The pursuit of decadence is always met with the painful reality that stopping the excess is much more difficult than starting.  This realization, like a killer in the night, lies in wait until just after the point of no return.  When the certain destruction cannot be undone.

John Maynard Keynes, Fabian socialist and the godfather of modern day economic planning, in his 1935 work, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, wrote:

“Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.”

In late November 2008, then Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke committed a fait accompli.  Though he may not have realized it at the time; he was blinded by his scholarly prejudices.

Bernanke, a smug Great Depression history buff of the highest academic pedigree, gazed back 80-years, observed several credit market parallels, and then made a preconceived diagnosis. Continue reading →