“It has been 5 weeks since
‘Three Weeks to Chaos” has been posted. Can someone describe what the chaos looks like. Everyday seems quite normal.

Is it the 401k thing?”

Yah, it’s the 401(k) thing (or rather, the 201(k) thing). It’s also the pension crash thing; it’s the wildly-gyrating market crash thing; it’s the hedge fund crash thing; it’s the intensifying housing crash thing (am I the only one seeing open houses in the middle of the week now?); it’s the countries-like-Iceland-going-bankrupt thing; it’s the credit seizing thing; it’s the commercial paper crash thing; it’s the employment crash thing; oh, and it’s also the student loan crash thing.

Now, does all that feel like chaos to you? I suppose chaos feels like different things to different people. And I suspect that those of us living in Southern California are experiencing (for the moment) a different slice of reality than those in the Rust Belt, or Detroit, or Manteca. I doubt very seriously that days continue to feel normal for folks in those parts.

The first week of October was the first time the shills openly admitted that we weren’t in Kansas anymore. The world acknowledged that the market is *crashing* — not in one day, but in slow motion. The world shifted entirely three weeks ago.

People now seem to be adjusting to the *new normal*, i.e. wild 500 point swings in the market, trillion dollar bailouts, tens of billions injected on a daily basis. So perhaps things still seem *normal* to you. But if that’s the case, then you are not noticing the seismic movements beneath your feet.

Make no mistake: this thing isn’t coming at us all at once; like a tsunami, it is coming in waves.

The question is, when the next wave hits will you be de-sensitized? Or will you take notice and act accordingly and prepare yourself?

The old adage goes, “Put a frog in boiling water, and he’ll jump out to save his life. But put him in water and gradually turn up the heat, and he’ll die before he knows it.”

Don’t be the frog who gets used to the heat, my friend.