Here's a thought for you. Give some time to it and see what you think.
The nearly total unanimity of belief that something is true doesn't make it true.
Most plants need some water. Water is a form of energy. Without water many plants wither and die.
Energy comes in many forms, sunlight, water, wind, air. Words and thoughts have their own kind of energy. Strung together just so and they can become propaganda.
And that brings us full circle to unanimity. For a belief to become so pervasive someone, in fact, lots of someones have to be putting energy into it.
Media and politicians and lobbyists and bureaucrats and marketers should readily bubble to mind. Wall Street is another example, possibly one of the more dangerous ones when it comes to your economic well being.
Perhaps the most recent case, as the WSJ noted yesterday, is that of TIPS, Treasury Inflation Protected Securities, and the mass exodus out of them by investors. There can never be a mass exodus without first having a mass entry.
The explanation, according to one line of thinking, is concern the Federal Reserve will soon reverse or start tapering its now notorious bond buying scheme.
The fear of too much liquidity created by the Fed caused investor concern about future inflation. So investors scrambled into TIPS, pushing their prices up and potential returns down paying up for what can basically be described as a feel-good premium.
The US economy is on the mend and the Fed's succor no longer needed goes this line of thought. In early 2012 there was an investor rush out of EU sovereign debt. The near total unanimity of belief then was default. And it still might happened. During the interim, however, numerous other things have happened, many of them contrary to the then prevailing near unanimity.
Another apparent gathering unanimity of thought today is, like the smartest kid in the dumbest row at school, the US economy is the strongest weakling among a core of global economic weaklings. So money will continue to flock here pushing up the prices of all kinds of US assets.
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