{"id":660272,"date":"2018-04-10T21:06:49","date_gmt":"2018-04-10T21:06:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/?p=660272"},"modified":"2018-04-10T21:06:49","modified_gmt":"2018-04-10T21:06:49","slug":"is-this-the-moment-of-truth-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/?p=660272","title":{"rendered":"Is This the Moment of Truth?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"PLACEHOLDER\"<\/a><\/div>\n

By James Rickards<\/a><\/span> <\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

This post Is This the Moment of Truth? appeared first on Daily Reckoning.<\/p>\n

One of the most famous passages in American literature occurs in Chapter 13 of Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. It takes place in a caf\u00e9 in Pamplona, Spain during the running of the bulls.<\/p>\n

Bill Gorton, a friend of the protagonist, Jake Barnes, has just arrived from New York. Bill is in the caf\u00e9 talking with Mike Campbell, an upper-crust Englishman, now fallen on hard times but keeping up appearances.<\/p>\n

In the course of telling a story about his tailor, Mike casually mentions his bankruptcy. Here’s the dialogue:<\/p>\n

\u201cHow did you go bankrupt?\u201d Bill asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwo ways,\u201d Mike said. \u201cGradually and then suddenly.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat brought it on?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFriends,\u201d said Mike. \u201cI had a lot of friends. False friends. Then I had creditors, too. Probably had more creditors than anybody in England.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mike admits to his own helplessness; his descent into bankruptcy was apparently totally beyond his control. This reflects upon his lack of control with regards not only to his business matters, but to his life in general.<\/p>\n

You’ve probably seen variations of the part of the passage that says, \u201cGradually and then suddenly.\u201d It’s often paraphrased or misquoted as, \u201cslowly at first, and then quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

The short version of the quote is offered as a warning that a slow, steady accumulation of debt with no particular plan for repayment can continue longer than expected, and then suddenly descend into a full-blown financial distress scenario and a rapid end-state of collapse.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Ernest Hemingway was not only a Nobel-Prize winning author, but was an astute observer of human nature and a fine armchair economist. His description of going bankrupt in Chapter 13 of The Sun Also Rises is a pitch-perfect narrative of how the United States is now barreling toward a crisis of confidence in the dollar.<\/p>\n

I selected the longer version to give the short quote some context. The debtor, Mike, didn’t just go bankrupt. He had a lot of \u201cfriends\u201d who relied on him for his generosity and support, with no willingness to pay him back or help him in distress.<\/p>\n

He also had a general \u201clack of control\u201d with regard to his financial situation. Most debtors can see problems coming and either cut back spending or take other steps to deal with the debt. Either course will bring the situation to a head sooner than later.<\/p>\n

It’s the lack of control that allows the debtor to reach the point of non-sustainable debt, the \u201cgradually\u201d part, and then have a crisis thrust on him all at once, the \u201csuddenly\u201d part. This is how the inevitable becomes a surprise.<\/p>\n

Sound familiar? It should. This is exactly the situation in which the U.S. now finds itself. The U.S. national debt has been accumulating slowly for decades. There is no plan to make it sustainable; just a vague wish that the creditors will keep expanding the debt or rolling it over.<\/p>\n

The U.S. has a lot of \u201cfriends,\u201d both at home and abroad, who \u2026read more<\/a> <\/p>\n

Source:: Daily Reckoning feed<\/a><\/p>\n

The post Is This the Moment of Truth?<\/a><\/a> appeared first on Junior Mining Analyst<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By James Rickards This post Is This the Moment of Truth? appeared first on Daily Reckoning. One of the most famous passages in American literature occurs in Chapter 13 of Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. It takes place in a caf\u00e9 in Pamplona, Spain during the running of the bulls. Bill Gorton, a friend […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660272"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=660272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660272\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=660272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=660272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=660272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}