How about we review Cipollla’s Five Rules of Human Stupidity?
One: Everyone always and inevitably underestimates the number of stupid people in circulation.
Two: The probability that a person is stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.
Three: A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or group of people when he or she does not benefit and may even suffer losses.
Four: Non-stupid people always underestimate the destructive power of stupid individuals.
Five: A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.
Rumors persist on Wall Street for a second day, natch, for a day and a bit cause it’s early yet. But the rumors are several institutional investors, read hedge funds or investment banks like Morgan or Goldman, are desperate to unload large naked shorts on oil futures.
WTI has risen from $58 to $77 in less than 30 days. Brent has spiked in a similar fashion. Urals Crude is trading between $57-$65, higher than just a few weeks ago when it traded between $45-$50.
Today is the day I cease underestimating just how stupid, stupid can get. It’s like “killing the chicken to scare the monkeys” levels of stupid have taken over.
edwin
In response to the 2008 crash, I believe that it was Greenspan who said “Nobody could have seen it coming.”
To make a long story short – we were self employed at the time. By the time of the crash of 2008 we had sold everything and had managed to go from around 400k in debt to enough to retire poor. The main reason was fear of a crash and lack of government understanding. Combined with health issues the path forward was easy. We ended up retiring poor at age 50. If the experts controlling the economy knew less than we did, it was time to get out of the game as much as possible.
But the rumors are several institutional investors, read hedge funds or investment banks like Morgan or Goldman, are desperate to unload large naked shorts on oil futures.
Corollary: Never underestimate just how stupid someone can be – especially someone who is being paid to be stupid.
Sean Paul Kelley
@Edwin: I can remain retarded longer than anyone can stay logical, is that what you mean? (I jest, obviously.) I have a low threshold BS detector, but sometimes teh (sic) stupid flies under my radar and it shocks me when I see it. I’m fallible.
different clue
I know nothing about finance or high-level moneyconomics. But I will claim I expected something real bad to happen a little before the actual 2008 crash. I can’t prove that. But I will claim it anyway.
Here is the basis for that claim. I used to watch CSPAN back in those days. One fine day I happened to tune in when Fed Chair Bernanke was testifying to Congress. I can’t remember the details, but I remember a Congressperson asking about some sort of danger of bad things and whether things were under control or not. I saw Bernanke almost crack and break ( voice/otherwise) for a second or so before he regained his appearance of composure and assure Congress that the Fed had everything under control and only good things were happening. I knew that Bernanke considered himself smarter than any 500-or-so Combined Representatives so it was not them that he was scared of. I got the strong feeling that Bernanke saw something very big and very bad in the far distance and moving toward us fast and hard.
So just based on his visible second of fear-behavior, I figured something real bad was going to happen. Of course I did not know what it was or would be.
Sean Paul Kelley
@different clue: I bet dollars to donuts that was his testimony to Congress on July 15, 2008, during his legally mandated semiannual testimony to Congress. I remember it well. Ian and I knew the fix was in long before this testimony, but I recall being viscerally shaken by his gaffe. I’d had an inkling of how bad it was going to be, but Bernanke had a tell and it was devastasting.
different clue
As I watch the video I am about to offer here, I wonder if ” building the world’s largest data center” in Texas also counts as stupid. I am offering it here because I think that it may be stupid to drop a mega-giga electricity-sucker into a state with an already strained power grid and with accelerating Global Heating Climate D’chaos Decay in progress.
“Something BIG Just Happened In Texas And It’s SCARY”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzUpTkYupHE
Separately, while I don’t know about High Finance or High Moneyconomics, I think I know something about something. And I noticed something interesting during the bursting into open view of the Bernie Madoff ponzi scandal. .. . the one where it was learned that Bernie had “Madoff” with the money. With all those billions of dollars that Bernie was able to steal, he wasn’t able to suck one single sardine through the metal of one single can of my cans of sardines. I think there is a broader lesson in that somewhere.
ProNewerDeal
Sean Paul, could you give an update on what happened at Feb month end with the silver market? You were describing in an earlier post that the UK & US markets did not have enough of the actual metal in their vault/warehouse to support the transactions if buyers took delivery. You also mentioned that the silver price on Asian markets were higher than the UK/US marets.
Sean Paul Kelley
@ProNewerDeal: it was kind of anti-climactic. Silver did break through resistance at $92 to close on the day at $94.50. But volume wasn’t enough to make it a breakout. It wasn’t a blowoff either. The vaults at the Comex as of February 27 contained 88.4 million oz of deliverable silver. Lots of March open interest contracts got rolled into April. Eligible silver is leaving the vaults at an unsustsainable rate. Prices of silver at SHFE, Shanghai and SEBI, India, Mumbai I think, are no longer marking to Comex and LMBA-London Bullion Markets Assoc. SEBI is marking to domestic demand. Silver trades at SEBI with about an $8 premium to Comex. SHFE is trading closer to $12 above Comex spot. There is enormous short pressure on silver, but it’s Comex short paper pressure. The shorts have been keel-hauled out of the SHFE by Chinese regulators. Who knew Chi-coms were better capitalists and free marketers than the USA? That’s about all I got.
Mark Level
My first disagreement with you all day, SPK– viz Cipolla’s 2nd rule:
“Two: The probability that a person is stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.” Nope, I can do a partial list of qualities that will make someone stupider:
1. Being rich, growing up privileged, having servants. As Russel Dobular noted of his time as a horse-carriage driver in NYC, the most stupid and obnoxious people who rode his carriages were richie rich folks, couldn’t understand his jokes, made absurd suggestions and demands, clueless as to how the hoi-polloi live, & what is permissible to ask/demand of subordinates.
