After this weekend the world is no longer Orwellian.

The world can now be described as Sue Collinsish (though maybe we need something catchier than that).

I can now finally admit I read the books over a year ago and found the world she creates somewhat interesting.  We don’t yet make foodstamp recipients in District 12 (I mean Detroit) submit their names for a nationally televised battle to the death – though imagine the ratings for that.  But we certainly seem to have no problem creating inflation for the necessities and pretending no inflation exists.  There seems to be a growing divide between the “haves” and “have-nots” and many of the policies seem to help entrenched entities at the expense of individuals.  The Occupy movement never managed to capture the “mockingjay” spirit of the Hunger Games trilogy, but then again, even that will take 4 movies to play out.

It is a shame that the “autocratic” ruler is still a President as opposed to a Chairman of the Central Bank, but although she misses the mark there, it will be fun to have another dystopian author to refer to and one that my kids have actually heard of.

In the meantime, back to watching the markets grind higher after some nice effort by Bernanke, Merkel, and Draghi to prop them up over the last 2 trading days – nothing like a centrally planned system where we can ignore the data.