The Year 2017

I have posted on this topic before, so this is not something new following on the outcome of Super Tuesday voting in the States; it is something I have been aware of since Spring 2015.

So in the spring of 2015 I sat here at the computer and wondered what the future would be like.
I had memories of the past, so that was covered. I was aware of the present. But what about the future.

I had an experience which was - in my mind - exactly equivalent to that I had 2 or 3 years ago at a baseball game in the autumn, Detroit Tigers versus Minnesota Twins (I think).
My friend and I were at the game. We decided to bet on the outcome of the game.

I "looked" and saw 0,1,2 were like letters with extremely light darkness... and this I felt meant "unlikely"... (realize that this was happening within less than 10 seconds... probably less than 5 seconds)... so a tie (if such a thing is possible) and a win by either team of 1 or 2 was out.

I saw that 4, 5, 6, and the later numbers melted into obscurity, and I interpreted this to mean (again, 5 seconds to make a decision!) not probable.
That left the number 3 !

And the number "3" was in bold type and emphasized!!!  3 was there, no doubt. So I lifted up my middle finger,  fourth, and fifth finger to indicate that "3 runs" would be the difference between the two teams. I said "Detroit!", meaning Detroit Tigers by three.
This was an odd way to left up one's fingers, which occurred to me at the time. One would life up the index, middle, and fourth, I should think.

Of course, the Detroits won by exactly 3 runs.

Also - of course! - I do not believe for one minute in foretelling the future.

We all intuit things. Some of us try to train intuitions, some do not. Those that do not, do not see much at all, other than that which is right in front of their eyes..., so they think.

So what about 2017?
At first, I thought it might be about my own health: perhaps I were to be sick, or perhaps to die in 2017. Well, even though my doctors conspire to make it so, I do not think anymore that that is the thing which will happen in 2017.

My granddaughter was born this year. That is not 2017. And I think I have already written about the vision I had when I looked at my daughter and her long-to-yet-happen future husband back when they were going to the high school senior prom.
In case you do not remember, I saw something I could not describe. I thought I would see something like a joining together of the races of the world in joy and harmony... but that is not what I saw; I saw a future promise, and I was a bit astounded by the whole thing.

Even when they had parted ways, even when some had established their own families, even after many years, death, and sickness, somehow they did come together. When they did so, I suddenly remembered what I had seen many years ago at the senior prom......

And I have told this stories a number of times since. Not a great many times; I have not become an Ancient Mariner and sequester the unhappy to listen to me. But I have repeated it. And no one has ever thought it important enough to talk to me about it.

So also with 2017.

Never ask.
I shall never tell, other than when I visualize the years, in the spring of 2015, there was a black hole where 2017 should have been. Since you probably do not "visualize" the years, it all means nothing.
I myself am not very smart or adept at understanding.
What I say is surmise, as unsubstantial as snow in spring.

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The Deconstruction Era

 Deconstructing The Capitol Dome

When the Republicans were victorious at the 2014 mid-term elections, I said to myself that now they have two years to botch things up in their own idiosyncratic way.
I hoped very much that they would not, but by and large Republicans are not conservatives as I am; I read The American Conservative, whereas most other Republicans take pleasure in things like The Drudge Report or Breitbart or even worse, things like NewsMax.

Of course, Democrats reading material is often hardly better.

In the BBC this morning, updated at 2:31 AM:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-30443960

...The US House of Representatives has passed a $1.1tn budget, hours before government was due to shut down at midnight on Thursday...


As presented earlier in the week, the 1,600-page bill also includes a number of provisions intended to gain votes from both parties, including:

• increasing the amount an individual person can contribute to a national political party from $32,400 to $324,000
• blocking the District of Columbia from using its own funds to set up regulatory systems for marijuana legalisation
• measures that would significantly weaken financial regulations in the Dodd-Frank law, including restrictions on derivatives trading
• blocking certain Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations
• cuts in the budgets of the EPA and the US tax agency
• increases in the budget for Wall Street regulation agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission...

Looking at the underlined sections, I am quite sure that the increased risks of weakening Dodd-Frank will not be mitigated in any significant manner by the increases in the budgets of Wall Street regulatory agencies.

The bill allows for banks to make risky loans with funds that are tax-payer insured.

This means that the chances for another future bail-out has just increased significantly.

If you recall, in 2008 none of the Wall Street regulatory agencies could do anything effectively to stave off the financial crisis.
And the same thing will be true in... say, 2017... to use my favorite "black hole" year as the example.

Since this is a modest example of what is in store when the new Congress begins next year.....
make your own prognosis.

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A Possible Scenario For 2017: Terminator-Style

I have been scratching my head (and other parts) trying to figure out what's up with 2017.
I mean, the year 2017 does not exist in my consciousness...
http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2014/11/whats-up-with-2017.html

All the other years are there: the painful process of trying to get through the telephone and media attacks running up to the presidential elections of 2016, the hazy future of 2018, a blip for 2019, and a future unclear from then on.
The point is not that the picture is unclear or hazy; the point is, to quote a fine figure and to make a fine point of it, is that 2017...

"...  It's not there, Mac !"

 

 (Donald Moffat as Garry to...

