Introduction
“He is funnier than you are.”
~David
Einhorn, Greenlight Capital, on Dave Barry’s Year in Review
Every December, I write a
survey trying to capture the year’s prevailing themes. I appear to have stiff
competition—the likes of Dave Barry on one extreme1 and on the
other, Pornhub’s marvelous annual climax that probes deeply personal
preferences in the world’s favorite pastime.2 (I know when I’m
licked.) My efforts began as a few paragraphs discussing the markets on Doug
Noland’s bear chat board and monotonically expanded to a tome covering the orb
we call Earth. It posts at Peak Prosperity, reposts at ZeroHedge,
and then fans out from there. Bearishness and right-leaning libertarianism
shine through as I spelunk the Internet for human folly to couch in snarky
prose while trying to avoid the “expensive laugh” (too much setup).3 I
rely on quotes to let others do the intellectual heavy lifting.
“Consider adding more of your
own thinking and judgment to the mix . . . most folks are familiar with general
facts but are unable to process them into a coherent and actionable framework.”
~Tony
Deden, founder of Edelweiss Holdings, on his second read through my 2016 Year
in Review
“Just the facts, ma’am.”
~Joe
Friday
By October, I have usually
accrued 500 single-spaced pages of notes, quotes, and anecdotes. Fresh ideas
occasionally emerge, but most of my distillation is an intellectual recycling
program relying heavily on fair use laws.4 I often suffer from
pareidolia—random images or sounds perceived as significant. Regarding the
extent that self-serving men and women of wealth do sneaky crap, I am an
out-of-the-closet conspiracy theorist. If you think conspiracies do not exist,
then you are a card-carrying idiot. Currently, locating the increasingly fuzzy
fact–fiction interfaces is nearly impossible thanks to the post-election
bewitching of 50 percent of the populace.
“The best ideas come as
jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.”
~David
Ogilvy, marketing expert
You might be asking, “What’s
with the title, Dave? My 401K is doing great, and I own a few Bitcoin!” Yes,
indeed: your 401K fiddled its way to new highs day after day, but this too
shall pass—it always does—and not without some turbulence. This year was indeed
a tough one to survey. As many peer through beer goggles at intoxicatingly rising
markets, I kept seeing dead people (Figure 1).
“We seem to be living in the
riskiest moment of our lives, and yet the stock market seems to be napping: I
admit to not understanding it.”
~Richard
Thaler, winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Economics
Figure
1. An original by CNBC's Jeff Macke, chartist and artist extraordinaire.
A
poem for Dave's Year In Review
The
bubble in everything grew
This
nut from Cornell
Say's
we're heading for hell
As I
look at the data…#MeToo
~@TheLimerickKing
Some will notice that in
decidedly political sections, the term “progressives” is used pejoratively.
Their behavior has become nearly incomprehensible to me. My almost complete
neglect of the right wing loonies may reflect some bias, but politically, they
have taken a knee. They have become irrelevant. Free speech is a recurring
theme, introducing interesting paradoxes for employee–employer relationships.
Some say I have no filter.
They obviously have no clue what I want to say. In case my
hints are too subtle, I offer the following:
I sit in front of a computer
16 hours a day, at least three of which are dedicated to non-chemistry
pursuits. I’m a huge fan of Adam Taggart and Chris Martenson (Peak
Prosperity), Tony Greer (TG Macro), Doug Noland (Credit Bubble Bulletin),
Grant Williams (Real Vision and TTMYGH), Raoul Pal (Real Vision),
Bill Fleckenstein (Fleckenstein Capital), James Grant (Grant’s Interest Rate
Observer), and Campus Reform—but there are so many more. ZeroHedge is
by far my preferred consolidator of news. Twitter is a window to the world if
managed correctly. Good luck with that. And don’t forget it’s
public! Everything needs an open mind, discerning eye, and a coarse-frit
filter.
“You are given a ticket to
the freak show. When you’re born in America, you are given a front row seat,
and some of us get to sit there with notebooks.”
~George
Carlin, comedian
Footnotes appear as
superscripts with hyperlinks in the “Links” section. The whole beast can be
downloaded as a single PDF xxhere or viewed in parts—the sections
are reasonably self-contained—via the linked contents as follows:
Part 1
·
Sources
·
Contents
·
Economy
·
Gold
·
Bitcoin
·
Pensions
·
Bonds
·
Banks
·
The Fed
·
Europe
·
China
Part 2
·
Sports
·
Antifa
·
Clintons
·
Media
·
Trump
·
Books
(Read the rest
at link below – this is long)
Of course, the war in Syria is a bloodbath that has left an
estimated 500,000 dead310 and millions displaced into Turkey
and Europe. The demonization of Assad continued to focus on gas attacks that
nobody seems to believe happened. None of this makes sense to me. None.
Given its length, we've had to break this report in half so as not
to crash your browser. Click here to read Part 2 of
David Collum's 2017 Year in Review, available free to
all readers.
