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Over the past nine years, almost to the day, we have been fortunate to collect the most thoughtful, smart, widely read, well traveled, professionally diverse, hard working, intellectually rigorous, level headed, non conspiracy oriented skeptics from around the world–over 4,500 members from 78 countries. With your constant and consistent contributions of fresh perspective and constructive criticism we avoid the pitfalls of an editorial and ideological positive feed-back loop that dogs many Internet-based communities, leading to confirmation bias and other errors of judgment.
Truth is not a fact but a process, not a destination but a road. Not everyone is up to the work it takes to stay on it. In an ever-changing world, today's truth can be tomorrow's fiction. Among the transitory are eternal truths that recur over and over, pouring out across the centuries, as timeless as human nature. It takes fortitude and discipline to tell them apart, to question even our cherished beliefs, to sort fact from fiction, signal from noise, the constant from the variable, to get to the bottom of things, and be willing to discard a beloved and hard earned insight once the evidence no longer supports it.
You, as one of our community, whether you participate on our forums frequently, rarely, or just not yet, deserve congratulations for the unusual quality of curiosity and dissatisfaction that drives you to stay with us even when the answers to your questions do not readily present themselves. Not a day goes by that we do not feel fortunate to have your good company and support. So even if you are not in the U.S. and do not celebrate this holiday, we use the occasion to express our gratitude to you as well.
As the housing market led recession and risk pollution induced financial market crisis we foresaw in 2006 comes into focus for everyone and begins to dominate the financial news, the risks for our readers will begin to shift from too much complacency to too much caution. The process will be gradual, over a period of years, and has only just begun. Along the way and especially at the end of it there will be once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to invest in certain markets after the financial and monetary systems complete their adaptation. Emotional preparation is just as important as keeping powder dry for the next reflation trade–which, in my opinion, most are going to get as wrong in this cycle as in 2001.
Emotional preparation for occasional bouts of panic on the way down, and staying grounded and away from the pervasive negativism that marks the bottom of these periods, will be as important as having money left to invest. But even more important than that is staying focused on what is truly important: health and happiness, family and friends.
Wishing the our growing community a Safe, Healthy, and Happy Thanksgiving,
Eric Janszen and the iTulip crew: FRED, OnPoint, qwerty, tree, SeanO, and John Serrapere
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