2. Extended time in school, graduate school level (okay I have an MLIS, would never waste the time needed for a PhD). These people are overly abstract and lack common sense and grounding. They are the kind of people who are okay with Stalin’s formulation, “The death of one person is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.” (Not that Stalin wasn’t smart as hell in political betrayals and survival at the same time.) Some of the dumbest, most clueless dipshits I have ever known in my life had a fake degree, EDD. We had a former superintendent that worked for years for Xerox, got a fake EDD and then attended the Brod Institute, learned how to crush teachers’ unions and fuck the little people over. When we organized and started taking over the school board by precinct walking, he knew his days were numbered and left. He couldn’t have taught a child to tie their shoes if his life depended on it.
3. The beautiful or striking-looking. They’re not all dumb, but a high percentage are. When everybody wants to bang you or fall at your feet, you can succeed without even trying, the world is your oyster (until you get old and your looks go); see as a Corollary, Celebrities. Johnny Depp and Amber Heard destroy their relationship and overshare with the whole world, both look like shit while imagining they made the other look worse. (I only know about this from friends who babbled in front of me, I don’t deliberately spend time on this. I do watch Celebs from a sociological view for laughs, to a limited extent.)
4. The dogmatic and religious fanatics. “Everything I need to know is in this here Bible Book, I’m agonna play with some Serpents now while I wait for the Rapture.” Now, there are very intelligent Mystics and Shamans (& Sha-wimmens) but these folks know how to tap into the inner and learn from both instinct and experience. And they have a bullshit-meter, as indispensable for the working mystic, solitary or in groups, as a Towel is when your planet’s facing destruction and you have to flee to an Escape ship.
I’m certain there’s more, but 4 is a nice square foundation to start on.
Friedrich Schiller gave us the last word on stupidity long ago, “Against stupidity, the gods contend in vain.”
Sean Paul Kelley
@Mark Level: as Kenney Rogers sang, “you gotta know when to hold ’em, and know when to fold ’em.”
I know when to walk away. 😉
Mark Level
We all learn from our mistakes, I often make ’em myself. The Rose-colored glasses is my biggest flaw. I have a Libra Sun trine a Gemini Moon (the former is warm and tolerant, the latter cold and a bit calculating, hyper-observant in a neutral way) people fascinate me and I often overestimate people’s goodness during early acquaintance. I agree with 1, 3, 4 & 5. 4 out of 5 for Cipolla isn’t bad. 5 is truly brilliant and consonant with Schiller.
Watch out for drunks, druggies, psychopaths and the stupid!! The charismatic can be abusive too, cult leaders and that type. Super-smart, but manipulative and always with a personal agenda.
different clue
Is crazy considered to be a form of stupid? Or is crazy considered a whole other force and attribute, sometimes dangerous in its own right? Especially when crazy people or groups or movements get their hands on ” the beautiful shiny red button . . . the jolly CANNNDY-like button . . . ”
I have written comments now and then, here and there, about the tens of millions of Armageddonite Rapturaniacs who support bringing the End of the World about as fast as possible, to get Jesus to come again and establish His Righteous Rule for a thousand years. I suppose people think I was being metaphorical or figurative or whatever.
A sensible Leftist whose videos I sometimes watch, named Parkrose Permaculture, recently posted this video about the role of Rapturaniacs in command authority and their upcoming role in this Iran War deal.
” Doomsday Cult: MAGA Military Commanders say Iran war is “God’s plan to bring about The End Times”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2pJur_ZXF4&t=101s
she has links to things related to this below the video itself.
And here is an article about this from Huffpost.
” Troops Being Told To Prepare for ‘Armageddon’ In Iran ”
https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1rjueim/troops_being_told_to_prepare_for_armageddon_in/
different clue
News of the MAGA Book of Revelation DeathCult within the US Military is spreading.
“US Troops Told War on Iran is ‘All Part of God’s Divine Plan’, Watchdog Reports More Than 200 Complaints ”
https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1rk7kpg/us_troops_told_war_on_iran_is_all_part_of_gods/
Mark Level
DC, crazy and stupid often go hand in hand. Stupid is bad, damaging, crazy is all-consuming and ultimately fatal. But then life is eventually fatal to all, the crazed just get onto a faster timeline.
Stirling Newberry
All people are idiots, some just know it. Everyone underestimates just how idiotic people are.
different clue
@Mark Level,
Thank you for the level headed reply.
Here is a joke I remember about the difference between “stupid” and “crazy” at least in some cases.
Some guy got a flat tire right next to a mental hospital. He had his car jacked up and the wheel off. Spare wheel on. Just when he was about put back on the lug nuts he accidentally shoved over sideways the hubcap he was keeping them in. They fell into a bottomless mud puddle.
A resident of the mental hospital was watching this all and upon realizing the driver’s helpless despair over the lost lug nuts he said: ” Why don’t you take one lug nut off of each other wheel and fasten the spare wheel into place with the 3 lug nuts? Then you can get to a mechanic or somewhere and buy more lug nuts.
The driver said ” Brilliant! But how can a resident of this mental hospital come up with such a good plan?”
The resident said: ” I may be crazy, but I am not stupid.”
different clue
I remember once reading somewhere about the Chinese proverb ” kill the chicken to scare the monkey”. So I looked it up. ” Kill the chicken to scare the monkey ”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_the_chicken_to_scare_the_monkey
That seems not necessarily stupid to me. It does seem mean and nasty and despotic. But not inherently stupid. Now, if the Wall Streeters and other Money Guys are killing the monkey to scare the chicken, that would seem pretty stupid.
Jorge
My favorite bit of lore from the Madoff episode: “we knew he was cheating, but we thought he was cheating someone else, not us”.
different clue
Here is a video called: ” How Intelligent People Deal with Stupid People — Schopenhauer”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TspV1odsXo
I have only watched the first couple of minutes but it seems promising.