Debt and Delusion

The Debt Delusion

The Velvet Delusion

The Devaluation Delusion Revisited

This is a delusion.

Another group also succumbed to this delusion.

Are we the victims of a mass delusion?

Hamas s promise to the Palestinians, however, is a delusion.

He saw her smile and a strange delusion possessed him.

Pascal saw us as a remarkable mixture of genius and self delusion.

But this is a delusion promoted by his finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis.

The sheer nihilistic irrationality of terrorism strains and tests our own beliefs like nothing else can.

It's very ingenious, as all Freudian arguments are but didn't make much sense because I have seen the same delusion, a patient having the same delusion, about his pet poodle.

Here is the grand delusion of the budget and the Finance Ministry in Italy.

The hope that terrorism can be regionally contained is a dangerous exercise in self delusion.

On the contrary, when others bear the costs of mistakes, the incentives favor self delusion.

Without political reforms, China s confidence in herself will quickly turn into disillusion, or even delusion.

Governments must shake off the delusion that full recovery is just a matter of pushing buttons.

But neither Breivik, nor the terrorists of September 11, 2001, killed without reason, in the way some nihilistic American shooters do.

The bad news is that an amorphous, disorganized, and nihilistic insurgency can eventually evolve into a coherent, efficient, and purposeful one.

That mass delusion, Dornbusch argued, keeps the inflow going long after it should come to an end.

But no such nihilistic view of our existence follows from the size of our planetary home, and Russell himself was no nihilist.

Another favorite delusion in the West is to believe that Iran will surrender if pressure is steadily increased.

A less nihilistic view is that the Yukos affair suggests above all a series of improvisations by Putin rather than a coherent agenda.

The damage Bush s self confidence and self delusion has inflicted was magnified by his gross overestimation of America s power.

The good news for those who desire stability and democracy in Iraq is that an amorphous, disorganized, and nihilistic insurgency cannot win in the traditional sense of replacing the government and forming a new regime. The bad news is that an amorphous, disorganized, and nihilistic insurgency can eventually evolve into a coherent, efficient, and purposeful one.

It would be a delusion to imagine that the eurozone need only follow its current path to ensure the single currency s future.

Finally, the insurgency as a whole remains nihilistic, focused on destroying the new Iraqi government and the emerging economic and political system rather than articulating a coherent alternative.

This would obviously pose a much more serious threat, but even an amorphous, disorganized, and nihilistic insurgency can survive and block stability, democratization, and prosperity for many years.

So, in the political sphere, reason has trumped both faith in an unattainable goal and self delusion about the consequences of its pursuit.

And ever since, I've been walking the mystic path, trying to peer beyond what Albert Einstein called the optical delusion of everyday consciousness.

Whatever the promises he makes, whatever the desires he enkindles, and whatever the hopes Satan rouses in them, are no more than delusion.

And, collectively, that delusion boosts our savings, and thus our capital stock, which on turn boosts all of our wages and salaries as well.

No regime built on limitless self delusion is capable of retaining a shred of legitimacy once the scale of its self deception is exposed.

On the contrary, when others bear the costs of mistakes, the incentives favor self delusion. A system that socializes losses and privatizes gains is doomed to mismanage risk.

Together with widespread hostility to organized religion, manifested in such hugely popular books as Richard Dawkins s The God Delusion , disappointment with social ideals means that we turn inward.

Of course investors who believe that their wealth is securely liquid, and that they are adding value for themselves by buying and selling are suffering from a delusion.

Of course investors who believe that their wealth is securely liquid, and that they are adding value for themselves by buying and selling are suffering from a delusion.

The nihilistic and destructive instincts that some young Germans of the Baader Meinhof generation acquired from extreme leftist ideology in the 1970 s, it seems, can be transformed into a romanticization of al Qaeda.

The good news for those who desire stability and democracy in Iraq is that an amorphous, disorganized, and nihilistic insurgency cannot win in the traditional sense of replacing the government and forming a new regime.

Moreover, the delusion that the European Council can somehow call growth and productivity into being has provided a diversion to national politicians who are unwilling to push for unpopular decisions back home.

Italy's recent budget, which neither confronted the pensions issue nor the issue of fiscal reform, demonstrates this fully. Here is the grand delusion of the budget and the Finance Ministry in Italy.

True, back then, monetary authorities were working with old fashioned Keynesian macroeconomic models, which encouraged the delusion that monetary policy could indefinitely boost the economy with low inflation and low interest rates.

Without political reforms, China s confidence in herself will quickly turn into disillusion, or even delusion. If that happens, the Russia China debate might be revived, this time as a comparison of competitive decadence.

When I was a kid, I thought that if I died the world would just disappear. What a childish delusion! I just couldn't accept that the world could continue to exist without me.