Capitolism

John Mauldin writes an excellent newsletter this week ripping that siren song, “This time it’s different.” I remember in the go-go years of 1997 to 2000, friends would tell me, ‘This time stock valuations are different” or ‘The internet is completely changing the economic fabric of the world.” As it turns out, while innovations like the internet have made a significant impact on human life, they have not re-written the laws of economics. Just as the railroad, automobile, telephone, electricity, airplane and television did not alter the fundamentals of economics. It also turns out that seemingly vital bulwarks of the economic fabric, like the Federal Reserve, designed to ensure that ‘This time it’s different”, are largely failures.

As a sidenote, for those people who said at the election of President Obama that ‘This time it’s different,” perhaps the last year has been a useful education that, in fact, it’s not. Moreover, for those modern worshippers of ‘progress’ in all its manifestations, the last 10 years have made faith in that religion difficult to sustain.