As Art Scatter stoops to post, it’s a Monday night and all the major markets were up substantially, around 10 percent during the day, making up a big chunk of the beating they took last week. Actually, I hate to anthropomorphize the “markets” like that. Took a beating? I don’t think so. They are just numbers. We know how illusory they can be, right? Real and illusory at the same time. Neat trick. Do we think that the “fundamentals” have been fixed so everything is all right now? Pour a few hundred million into some banks, take an equity stake in them, and it’s all good? Art Scatter doesn’t know its economics but … all we can do is shrug.

So, last night we were seeking solace in philosophy, the refuge of scoundrels. Often we turn to Rousseau — we don’t even really count him as a philosopher. “Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains!” But we were in a darker mood. “Nature, red in tooth and claw” was more like it. That’s Tennyson, but he pointed the way to the philosopher we wanted. Thomas Hobbes: “the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Pretty close to “red in tooth” if you ask me.
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