Forum Post: Stieg Larsson Character has it right: The stock market is NOT the economy.
Posted 12 years ago on Jan. 3, 2012, 12:08 p.m. EST by ClearView
(73)
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At the end of "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" Blomkvist states: "You have to distinguish between two things - the Swedish economy and the Swedish stock market. The Swedish economy is the sum of all the goods and services that are produced in this country every day. There are telephones from Ericsson, cars from Volvo, chickens from Scan, and shipments from Kiruna to Skovde. That's the Swedish economy, and it's just as strong or weak today as it was a week ago...
"The Stock Exchange is something very different. There is no economy and no production of goods and services. There are only fantasies in which people from one hour to the next decide that this or that company is worth so many billions, more or less. It doesn't have a thing to do with the Swedish economy."
"So you're saying that it doesn't matter if the Stock Exchange drops like a rock?"
"No, it doesn't matter at all... "
He takes the idea further in a interview: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2011/02/08/stieg-larssons-prescience/
Great Post! If we got focused on locally taking care of ourselves. Growing food, manufactring, etc. No need to listen to any of the "market hype" and fears. We would get on just fine.
Right! The real economy is about production and consumption. The Imaginary economy of finance is about a parasitic affliction of the real economy that threatens the survival of the Human Species.
The problem is we have been using the parasitic affliction to run our economy at a worse and worse percentage for the past 30 years. During the years leading up to the crash a huge portion of the money flow was created by excessive bank leverage thrown at the housing bubble. This is no substitute for a productive economy. We need to get some manufacturing back IMO
And some more "out of the box" thinking from J. Krishnamurti "Think on These Things" Chapter 11 "So your revolt, like the so-called revolution brought about by ambitious or very clever people, is always limited by the past. That is not revolt, that is not revolution: it is merely heightened activity, a more valiant struggle within the pattern. Real revolt, true revolution is to break away from the pattern and to inquire outside of it." http://www.jiddu-krishnamurti.net/en/think-on-these-things/1963-00-00-jiddu-krishnamurti-think-on-these-things-chapter-11
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EewGMBOB4Gg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z9WVZddH9w
So, I gather from this post that your are attempting to explain the disparity between the optimism as expressed by the rising stock market and the gloom expressed in polls, such as Gallup's Life Evaluation and Gallup's Economic Confidence Index.
Statistics in general can be a deceiving gauge of anything substantial. One moment of bliss is complete in the moment. One moment of hell is complete in the moment. The moment in ALL its forms is inherently complete in the moment. And there is this awesome and mysterious flow of is-ness, complete with or without our clever evaluations.