Saturday, November 26, 2016

The Sarcasm Report v.269

I have great news to share. You are immortal!

November 17, 2016
Yahoo Finance: RAOUL PAL: History shows there's a 100% chance of a recession for Trump

“I recently noted that since 1910, the US economy is either in recession or enters a recession within twelve months in every single instance at the end of a two-term presidency… effecting a 100% chance of recession for the new President,” he wrote in a copy of GMI posted below.

You are probably wondering how this relates to your own mortality. Please allow me to explain.

1. You are reading this.
2. Therefore, you are not dead.
3. If you are not dead now, then you were not dead last year or any previous year.
4. Therefore, you were not dead every single year of your life (not counting the potential for being mistakenly and temporarily declared dead).
5. Since you have never died, sound statistical analysis proves you have a 100% chance of not dying. Welcome to immortality!

Even if there is some tiny flaw in this statistical analysis, there is one thing we can say with even greater than 100% confidence. The longer you go without dying, the more resilient to death you will become!

Further, the only conceivable way you could possibly die would be the occurrence of a 25-sigma black swan event. To the best of my knowledge, no hedge fund manager has ever been burned by one of those though. They all use statistical models we can absolutely count on. That's why we can trust that if there is a 100% chance of a recession within a certain narrow time frame, then it is absolutely guaranteed to occur! It's a sure thing, exactly like your own immortality!

4 comments:

mab said...

Flawless circular reasoning! Yes! We can deduce anything!

But just in case reality intrudes, my two hedge funds always use leverage and take opposite sides of the same trade. That way one of them always pays off!

Stagflationary Mark said...

mab,

Flawless circular reasoning!

If the circular reasoning is flawless, then it is indeed flawless circular reasoning! And how do we know it is flawless? Because it is flawless circular reasoning!! Yes!!! ;)

We can deduce anything!

If we can deduce anything, then there is nothing we can't deduce! I deduce that we can deduce something, therefore we can deduce anything!! Woohoo!!!

P.S. I also imvest in your two hedge funds. The fees have been really hurting my performance lately so I leveraged up. Assuming fees average zero over the long-term, I figure it is only a matter of time before the fees return to the mean!! Should more than offset the 18% interest on my credit card in this zero interest rate environment!! Just need more patience! I deduce that these hedge fund managers will make me filthy rich with no added risk!!!

mab said...

I've never been comfortable with the notion of 100% certainty. With our flawless circular reasoning, we can be way more than just 100% certain.

No added risk? I don't see any. I'm more than 100% certain.

Stagflationary Mark said...

Worst case, any flaws in our flawless circular reasoning will undoubtedly add value, much like minor imperfections separate the expensive and flawed natural diamonds from the cheaper and nearly flawless manufactured diamonds.

So we've got that going for us, which is nice.