sure, global markets have rallied back strongly. Bullish news, analysis and sentiment have followed suit, as they do. The poor bears have again been bullied into submission, as the punchy bulls have somehow become further emboldened. The optimists are even more deeply convinced of U.S., Chinese and global resilience (the 2008 crisis \u201c100-year flood\u201d view). Fears of China, EM and global tumult were way overblown, they now contend. As anticipated, global officials remain in full control. All is rosy again, except for the fact that global central bankers behave as if they\u2019re utterly terrified of something.<\/p>\n

The way I see it, underlying system fragility has become so acute that central bankers are convinced that they must now forcefully (\u201cshock and awe,\u201d \u201cbeat expectations,\u201d etc.) react to any fledgling market \u201crisk off\u201d dynamic. Risk aversion and de-leveraging must not gather momentum. If fragilities are not thwarted early, they could easily unfold into something difficult to control. Such an outcome would risk a break in market confidence that central banks have everything well under control \u2013 faith that is now fully embedded in the pricing and structure for tens of Trillions of securities and hundreds of Trillions of associated derivatives \u2013 everywhere. With options at this point limited, the so-called \u201crisk management\u201d approach dictates that central banks err on the side of using their limited armaments forcibly and preemptively.<\/p>\n

With today\u2019s extraordinary global backdrop in mind, I\u2019m this week noting a few definitions of \u201cHobson\u2019s Choice\u201d:<\/p>\n

\u201cAn apparently free choice that actually offers no alternative.\u201d (The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms)<\/p>\n

\u201cA situation in which it seems that you can choose between different things or actions, but there is really only one thing that you can take or do.\u201d (Cambridge Idioms Dictionary)<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hobson’s Choice More than two months have passed since the August \u201cflash crash.\u201d Fragilities illuminated during that bout of market turmoil still reverberate. Sure, global markets have rallied back strongly. Bullish news, analysis and sentiment have followed suit, as they do. The poor bears have again been bullied into submission, as the punchy bulls have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4794,4793,124,7756,1668,4715,368,10183,690,6700],"class_list":["post-13782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-bear","tag-bull","tag-central-banks","tag-credit-bubble-bulletin","tag-derivatives","tag-flash-crash","tag-global-markets","tag-hobsrons-choice","tag-risk","tag-securities"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13782"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13782\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13783,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13782\/revisions\/13783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}