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centaurianthropology · 7 years

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The Magnus Archives ‘We All Ignore the Pit’ (S03E17) Analysis

Hoooo … for those of you who listen to these on public transit, fair warning: this one was, for me, the scariest episode in a long damn time. The statement is phenomenal, and got a real gut reaction out of me at one point. And there’s a character who … you know what? Just listen to it. Because this? This is the good stuff. Come on in to hear what I have to say about ‘We All Ignore the Pit.’

It’s nice to get a proper statement read from Sims after so many either shortened ones or ones that are directly related to the larger story. Sometimes it’s great to get something just a little more distant from the action, make everything feel less driven toward a single point. And acting as a departure from the primary action, I couldn’t have asked for better. It’s classic horror fare of a guy moving into a small town with a dark secret, but with a very TMA twist. Plus it ended up bulking out the feel of the horror landscape of America in this universe, which was a lot of fun.

Honestly, my only minor quibble with the episode was how obviously British the narrator was. Trying to write in another cultural dialect is seriously hard, and usually requires a dedicated editor to go through the script and make phrasing suggestions, so I get why that might not have been feasible. And honestly, as a native American, nothing was ever bad enough to drag me out of the flow of the story.

And what a story it was. The feel of Bucoda was perfect, and really managed to capture the sense of a small town when you’re from the outside. I also really appreciated how often the narrator mentioned that he might be blowing details out of proportion after the fact. It lends the whole story a nice sense of the concrete. This is a guy who had a weird thing happen to him, but he couldn’t say how much of it was weird and how much he invented to correlate with the weirdness.

I also liked how well this story set up, in a thousand subtle ways, that the horror landscape, the powers in control, and the feel of the terror in America is decidedly different to that in Britain in this universe. Having the Vast and the Below (which is what I’ll be calling it until I get a more official name) be the main focus of American horror works well, particularly given the sense that a lot of this horror plays out in the more rural portions of America (the majority of the North American landmass is rural), and calls to mind miners and clear and empty plains. If Britain of the TMA universe feels like Robert Chambers and MR James got together and had a horror baby, America is unapologetically the purview of Ambrose Bierce. And I really like the sense of contrast hinted at in these two horror landscapes.

I also have to say that, of all the entities, the Below is starting to scare me the most. Maybe it’s the creeping sort of scary it exudes. Maybe it’s because we know so little about it or what it does or what its motivations might be. It’s the most unknown of the major entities, at least to Sims and to the audience, and that makes it worrisome. It also helps that the Below has had consistently fantastic stories. Building on the strong foundations of ‘Dig’ and the absolute bedrock of this series that was ‘Lost Johns’ Cave’, this episode approaches the latter in terms of horror and narrative tightness. The story told here is a classic horror tale, yes, but no less strong because of it. Hell, the dream with the teeth and the tongue? I actually started grinning like an idiot because it was so perfectly creepy. I haven’t felt creeped out like this by one of TMA’s statements since some of the best episodes of season 1. I know I don’t often dig into the statements during these analyses, since I focus on meta, but I just had to take the time to sing this statement’s praises. Strong doesn’t begin to cover it. It cracked my top 5 statements from this show easily, and has lingered with me for days.

And really, topping what was an utterly glorious horror story off with the introduction of Nikola Orsinov (and even explaining why she has a male patronymic!), played to eerie, horrific perfection by Jessica Law? Oh, it was good. She’s an utterly delicious villain, and deeply frightening on a fundamental level. I’ve always found that cheery monsters were by far creepier than ones that seemed entirely serious. The decision to make her as alien as Michael, but far more threatening was brilliant, and her entire approach to coming after Jon was a breath of fresh air.

I love that, instead of killing one of his assistants or menacing him, she basically pops by to ask him if he wouldn’t be so kind as to find that skin for her. Sure, there are threats, but the line ‘that would be lovely!’ when he asked her if she expected him to just hand the skin over was fantastic. And I also love the notion that she needs the skin to wear. It’s so simple, but makes perfect sense for a plastic being that requires the skin of others to perform basic tasks.

And of course, we find out in this episode what exactly happened to Gregor Orsinov. Apparently, having created a monstrous daughter, she got bored one day and repurposed all his bits. Nikola not only accepts that she’s a monster, she embraces it. She has a fantastic sense of self-confidence and cheer which makes her horrific actions all the more powerful. I loved her instantly.

Another note that I think is relevant on a meta level is her use of darkness to hide herself from Jon. I don’t know about anyone else, but I was more than a little convinced that when Jon stepped into that darkness, he was no longer in Georgie’s place, but in the same strange stone cathedral described in ‘Growing Dark’, a location that only seems to exist when you can’t see it. Likewise, I think that this is yet more evidence that the darkness and the People’s Church are different extensions of the Stranger

Oh, and it wouldn’t be an episode of TMA in season 3 without Jon being a complete moron, apparently. Who was still at Georgie’s place despite insisting that he should leave before she was endangered? Jon. Whose home is now known to the Stranger, and has been invaded by Nikola? Georgie. I swear to god, if Jon gets Georgie’s skin stolen because he was too stupid to move back into his own place once he got his job back, I’m going to smack him one. And a flayed and undead Georgie, now fully claimed by the End, might well smack him too.

