This Time Is NOT Different

``Let it be your constant method to look into the design of people's actions, and see what they would be at, as often as it is practicable; and to make this custom the more significant, practice it first upon yourself.” Marcus Aurelius

“This time it’s different” is a popular but fallacious investing catchphrase that mostly reflects on sentimental excesses.

It exhibits mostly overconfidence on a perception of knowledge or embody a generation of new faith adherents that justifies the course of particular set of actions. For instance, distinguished economist Irving Fisher, who developed and popularized the debt deflation theory, in the boom days prior to the Great Depression uttered, ``Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau”. Mr. Irving was in a delusion that the price values in the stock market would perpetually rise.

“This time it’s different” in today’s context can be observed from commentators who appear to be perplexed by the evolving unorthodoxy in the marketplace. They appear to be befuddled by the impact from the massive concerted government interventions in the marketplace worldwide, which has resulted to these large deviances relative to conventional standards.

So while there is a grain of truth whereby global government “relief” operations have obscured developments in the marketplace, especially in terms of scale, scope and or magnitude involved, arguing that “This time it’s different” is generally superficial and incomprehensive of the gist of what makes this episode NOT different from the past-INFLATIONISM.

As Mark Twain once remarked, ``History doesn't repeat itself - at best it sometimes rhymes”. In short, specific policy actions and their degree may vary (tactical operations), but the ultimate purpose or design driving the underlying actions (strategical process) has been the same with the past. And history has been littered with demonetized or “dead” currencies as a result mostly from the same teleological (study of the evidences of design or purpose in nature) impetus.

Therefore, this time is NOT different.