they're going to have to wait for investors to redevelop some confidence in the market.

there's lots of money out there, and, as i said, the real economy may benefit from some more real spending. you want to make sure there's lots of money....

...but you can't force people to buy when they're too scared to. you have to wait.

looking forward, it might help to avoid announcing ridiculous blockades against europe.

stimulus isn't going to overpower fear.

the experiment was interesting, but the outcome was obvious.

i haven't said much about the stock market recently.

my arguments were always a little different. the way i see it, and this is broadly a type of mmt, is that the stock market is essentially a casino, and that the amount of inflation that occurs depends on how much money exists in the economy. so, when obama went through all this easing, the money trickled up to the top in the form of corporate profits and eventually ended up in the market.

when trump first took over, his new fed chair almost instantly reversed that under whatever kind of bullshit austerity argument and we started to see all of these jolts in the market because the money was starting to dry up. but, investor confidence remained exceedingly high - even as the money was drying up, these people wanted to keep gambling, so they did. i insisted that it was just a matter of time...

but, then the feds seemed to realize what they did, and went back to easing, and the jitters stopped. so, i stopped talking about it.

if you want to talk about the stock market in terms of what it's supposed to be, there's no doubt that it was in need of a ridiculous correction. stocks across the board were just absurdly inflated.

but, the stock market isn't what it's supposed to be today, and maybe never really was - it's a casino, and trump is really the right kind of personality to look over it. so, you can pump as much money into this thing as you want, and the stocks will inflate as much as you let them. you want the average to keep rising? just keep printing money.

investors are no doubt scared that they're going to run out of caviar and are pulling their money out to spend it. that could actually be great news for the real economy!

and, this is going to be a double hit for seniors which are taking it on the chin right now.....although you shouldn't cry too hard, because they're pretty rich, nowadays.

but, if you're into this shit, you're being presented with a helluva buying opportunity, because these numbers will rise quickly, so long as they keep printing money.

it's hysteria. but, it's a casino.....

sarah was (i guess still is.) about a half an inch taller than me, and she used to complain that she wanted me to be taller than her - although, i'd take the opposite position, in that i'd want to be about equidistant from the ground with any potential partner. i want equality; i liked being able to see eye-to-eye, and certainly didn't want to look down on anybody - i'd consider that weird and unsettling. and, i told her that. but, she wanted to look up to me and actually considered it a sort of pre-requisite.

so, she liked me in heels, on the very few occasions that i wore them. i noticed that. it was one of the few feminizing decisions that she reacted well to, because it gave her the opportunity to look up at me. oddly.

anyways.

the point is that i'm not tall, and my life experiences have not been as somebody that is tall. i'm short for a white dude, and about average for a white woman.

i am a short 5' 8". so, it's closer to 5' 7".

my father was a hair taller than me, and my mother is a hair shorter than me. my full sister is a good inch taller than me - she's a convincing 5' 9". and, i have an aunt that is 5' 11".

we know that height is primarily a function of nutrition and diet during childhood, and it is not clear whether the differences we see in gender across most cultures (although not all cultures.) are due primarily to genetic sexual dimorphism or to cultural differences in how men and women are nourished in childhood. in rural india, where poverty is endemic across both genders, the average height of men and women are both around 5' 4". on the other hand, the average height of women has been increasing dramatically over the last century inside of oecd nations, where gender equality is on the rise. women in northern europe are taller than men in much of the world, nowadays.

5' 8" would be relatively short for a woman in scandinavia, which is where my mother's ancestors are from, and which is the part of my ancestry that i most readily identify with, culturally. while it is a little taller than the global average for women, it is also shorter than the global average for men. i would be considered very short for a male in northern europe.

so, i don't consider myself particularly tall.

i meet women that are taller than me all of the time.