A word to the wise from Michael Shedlock

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A word to the wise from Michael Shedlock

Wednesday, December 31st, 2008 | Economics, Political Survival Kit, Quotes |

“It is the very nature of the market that it takes the convincing of nearly everyone to believe that something cannot happen, to actually cause it to happen.”
- Michael Shedlock

That’s from his piece, Things That Can’t Happen, published one year ago today, about all of the things that couldn’t happen that did.

One of the reasons the Fed was created was to manage the economy and prevent further depressions. Guess What? The biggest deflation in history, the great depression, happened 17 years later.

At one time economists thought that inflation and recession could not happen at the same time. It happened anyway. A new term was coined for it “Stagflation”.

Deflation supposedly couldn’t happen in a fiat regime. Japan proved otherwise.

If you asked anyone in Japan if housing prices could fall for 18 straight years, they would have said “It can’t happen”. It did happen.

For 30 years people have said US housing prices would never again decline on a national scale. They were wrong. It happened.

Tags: inflation, the fed

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