Fundamental Comparisons

It is impossible to sell debt securities at virtually zero percent, when the obtaining market benchmark rate for debt is five percent.

Hence what we have going on all across the Western World right now is a fundamental illiquidity of mainstream capital.

And, certainly, that mainstream capital (paying mostly all zero percent coupons) is almost all entirely in the hands, not of private investment banks like it would have been in the past - but in the hands of government via their central banks.

In all the world, the place where
I found the most obvious,
casual and quite overt displays
of real cash wealth among the
people there - was Vienna.

Secondly, the basic and critical intrinsic reason no one is able to sell existing debt (IE not new lines at current rates or ahead of those - as will be necessary) is that governments insisted on forcing (borrowed money) capital investment into building projects and real estate (because these things are immobile and are easy to extract taxes from the 'owners' of) and stone does not produce anything, as the ancient Egyptian pharaohs eventually discovered.

Zero percent... Five percent. Zero percent. Five percent.

Well you will be soon enough looking at some percentage that it would not be advisable for me to say here right now.

And energy prices are going up.

So what happens next?

LOL

Not sure.

; )

'I - am - not - sure - that - I - can - say.'

I guess if you go down this doom-sayer thinking to what looks like its logical ending, you would have to think there is little or no point buying expensive wines - that is, 'investing' in them hoping to realize some kind of profit in the future.

But it is one thing to speculate about what a certain trajectory looks like from a present standpoint, and another thing to say that you know for sure nothing good ever happens from out of the blue.

Plenty of women still wear
opera gloves there.
In Vienna.

As our poet friend set down in verse in the immediate previous post comments section -, you could be suddenly blessed by a gift from some divine source.

That is indeed what the world needs right now. 

It does not seem, on the surface of things that human mortal leaders are capable of discovering any new solutions to literally age-old problems.

But why will you be blessed?

You are certain to be blessed.

You.

Maybe not others but just you.

Coming here you have opened a door - entered as it were, through a portal.

To another place.

Where bits of broken ceramic are all put back together with gold... (The Japanese art of kintsugi).

Shall we invite some people around and offer them the best wine - to be drunk from some kintsugi?

Shall we though...

We shall see.