Paul’s main interest seems to have been about banking, but the majority of comments I saw, stimulated partly by the title, were about left-right politics.

My own political sentiment aside, one thing I found interesting were the number of times the word “moron” and its unfriendly synonyms were thrown against the opposition (whichever the opposition happened to be), along with assorted accusations on the topics of the immaturity, historical ignorance (often partly true), and lack of patriotism of the other side (again, whichever the other side happened to be).

A surprising number also expressed approval at the idea of Texas seceding, whether the comments were motivated by exasperation, sarcasm, or (on the flip side) hope at escaping the frustrating machinations of the remainder of the American union. And of course many who thought that was ridiculous. The most popular emotional concern seems to have been to blame others or put them in their place. And a small sample feebly requested others to calm down.

The anger behind such an un-moderated, polarized brawl seems to have been expressed by a wide variety of Americans from a wide variety of locations in a surprisingly short period of time. It seems representative of a larger segment of society.

More to my present point, it seems to fit well the theory that mass psychology drives the market, an economic theory associated with such names as Kondratiev, Elliott, and Prechter.

Negative emotion drives bear markets as positive ones drive bull markets. Polarization is also symptomatic of the causes of a bear market. Granting that there is plenty of blame to go around regarding the causes of the bull market collapse, yet I would like to conclude with a question: “What are you and I going to do, not to focus on blame, but to lift yourself and others emotionally and economically?”

Peter Rubel