Kurt Russel as MacReady... 

in John Carpenter's The Thing)

Here's a maybe-why or a possibly-might scenario dealing with equity market flash crashes, about which I have written before:
Breakdown: A Glimpse Inside the 'Flash Crash'
By Scott Patterson
June 10, 2012 5:56 p.m. ET
 http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303296604577454330066039896

 [...]
Pools of Darkness

In the weeks and months following the flash crash, a fierce debate erupted over what had become of the stock market. Angry words were exchanged in the halls of Capitol Hill, on financial television shows and at trading firms in New York and Chicago.

Congress held panel discussions. The Securities and Exchange Commission grilled the previously unknown chieftains of the high-speed merchants, including Mr. Cummings of Tradebot and Mr. Peterffy of Timber Hill.

The complex, labyrinthine nature of the market vexed ordinary investors. Years ago, before the rise of electronic networks, most trading took place at the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq.

BY 2012, trading occurred in roughly seventy different venues, including giant hedge funds and banks. So-called "dark pools," private markets in which trading took place away from public exchanges such as the NYSE, accounted for more than 10% of all U.S. stock trades, according to Tabb Group.

As the markets slid into discrete pools of darkness, investors, too, had been left in the dark.

It is only our dire lack of imagination that forces us into Terminator 2 and Terminator 3 modes of envisaging the future.

Skynet may destroy the future of many generations of mankind as effectively with a Flash Crash of equity markets, power grids, and many other complex system which have abandoned human oversight and control, as with the robotic armies sweeping through the streets of Los Angeles.

We have trouble imagining the banes to come that we have not yet afflicted ourselves with.

We will have placed the Robot boot upon our skulls.

Despair is worse than slavery.

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What's Up With 2017?

The next Prez election is 2016.

There. I have the concept of the year 2016 in my head, sort of fuzzy, but it's there. I also have a faint glimmer of 2015 and 2016; 2016 is the year during which money will flow into politics like Orcs into the mines of Moria.
2016 is in my head pretty good.
I have 2012 and 2013 in there, too. Those were the years of taking care of my father and the efflorescence of funerary rites: 4 important people and my mother's cat... whom, truth be told, she probably misses more than anyone else.

2014 is well ensconced in the old noggin. It a year of Big Sucks, but no one can deny that it is in the cranium, doing its dirty work. I hear a whimper from 2018 and a sluggish stumble from 2019.

2017 is not there, however.

This rather surprised me last night, because I could "sense" all the other years, but there was nothing for 2017.

What I mean by this is the following:
If you remember my post "Detroit Tigers Win The Central Division !"  when the Detroit Tigers were playing the Minnesaota Twins towards the end of the baseball season, (http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2014/10/detroit-tigers-win-central-division.html)
you may recall that my friend and I made a bet on the outcome of that baseball game. We thought thought the Tigers would win, so we bet on the number of runs by which they would win.

He - poor schlemiel! - sort of ran over the entire baseball season in his head, tried to remember how Detroit did against the Minnesota Twins during the year so far, juggled probabilities and made Bayesian allowances for things like spirit, enthusiasm, and made a show of rationality at its best.

I, on the other hand, imaged numbers. There were the numbers 1,2,3, 4, and 5.

The numbers 1 and 2 immediately went blank, suggesting there was no way these were the numerals I sought. 4 and 5 remained visible, but immediately began to waver and get fuzzy, and sort of fade out. 3 glowed like a champ and filled the CRT screen of me mind's eye, and I held up three fingers of the left hand to him, saying the Tigers would win by three runs.

Of course, they did.
Lucky guess. All I care about is being right, not the wager money, nor how I got the right answer.

If there is anything to this nonsense of visualizing numbers and prescience, however, I sense something amiss in 2017.

In my total contempt for politicians of all stripes, I think that the Republicans will spend the next two years creating chaos; for example, the Health Care field may be subject to a burnt earth policy against the ACA, leaving a goodly number of guys, dolls, and corporate legal entities scratching their heads.

It is a time to evaluate political risk in one's investments. If you view the VIX index, two of the three periods of greatest volatility subsequent to 2008 occurred directly due to Republican shenanigans, and I think the general direction of events is downhill, regardless of who is calling the shots.

So 2017 is a black hole in my mental calendar.
Well, that black hole could be something as prosaic and humdrum as an actual black hole, a roguish interstellar interloper. (I guess a black hole is hardly prosaic. I just meant the interpretation of "black hole" would be prosaic, the sequence of letters - for the denotation of "black hole" as a massive object with a bristly beard of Hawking radiation is hardly what one would usually call "humdrum".)

The missing 2017 could be a new neurologic disorder that will soon be termed "Montag's By Proxy", wherein regular blokes have ontological gaps awaiting them in the near future.

It could be the imaginings of a fevered mind.

It could be a lapsus mentis.
(Sorry. When I say or write lapsus mentis- a slip of the mind - I always think of Marcel DuChamp, Rrose Selavy, and French rabbits, or more clearly "lapins"... and lapins makes me think of chauds lapins, and we are no longer in Kansas.)

I find it all a bit ominous of the bad kind. I used to be frightened by such things, but catastrophes, near-catastrophes, rumors of pandemics, and wars have become so commonplace and so - dare we echo Hannah Arendt ?! - banal, that I hardly care.

25 months is enough time to get ready.

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