“The commercial world is very frequently put into confusion by the bankruptcy of merchants that assumed the splendour of wealth, only to obtain the privilege of trading with the stock of other men, and of contracting debts which nothing but lucky casualties could enable them to pay; till after having supported their appearance a while by tumultuary magnificence of boundless traffic, they sink at once, and drag down into poverty those whom their equipages had induced to trust them.”

Samuel Johnson, Rambler #189, January 7, 1752

It is a good thing that modern economics has proven, through a series of unstated and wildly unnatural assumptions, that these things as described by Samuel Johnson above cannot happen anymore, the gods of the market being selfless and possessed of perfectly rational self-interest, supported by their higher intellects and superior character.

Dr. Johnson might respond, as he did when considering Bishop Berkley’s ‘ingenious sophistry to prove the nonexistence of matter,’ by stepping outside and kicking a stone quite soundly saying, ‘I refute it thus!’  Or in this case, instead of a stone, he might choose to plant one on the posterior of some smarmy white collar business cheat, his hands filled with other people’s money, and refute such nonsense once again.

It is almost comical to see a short lived ball of dust gather itself up, and throw a puffball of a challenge into the vastness of the universe. The lack of self awareness of the self-obsessed is amazing.

Speaking of immaterial and manufactured nonsense, there is quite a bit of it swirling around the precious metals this week.  Commentators are inventing strawmen arguments that, as far as I can tell, never existed. One such example is the assertion that precious metals crowd held a consensus that the passage of the Swiss referendum was a sure thing. And then these fellows use that canard to mock the metals crowd gullibility, as a sure sign of their deficiency of both intelligence and character.