Business Cycles – The Greatest Con Never Told

A rogues' gallery of con artists -- (from left to right top then bottom) Marx, Spencer, August von Hayek, Adam Smith, Hank Paulson, Martin Feldstein, Milton Friedman, Jack Krugman, Alan Greenspan, John Maynark Keynes

Wheel of Fortune

CON ARTISTS ARE CUNNING FOLK. Their game relies on tricking their “Marks” into seeing as meaningful, supposedly natural patterns of events that are, in reality, meaningless. Once their Marks are hypnotized into seeing these patterns as filled with meaning, the con artist knows his Marks’ natural predilection toward pattern recognition will do the rest of the work. Thus, the confidence artists acquire the status of gurus, soothsayers, and shamans. The mystified Marks have become enslaved by the artist’s nonsense.

One of the most powerfully deceptive devices for imputing meaningful patterns to meaningless events are silly cycles–’round and ’round about. Rationally we know that time’s arrow does not go in cycles, but rather moves relentlessly forward toward unique futures. The world unfolds anew with each passing moment. Where it otherwise, I would happily contemplate my cycling back to my youthful self, when the girls thought me handsome.

Pattens in the night sky have provided fertile materials for the psuedoscience of astrology which has a long history of entrancing Marks into seeing fated futures in the meaningless celestial dots and the scratching of practitioners. Woe those who drink too deeply from this cup of nonsense.

But the con artist knows that it is not necessary to point to patterns in stars, tea leaves, palms, or chicken bones. The Numerologist relies on the meaningless patterns of arithmatic numbers to bamboozle his Marks into believing that the future can be decoded though mystical numerical cyphers–’round and ’round about.

Today, the greatest cons of all are leading us toward national and international destruction. The Economists’ game is the a thing called the business cycle. This cycle, they tell their Marks, represents the natural pattern by which wealth and power are allocated amongst men. The cycle dictates some few will wax wealthy while many wane poor. The cycle, they would have the Mark believe, makes sense of human misery. The are no actors, no cheaters, no strongmen, no con men. There is only the natural cycle of mystical economic forces—the ebb a flow of “market forces”—’round and ’round about.

When you hear the man talk “cycles” and find your attention riveted by pretty patterns in the sky, splash cold water on your face and then run like hell, lest you become the Mark.

Business Cycle Wheel