{"id":387,"date":"2014-10-21T23:46:52","date_gmt":"2014-10-21T23:46:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=387"},"modified":"2014-10-21T23:46:52","modified_gmt":"2014-10-21T23:46:52","slug":"oftwominds-charles-hugh-smith-in-uncharted-waters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=387","title":{"rendered":"oftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith: In Uncharted Waters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/charleshughsmith.blogspot.ca\/2014\/10\/in-uncharted-waters.html\">ftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith: In Uncharted Waters<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"display: inline; height: 0px; overflow-x: visible; overflow-y: visible; padding: 1px 0px 1px 0px; margin: 0px;\"><span style=\"font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; padding: 0px; margin: 0px;\"><i style=\"background-color: white; padding: 0px; margin: 0px;\">What I see as extremes that must necessarily end badly, others see as mere extensions of recently successful policies and trends.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<div style=\"background-color: white; padding: 0px; margin: 0px;\"><b style=\"padding: 0px; margin: 0px;\"><span style=\"font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; padding: 0px; margin: 0px;\"><br style=\"padding: 0px; margin: 0px;\" \/><\/span><\/b><span style=\"font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; padding: 0px; margin: 0px;\"><b style=\"padding: 0px; margin: 0px;\">A long-time reader recently chastised me for using too many\u00a0<i style=\"padding: 0px; margin: 0px;\">maybe&#8217;s<\/i>\u00a0in my forecasts.<\/b>\u00a0The criticism is valid, as &#8220;on the other hand&#8221; slips all too easily from qualifying a position to rinsing it of meaning.<\/span><\/div>\n<p><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; line-height: 21px; color: #000000;\"><\/span><b style=\"padding: 0px; margin: 0px;\"><br \/>\nThat said, given that we&#8217;re in uncharted waters,\u00a0<i style=\"padding: 0px; margin: 0px;\">maybe&#8217;s<\/i>\u00a0become prudent and certainty becomes extremely dangerous.<\/b>\u00a0I have long held that the financial policy extremes that are now considered normal are unprecedented in the modern era: extremes in debt, leverage, risk, complexity and willful obfuscation of these extremes.<span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; line-height: 21px; color: #000000;\"><\/span><\/p>\n<div style=\"background-color: white; padding: 0px; margin: 0px;\"><span style=\"font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; padding: 0px; margin: 0px;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<div style=\"background-color: white; padding: 0px; margin: 0px;\"><span style=\"font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; padding: 0px; margin: 0px;\"><b style=\"padding: 0px; margin: 0px;\">Consider the extent to which sky-high asset valuations and present-day &#8220;prosperity&#8221; depend on extremes of leverage:<\/b>\u00a0autos purchased with no money down, homes purchased with 3.5% down payments and FHA loans, stocks bought on margin, stock buybacks funded by loans, student loans issued with zero collateral, and so on&#8211;an inverted pyramid of &#8220;prosperity&#8221; resting precariously on a tiny base of actual collateral.<\/span><\/div>\n<div style=\"background-color: white; padding: 0px; margin: 0px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"background-color: white; padding: 0px; margin: 0px;\">&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith: In Uncharted Waters. What I see as extremes that must necessarily end badly, others see as mere extensions of recently successful policies and trends. A long-time reader recently chastised me for using too many\u00a0maybe&#8217;s\u00a0in my forecasts.\u00a0The criticism is valid, as &#8220;on the other hand&#8221; slips all too easily from qualifying a position [&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":[38,127,244,289,481,587,812],"class_list":["post-387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-asset-valuation","tag-charles-hugh-smith","tag-economics-2","tag-extropolation","tag-leverage","tag-of-two-minds","tag-trends"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387","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=387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}