12 October 2009

Mourning Rally ~ The other gold rally message

The source of much of the dissonance the gold price rise engenders.

Rather, I think that in my search for meaning, the rallying Gold price signifies more monumental failures at multiple levels for society, in politics, for nations, for our individual and collective ability to measure our wants and desires with our means. So despite my skeptical exoskeleton about most things (financial innovation perhaps first and foremost), the aforementioned bothers me intensely, for I am, at heart, both an idealist, and a closet optimist about humanity, foolish as it may be, and perhaps as paradoxical as Cliff Asnsses' views on Healthcare. Sustained Gold rally lances this optimism, helps lay bare the falsity of the veneer of prosperity and the fragility of its lattice during these last two-and-a-half decades, revealing the financial pus inside. This is after-the-fact, market reactive stuff and comes as no surprise to a skeptic, but one must push this view from the minds eye to function day-to-day without self-inflicting wounds. And what be goldbugs culpability? They resemble anarchists: strongly motivated to be on the vanguard for a variety reasons, but ultimately selfish and probably mistaken for apocalyptic systemic implosion remains a tail event. In this view , gold remains "a trade", and not an end to itself. More irksome, a bet on Gold may be "right", but it - betting as it does upon the acceleration of pus manufacture, feels (to me) somehow uncivic-minded - a wasteful employment of intellectual energy that might be set upon making what is systemically and socially un-well, better. I do not hate them for this, but am, merely saddened that the sum of prior decisions taken (and not taken) have brought us here.

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