The action of the stock market recently has been emotionally draining, perverse and unpredictable. On the day of this writing, it appears to be spent. But there is no end to bad news; never an end to fear; and always there is forced selling.

As Keynes said: the irrationality of the market will always outlast your liquidity. But is this market irrational? It is certainly volatile. So much so, that even expert traders cannot bear too much more of it. But irrational?

Things probably could hardly be worse. At the very moment when our economy and financial structure are at their worst and faltering, we have men in charge who are small-minded, class-oriented, biased toward banking and blind to the real historic threats.

The American economy has been financialized. We no longer manufacture desirable things. Innovation and imagination have been focussed on abstract financial instruments and credit and banking deals. We are an economy of paper–instruments of credit, equities, derivatives and more arcane bundles of risk and investment.

When a nation is financialized and drowning in debt, neither monetary nor fiscal policy can effectively and immediately reverse the depressing momentum. The stock market reflects this. It reflects fear, especially of deep deflation; misguided manipulation; and a sense of the relative worthlessness of that which people previously considered wealth. Paper is not wealth, even when it represents currency. Everything has been sucked dry of value. This is what the market activity reflects.

– Raphael O’Suna, Haiku