Seriously, Jon, get the hell back to your own damn apartment, and keep your problems safely in your wheelhouse.

The final interesting tidbit that I found myself thinking about during this exchange was Nikola’s statement that she wanted to wear the skin when she ‘danced the world anew’. What I realized was how much creation and art seem to be a focus of the Stranger. Nikola wants to wear a taxidermy skin, the definition of turning death into art. She plans to dance, creating a story with her body and a world with her movements. Even Nikola herself is a deliberately crafted plastic being who creates other plastic beings like her.

I think that the Desolation might actually stand as opposed to the Stranger as the Beholding does. As the Desolation destroys all, consumes all, the Stranger creates. It remakes. Nothing, from the victims of the Anglerfish to the bits remaining of Gregor Orsinov, are wasted.

Everything can be reworked. The world won’t end with the Unknowing; it will be made. Hell, it might have already been made several times. For all Jon knows, the world he’s living in could be the result of previous Unknowings. With a soft apocalypse in which everything changes but very few die, how would you know hundreds of years after the fact that it had happened at all? The change has become reality. The vagueness of the concept of the Unknowing, the delicacy and the art of it, is fascinating. I love the notion that everything about the Unknowing is actually cloaked in creation.

The Stranger is beautiful, and active, and alive. And that makes Nikola all the more terrifying as a villain.

Conclusions

I’m thrilled that, after last week’s disappointment, this show is very much back on top in my eyes. This is a cracking statement and a hell of an introduction for Nikola, very nearly as chilling as the introduction to Michael last season. Nikola feels infinitely strange and infinitely threatening in the most genial way possible. Jessica Law completely nailed the delivery (I also love that TMA is quietly drawing on all the Mechanisms one by one). She’s uncanny and terrifying, but also has a beauty and a joy to her voice. Nikola, I think, believes herself to be the heroine to this story. She’s taking a boring world and creating something far more beautiful out of it. She’s wresting control of it from the staid hands of the Beholding, and she’s actually DOING something with it.

And I love her. I’m thrilled that season 3 (and possibly more) has a villain this rivetingly unhinged. Jon’s now stuck having to either acquiesce to her request, knowing he’s letting her get closer to the Unknowing, or to try and stop her. I’m interested, honestly, to see if Elias can see in her darkness (I would bet he can’t, and that keeping out his prying eye was a big reason why Nikola wouldn’t let Jon turn on the light). If he can, I want to know how he’ll react to all this. If he can’t, how insistent is he going to be that Jon fill him in?

I’m interested in Elias’ reaction mostly because we can basically be guaranteed that Jon is going to do whatever seems stupidest at the time. I love him, but the man is a complete and total disaster. I despair that he’ll do something sensible like get away from Georgie before her skin gets repurposed, or talk to his assistants about anything of substance. Could I at least suggest that he start small and try bringing them tea? Maybe give them all spa days or something. God knows they’ll deserve it after all this shit hits the fan.

#The Magnus Archives #analysis #I haven't been this creeped out by a statement in a while #it was lovely

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johnmauldin · 8 years

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Our Legislators Should Read This Book Then Restructure The Fed

Fed Up: An Insider’s Take on Why the Federal Reserve Is Bad for America by Danielle DiMartino Booth is a devastating account of what actually goes on in the Federal Reserve.

I’ve known Danielle for years, and we’ve had many talks in which we despaired of the impact the Federal Reserve is having on Main Street. To say she eviscerates that august institution in her new book is to be kind.

Ten years ago, Danielle left a trading gig on Wall Street to work directly for Dallas Federal Reserve President Richard Fisher. She helped him gain insights into the economy and aided in crafting his speeches and writings.

When Fisher resigned and Danielle left the Fed, she started her own website and newsletter. She is the third most followed person on LinkedIn, after less than a year.

I persuaded Danielle to let me take you right to the end of her book. There, she gives a summary of how the Fed should be reorganized. This is a powerful to-do list that I hope every Congressman and Senator will read. It is crucially important that they reorganize this institution that is playing havoc with Main Street.

We should remove the Fed’s dual mandate, reinforce its oversight functions, and so forth, while understanding that there is a role for an independent central bank—just not the role subscribed to by the academics that currently run the Fed.

After you read Fed Up, I think you too will be ready to join the movement to demand the restructuring of our central bank.

Culture Shock

“If it were possible to take interest rates into negative territory, I would be voting for that.”

– Janet Yellen, February 2010

As her fame has grown, Janet Yellen is recognized in restaurants and airports around the world. But her world has narrowed. Because the Fed chairman can so easily move markets with a few casual words, Yellen can’t get together regularly and shoot the breeze with businesspeople or analysts who follow the Fed for a living. She must rely on her instincts, her Keynesian training, and the MIT Mafia.

