{"id":33320,"date":"2018-04-11T10:50:05","date_gmt":"2018-04-11T15:50:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=33320"},"modified":"2018-04-11T10:50:05","modified_gmt":"2018-04-11T15:50:05","slug":"is-this-the-moment-of-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=33320","title":{"rendered":"Is This the Moment of Truth?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"small-12 medium-10 medium-centered columns featured-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/dweaay7e22a7h.cloudfront.net\/wp-content_3\/uploads\/2016\/10\/shutterstock_106049372-650x360.jpg\" alt=\"Is This the Moment of Truth?\" \/><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"row content-body\">\n<div class=\"small-12 medium-10 medium-centered columns\">\n<div class=\"row\">\n<div id=\"single-article-body\" class=\"small-12 medium-10 columns single-article\">\n<h3><a href=\"https:\/\/dailyreckoning.com\/is-this-the-moment-of-truth\/\">Is This the Moment of Truth?<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>One of the most famous passages in American literature occurs in Chapter 13 of Ernest Hemingway\u2019s <i>The Sun Also Rises<\/i>. It takes place in a caf\u00e9 in Pamplona, Spain during the running of the bulls.<\/p>\n<p>Bill Gorton, a friend of the protagonist, Jake Barnes, has just arrived from New York. Bill is in the caf\u00e9 talking with Mike Campbell, an upper-crust Englishman, now fallen on hard times but keeping up appearances.<\/p>\n<p>In the course of telling a story about his tailor, Mike casually mentions his bankruptcy. Here\u2019s the dialogue:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow did you go bankrupt?\u201d Bill asked.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTwo ways,\u201d Mike said. \u201cGradually and then suddenly.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat brought it on?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFriends,\u201d said Mike. \u201cI had a lot of friends. False friends. Then I had creditors, too. Probably had more creditors than anybody in England.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Mike admits to his own helplessness; his descent into bankruptcy was apparently totally beyond his control. This reflects upon his lack of control with regards not only to his business matters, but to his life in general.<\/p>\n<p>You\u2019ve probably seen variations of the part of the passage that says, \u201cGradually and then suddenly.\u201d It\u2019s often paraphrased or misquoted as, \u201cslowly at first, and then quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The short version of the quote is offered as a warning that a slow, steady accumulation of debt with no particular plan for repayment can continue longer than expected, and then suddenly descend into a full-blown financial distress scenario and a rapid end-state of collapse.<\/p>\n<p class=\"centered no-bottom-padding\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"centered aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/agorafinancialwebsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/image17-2.png\" alt=\"PLACEHOLDER\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"centered\"><i>Ernest Hemingway was not only a Nobel-Prize winning author, but was an astute observer of human nature and a fine armchair economist. His description of going bankrupt in Chapter 13 of The Sun Also Rises is a pitch-perfect narrative of how the United States is now barreling toward a crisis of confidence in the dollar.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is This the Moment of Truth? One of the most famous passages in American literature occurs in Chapter 13 of Ernest Hemingway\u2019s The Sun Also Rises. It takes place in a caf\u00e9 in Pamplona, Spain during the running of the bulls. Bill Gorton, a friend of the protagonist, Jake Barnes, has just arrived from New [&hellip;]<\/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":[1361,11023,13599,19761,839,5482],"class_list":["post-33320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-bankruptcy","tag-daily-reckoning","tag-james-rickards","tag-moment-of-truth","tag-us-dollar","tag-world-reserve-currency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33320","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=33320"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33321,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33320\/revisions\/33321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}