The nations of the world have become unstable, politically, militarily and economically. For one, the European Union and its Euro may dissolve for the oldest of reasons: a squabble over money. Like us, they can say debt is credit right up until the rent’s due, then they discover the insolvent can prop up the bankrupt only until somebody has to give something of value to get something of value. It’s then they understand how poor they’ve been all along, that they don’t actually have much that anybody else wants.

Which conservatives have been bitching about all along, not the GOP, I mean conservatives who know what the debt is doing to the nation, not some left of center RINO enlarging his retirement portfolio at the expense of the taxpayer.

In the US flash crash  of May 2010, bogus trading slipped the leash and a trillion dollars of notional market value vanished in minutes, and in the doing setting a new standard for downward volatility. They liked to call it “avoided transition”, a fancy way of saying no one trusted the other guy’s bookkeeping once the cosigner went missing. When bogus trades on bogus data can pump up the market for years, then slip utterly out of control in about the time of a commercial break, when the FAILURE IS NOW PERMITTED sign lit up but briefly, and it’s still long enough for the market to flash-crash, it suggests our black swan will be the truth, the simple truth. Said differently—reality.

And we all know, reality can be a bitch.

What will be our signature event? Like Rome, the aqueducts still stand but the era that built them is gone. Which suggests one event. Nations, like people, go broke secretly, then publicly and to all appearances, instantly. And we’ve been broke for a very long time. The decisive, irretrievable losses are like a corpse hidden in the ceiling, not yet acknowledged but more evident with every passing day. Perhaps our black swan will be the sheer speed of the closing act,

When the lights go out, it could be out for a very, very long time.

Panic is the rational response. Game theory favors the nimble, the first one to panic and run out the door wins. Sure he triggers a surge to the exits, but he still wins. Everybody else loses something, or a lot, or everything . This is not esoteric knowledge. Expatriate applications are running ahead  of even last year’s record. Firearms and ammunition, grain and freeze-dried food, canning supplies, tactical gear and water purifying gadgets have been selling briskly for years now. Then there are the suburban survival gardens and chicken herds and on and on. Whatever else they’re doing, everyone seems to have their coat in one hand, their car keys in the other, and a bugout bag next to the door.

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