Faustian Weblog

What I have learned about the market is this. On average most days are down – around 80% of the time. However, in the aggregate the market is up – year over year. It’s the fact that most of the days are down days that one gets the overall sense that it is headed down. The truth be known, I’ll bet that 90% of the gain can be attributed to less than 5% of the days.

The Mac is back. I always wonder if the bad times are augured in by the election of heroes to the highest office. Chamberlain and Petain come to mind. We sleep better knowing that senile old fools, once revered for their bravery, give us the illusion of keeping the barbarians at bay. For times are truly testy, as our society becomes ever more insular and ever more comfortable in a life behind the screen; pixilated into submission. Today, we have to reach ever farther for our sustenance and our supplies. Dependent on transnational companies and armies of mercenaries to provision us in the accouterments of our entertainment, we slip into the Faustian abyss of the quite comfort of a Bose speaker.

I have always found the persona of Ben Bernanke rather interesting. Here is a man in charge of regulating the pyramid of greed and fear who can participate in neither of these emotions. Rather he must portray himself as the ultimate disinterested puppet master, the mysterious watchmaker behind the valuations of our Faustian economy.

The DOW is at 12,265.13 tonight – an arbitrary number indeed. It was down today nearly 370 points. So if your position was large, you are a much poorer man (or women) for investing your belief in this system of Faustian weights and measures. It would be just as arbitrary in the opposite direction, but at least you would feel that much richer. Clearly, if there is but one man, one ascetic, or one magus of sorts who could make sense of all this by turning the needed dials and levers to make the rest of us sleep at night: Ben (not Bin) is the person for the job.