National GDP came out today at 2.84%. That was certainly a beat of the expected 2.5%. The numbers once again proved that nutters like me- are wrong, didn't they? Our economy is excellent and the stock market is fairly priced near 16,000. The Twitter IPO with virtually no earnings is worth 35 bucks a share, right? Enter the Greater Fool Theory. There must always be a greater fool than you who will buy Twitter at 45- so that you can profit at 35. That fool in turn must need someone willing to pay 55. GDP numbers have always been cooked and inflated with the use of inventory. Most of us know that and when today's 2.84 print came out I was a little shocked. At first I was puzzled, because everything I am seeing and reading does not support that kind of number. Then it hit me. The latest government manipulation- thanks to this commenter. The BEA's GDP tables tell us that the   gross  change in GDP from 2Q -> 3Q was $196.6 billion.  But the Fed's QE program   in...

Imagine for just a moment, the possibility that the human experience is just a random event. That there is no purpose, no real reason for any of us to be here. That we simply crawled out of some primordial ooze and wound up here- doing this. We live our lives without any real purpose and when we leave- there is no such thing as St. Peter handing us an exit interview to complete. No review, no pop quizzes, no heaven or hell. You simply live one life and when it's over- it's over. Can you imagine the futility of that? Who envisions that sort of ending or who hopes to live some unmeasured life? Answer- nobody. So the artists make art, the bridge builders make bridges, the plumbers make plumbing, the law makers make law, the philosophers create philosophy, and the writers write. And each of us wants to produce a quality product because we think these things are measured. We hope they are. And if somebody asked me, and rest assured that they never have or will, "Brian,...