There are a great many crowded trades out there in the market place.
Precious metals and commodities are trading at nose bleed levels. Goldman Sachs, the anti-Christ, is out telling their clients to close their crude, cooper, platinum trades, among other items... no doubt, IMHO, because they have intimate knowledge of the Fed's next moves. Don't fight City Hall. QE2 is coming to an end, and I do not see QE3 in our future, given the religion the 2H1P has gotten of late regarding spending.
Housing and lending are as dead as fried chicken, and are just about as resuscitatable. Employment is too, despite the distortions, gimmickry, and out right lies of the BLS. QE1 and 2 were both unmitigated successes, or unmitigated failures, depending on how you look at it. Fact is, I favored QE1 and TARP as we were days away from Martial Law at the time. QE2? Not even a little bit.
The government seems to have come to the belief that its job is to cause perfect, seamless, and unending economic growth, and besides the fact that this is the primary reason the political class cannot come to grips with Peak Oil this is hardly the Constitutional function of government... encouraging the electorate to believe that it is has left us where we are.
(I read with interest the dynamic duo spokespeople of the Left: Robert Reich and Paul Krugman. These are bright fellows, if I make use of understatement, so how did they get to be so daft in how they interpret the environment of the human condition? Liberal, elite, of privileged background... and childless. I (very politically incorrectly) assert that the experience of parenting and providing for the needs of a family is a primary experience necessary to fully be able to see and interpret the entire human condition. Living in perpetuity in Academia without having to make payroll and care for children and deal with government edict and regulations is not conducive to rational interpretation of ones environment, me thinks. For example: That fully 1/3 of the SCOTUS Justices are childless, self-important geeks disturbs me to no end. Think this is a silly point to bring up? Why? Ask ANY PARENT what the most significant, life altering/affirming/maturing event in their life was and invariably it will have to do with becoming a parent. I don't see raising children so much as a "choice" as a civic duty. While it might be acceptable to choose to be childless, it can hardly be defended as the better of the 2 options. And why is it that wealth transfer agents like Krugman & Reisch want so much to make life better and fair by sharing your assets and wealth when they are unwilling to share of themselves with children? OK, maybe I am all wet. Maybe they cannot HAVE children. And adoption was not an option for people of such wealth and power? Should we blame the Liberal's birth-derth/baby bust on their infertility? F*** right off!)
Adults know and understand this out of hand. Unfortunately, we seem to be in a serious shortage of supply of adults at this time in our history. With the vast majority of Americans and the inhabitants of the rest industrial West firmly believing that something can be had for nothing, that there is no such thing as self-interest let alone the ability recognize and act on it, I think it is incumbent upon each of us to prove the majority wrong - for your own self-interest!
"Self-Interest" is perhaps confused in some political quarters as being selfish or self-absorbed. Those quarters, as I mentioned above, often don't have children. Every parent knows how much blood, sweat, and tears goes into raising a family. The chasm between Paul Krugman's and Robert Reich's world view and mine has at least as much evolved from our personal family experiences as anything else. These are brilliant fellows, to say the least. Pretty smart, myself. Very different experiences.
Those supporting the Krugman/Reich view point will often bellow and assert and hold forth on income disparity/tax the rich/Life's not fair! Taking the 400 richest billionaires as an example/reason for destroying the well being and security of the middle class millionaires that grind it out everyday at small business around the country. Look, some of what these guy's bring up is legitimate - our system has evolved flaws that have leant a winner-take-all paradigm that does present serious issues and challenges. Look no further than the recent mortgage and finance crisis in which the moneyed establishment was able to break the rules, profit mightily, and then rewrite the rules with impunity. Believe me, I get it. I spent my life working in finance with these entitled jack-asses (and most of them identified with the Left). The question is whether the cure is worse than the disease.
(It has been my experience that when a view point is extremely weak, the holder must resort to the "nuclear option". For example, when I bring up my pro-Life views and belief that abortion cannot be supported ethically the first response from the pro-choice around me has invariably been "Oh, yea? What if the woman was raped?" WTF??!! What percentage of abortions are motivated by rape? Not a very big percentage, me thinks, but the balance of their argument is soooooo flawed and ill considered that like any drowning person they flail about dangerously.)
I respectfully submit that the cure for much of that disparity is in the offing, but I absolutely guarantee that that cure will not satisfy the Krugman/Reich gang. In fact, as with any organization, they will use what supports their contention and discard the balance. As will the Right.
The folks identifying with the Right are suffering equally from the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. All things are NOT equal... and yet the U.S. military budget must be cut into, and deeply, in much the same fashion as the entitlement programs. The prison/industrial/war on drugs industrial complex simply cannot be financed further, and was never a terribly good idea irrespective of the fiscal environment. The Right will NEVER be able to use government thugs to enforce the (very correct) idea that Life begins at conception. What are they going to do? Issue birth certificates for conception? No, these knuckle heads don't give a good fart for the unborn. They are simply USING well meaning folks to further other political agendas.
There are no macro solutions; only micro solutions. The West's energy situation is going to readjust these attitudes of smug superiority. But that revolution won't be televised, either. There will no "I told you so" moment. We'll all be too busy seeing to our own affairs.
Thank G-d.