A reasonably useless fact: Friday, February Fifth is notable because all three words of the date begin with the letter “F”. It is among the Saturdays and Sundays that fall on September Second, Seventh, and Seventeenth and Fridays that fall on February First, Fourth, Fifth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth. A more ambitious person make the effort to calculate how many days a year such calendar onomatopoeia and assonance happens, but I, alas, am far too slothful to do more than note the unusualness.
In trying to predict the markets, most of us look at graphs showing ups and downs. We try to get an indication of where things are going by seeing where they’ve been. This does little harm, and may do some good, but the futility of it was explained by a man who was able, in the course of a summer, to call 70 or 80% of market rises and falls. “If the chickens laid more eggs, the market went up. If they laid less, it went down.”
Hardly the sort of fact upon which to base our own futures. Now, it seems to be a fact that, at least once, a week that ends with Friday, February the Fifth is not a good week for stock values.
Politicians Spend a Lot of Time Triangulating.
Playing endless variants of “Let’s you and him fight.”, politicians seek to gain support while weakening opponents. In fact, there are two great divides in America that few politicians wish to define. There are people who are employed by the government who are paid to perform duties neither enumerated nor implied by the Constitution. On the other side of this great divide are those whose money is taken from them to pay the wages, benefits, and pensions of those espousing, causing, and exaggerating any number of largely Imaginary Problems.
The divide is clear, but perpetually blurred by triangulators. The candidates who say “Your taxes are too high.”, and focus their theme on that tend to do well. Such people are always attacked by those desperate for more taxes to be levied. The “We just need a slight increase in taxes.” people invariably believe that high taxes are the sign of an advanced society. It’s not an exaggeration to say that many of them truly can’t understand why people object to paying taxes.
It’s hard to keep from being fooled. Their control of the media allows them endless opportunities to propagandize for an uncountable number of programs that do little but pay the salaries of people whose only work is to increase their funding.
Once we identify the basic divide, it only makes sense for conservative candidates to exploit it. Distinctions must be made between those whose only skill is to organize and control government’s power and those who provide useful goods and services. The latter should be preferred as a matter of sound public policy.
