Rule – of Law

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On a Friday the 13th when the sky hangs grey over what should be Spring, the world appears on the edge of catastrophe. The Trump debacle descends into the kind of madness that Shakespeare made a living out of, careening into the end of the second act when the stage goes dark.

Hollywood, for its part, depicted days like this as slasher movies, their idea of scary. There was never a cop to be found as people traipsed through a hellscape, dark and throbbing in surround sound.  There was no order, only survival – for a few.

Yet here we are, waiting for something. And into it comes James Comey’s book, “A Higher Loyalty.”  The former top cop appears to doing what we have so far been unable to do ourselves, coming in to rescue us all. But it’s still scary, and more in the Shakespearean way, because there is something bigger than the players on the scene strutting and fretting. There is, there has to be, some kind of morality made real.

There has to be law – either the law of humankind of morality.

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The Rats Know

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Like all mariner tales, the story slips in like a schooner on a foggy, becalmed day. Rats, the story goes, might leap off the lines that held a boat fast to the dock if they knew the next voyage was doomed. And rats, as creatures of the bilge, always knew. When you see them on the lines do not sign on to that ship for she is bound for Davy Jones’ locker.

People today are rarely as superstitious as ancient sailors. But when you have far too many hours adrift at sea with no winds, like this Congress, the mind does wander. A change of leadership isn’t always up to the voters, as it were, but up to the crew and their desire to not miss the message of the rats.

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Social Media Should be Boring

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It’s still unraveling, but the story of facebook and data sharing has captured the attention of its users and Wall Street alike. It seems that personal data was shared in many ways which violated facebook’s own policies and privacy laws in some states and nations.

Step back for a minute, however, and we can all see how much worse the problem is. From the Clinton hacked email scandal through this to even more revelations to come, it is very clear that every single thing online has to be treated as if it is public knowledge. There is no privacy.

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Barometer

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The weather is terrible, and I feel lousy.  Perhaps you do, too.  Here’s a piece on a possible reason why, from ten years ago.

On a grey and dreary day, nearly everyone is running a bit low. You can see it in people’s faces – they’d rather snuggle under a blanket with the cats up close and warm. Some of us, however, are even more sensitive to the weather than that. We are the human barometers.

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Risk and Reward

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The basis of any capitalist or free market system is risk analysis. Every investment, whether in time or capital or short-term inventory is made based on the potential reward for success and the potential risk of failure. Because these events happen in the future, confidence or anxiety often play a large role in the process.

Generally speaking, it’s all about the availability of the critical resource being invested. People with nothing left to lose often put their time into a project because their time is all they have. Capital markets flush with cash are often looking for places that will give them a big return. Yet in all of these cases, emotions eventually become important.

Lately, nerves are raw. Investment? You gotta be kidding.

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