Working It Through

"It's a total and complete disaster and the crisis we had is just the appetizer to the big total breakdown of financial markets and of governments in five or 10 years time when the whole system goes bust. The future will be a total disaster, with a collapse of our capitalistic system as we know it today, wars, massive government debt defaults and the impoverishment of large segments of Western society. Unless the system is cleaned out of losses, the way communism collapsed, capitalism will collapse. The best way to deal with any economic problem is to let the market work it through."
Marc Faber

Who Shot The Monkey?

The news was filled last week with stories surrounding the controversial cartoon in the New York Post. The cartoon depicted two police shooting a monkey and stating that someone else will need to write the next stimulus bill. Several came forward claiming "racism" was the motivation for the cartoon and that it was a direct reference to President Obama. My take is that I have to think that racism was not the motive, but the cartoon does imply a strong reference.

The real question is "is racism alive and well in the U.S.?". I believe it is, but it now resides below the surface for political correctness reasons. Following the election, the "geologist in me" couldn't help but notice an interesting pattern on the election results map. The correlation between the "civil war states" and the election results are quite interesting. As times get tougher, I predict that race relations will become more strained.