The End of The Era Of The Martingale

What do Barack Obama's election and the credit crisis have in common? They are both signals of the end of an era. They called it the "End Of History", and they were just as wrong as the phrase alone would lead you to expect they would be. But that didn't stop them. They were so sure of themselves that in the face of adversity, they just kept doubling their bets.

Didn't work out so well.

It was not just the now-central follies of ignoring the Kurdish Question, having too much confidence in Musharraff or the total blind faith put into the insane notion that somehow bankers would always tell the truth and be responsible that led us to the state we're in. It was a Culture War against doubt and intellectual skepticism itself. It was an iron-clad belief that what worked yesterday would always work. And in the waning year it became the nothing more than a Ponzi scheme depending on the emotional camouflage of the martingale.

The conservative business and political elite gave the world the message that they would back down to nothing short of total repudiation and that is very nearly what they've gotten. That is how martingale's always end: bankruptcy.