Black Swan - The Gormogons

Czar mentions in his post below that Standard & Poor’s has downgraded its outlook on United Staes debt from stable to negative. Essentially, S&P acknowledged what everyone knows: if America doesn’t get its fiscal act together pretty soon, its debt is going to be some degree of risky.

But what seems to have received relatively little play is BRICS’s decision to seek to use local currencies in transactions among the affiliated parties. And how about rising inflation driving up borrowing costs?

Taken alone, the S&P downgrade may not be such a big deal. But along with the other flags, such as the referenced BRICS decision and the beginnings of inflation (particularly food inflation worldwide), ‘Puter believes it is foreseeable that there could be a seismic shift in the next 12-24 months.

As American debt becomes riskier, buyers will demand a premium for purchasing it, driving interest rates on bonds higher. This will cause increasing percentages of the American budget to be devoted to interest payments on the debt, shunting aside other expense items or causing the government to borrow more. As the government’s need for revenue rises, inflation coupled with lagging wages will sap the ability of taxpayers to fund America’s burgeoning expenses. And along comes the BRICS bloc, perhaps having succesfully weaned itself off the dollar, driving down demand for our currency.

‘Puter does not think this perfect storm of events is likely or even probable. Merely that it is possible. And lest you call ‘Puter crazy, let him remind you that relatively few people recognized the bubbles in 2001 and 2008 until after the fact.

And the happening of an event with enormous and disproportionate impact that all right-thinking people agreed was impossible is the very definition of a black swan event.

'Puter

Always right, unless he isn’t, the infallible Ghettoputer F. X. Gormogons claims to be an in-law of the Volgi, although no one really believes this.

’Puter carefully follows economic and financial trends, legal affairs, and serves as the Gormogons’ financial and legal advisor. He successfully defended us against a lawsuit from a liquor distributor worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid deliveries of bootleg shandies.

The Geep has an IQ so high it is untestable and attempts to measure it have resulted in dangerously unstable results as well as injuries to researchers. Coincidentally, he publishes intelligence tests as a side gig.

His sarcasm is so highly developed it borders on the psychic, and he is often able to insult a person even before meeting them. ’Puter enjoys hunting small game with 000 slugs and punt guns, correcting homilies in real time at Mass, and undermining unions. ’Puter likes to wear a hockey mask and carry an axe into public campgrounds, where he bursts into people’s tents and screams. As you might expect, he has been shot several times but remains completely undeterred.

He assures us that his obsessive fawning over news stories involving women teachers sleeping with young students is not Freudian in any way, although he admits something similar once happened to him. Uniquely, ’Puter is unable to speak, read, or write Russian, but he is able to sing it fluently.

Geep joined the order in the mid-1980s. He arrived at the Castle door with dozens of steamer trunks and an inarticulate hissing creature of astonishingly low intelligence he calls “Sleestak.” Ghettoputer appears to make his wishes known to Sleestak, although no one is sure whether this is the result of complex sign language, expert body posture reading, or simply beating Sleestak with a rubber mallet.

‘Puter suggests the Czar suck it.