“You can’t think about what is happening in the economy constructively, from a policy standpoint, unless you have some theoretical paradigm in mind,” Yellen had told Lemann of the New Yorker in 2014.

One of Lemann’s final observations: “The Fed, not the Treasury or the White House or Congress, is now the primary economic policymaker in the United States, and therefore the world.”

But what if Yellen’s theoretical paradigm is dead wrong?

The woman who “did not see and did not appreciate what the risks were with securitization, the credit rating agencies, the shadow banking system, the SIVs ... until it happened” has led us straight into an abyss.

It’s time to climb out. The Federal Reserve’s leadership must come to grips with its role in creating the extraordinary circumstances in which it now finds itself. It must embrace reforms to regain its credibility.

Even Fedwire finally admitted in August 2016 that the Federal Reserve had lost its mojo, with a story headlined “Years of Fed Missteps Fueled Disillusion with the Economy and Washington.” In an effort to explain rising extremism in American politics in a series called “The Great Unraveling,” Jon Hilsenrath described a Fed confronting “hardened public skepticism and growing self-doubt.”

Mistakes by the Fed included missing the housing bubble and financial crisis, being “blinded” to the slowdown in the growth of worker productivity, and failing to anticipate how inflation behaved in regard to the job market. The Fed’s economic projections of GDP and how fast the economy would grow were wrong time and again.

People are starting to wake up. A Gallup poll showed that Americans’ confidence that the Fed was doing a “good” or “excellent” job had fallen from 53 percent in September 2003 to 38 percent in November 2014. Another poll in April 2016 showed that only 38 percent of Americans had a great deal or fair amount of confidence in Yellen, while 35 percent had little or none – a huge shift from the early 2000s when 70 percent and higher expressed confidence (however misguided) in Greenspan.

In early 2016, Yellen told an audience in New York that it was too bad the government had leaned so heavily on the Fed while “tax and spending policies were stymied by disagreements between Congress and the White House.” Maybe if she hadn’t been throwing money at them, lawmakers might have gotten their house in order.

“The Federal Reserve is a giant weapon that has no ammunition left,” Fisher told CNBC on January 6, 2016.

The Fed must retool and rearm.

First things first. Congress should release the Fed from the bondage of its dual mandate.

A singular focus on maintaining price stability will place the duty of maximizing employment back into the hands of politicians, making them responsible for shaping fiscal policy that ensures American businesses enjoy a traditionally competitive landscape in which to build and grow business.

The added bonus: shedding the dual mandate will discourage future forays into unconventional monetary policy.

Next, the Fed needs to get out of the business of trying to compel people to spend by manipulating inflation expectations. Not only has it introduced a dangerous addiction to debt among all players in the economy, it has succeeded in virtually outlawing saving.

Most seniors pine for a return to the beginning of this century when they could get a five-year jumbo CD with a 5 percent APR, offset by inflation somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 percent. Traditionally, 2 to 3 percentage points above inflation is where that old relic, the fed funds rate, traded. The math worked.

Under ZIRP, only fools save for a rainy day. The floor on overnight rates must be permanently raised to at least 2 percent and Fed officials should pledge to never again breach that floor. Not only will it preserve the functionality of the banking system, it will remind people that saving is good, indeed a virtue. And that debt always has a price.

Limit the number of academic PhDs at the Fed, not just among the leadership but on the staffs of the Board and District Banks. Bring in more actual practitioners – businesspeople who have been on the receiving end of Fed policy, CEOs and CFOs, people who have been on the hot seat, who have witnessed the financialization of the country and believe that American companies should make things and provide services, not just move money around.

Governors should be given terms of five years, like District Bank presidents, with term limits to bring in new blood and fresh ideas.

Grant all the District Bank presidents, not just New York’s, a permanent vote on the FOMC. Why should Wall Street, not Main Street, dominate the Fed’s decision making?

While we’re at it, let’s redraw the Fed’s geographical map to better reflect America’s economic powerhouses.

California’s economy alone is the sixth biggest in the world. Add another Fed Bank to the Twelfth District to better represent how the Western states have flourished over the last hundred years.

Why does Missouri have two Fed banks? Minneapolis and Cleveland can be absorbed into the Chicago Fed. Do Richmond, Philadelphia, and Boston all need Fed District Banks? Consolidate in recognition of the fact that it isn’t 1913 anymore.

Slash the Fed’s bloated Research Department. It’s hard to argue that a thousand Fed economists are productive and providing value-added insight when their forecasting skills are no better than the flip of a coin and half of their studies cannot be replicated.

Send most of the PhD economists back to academia where they belong. Require the rest to focus on research that benefits the Fed, studying how its policies impact American taxpayers and citizens. (Did the Fed do any studies about how ZIRP and QE would impact banking and consumers before it imposed them? No.)

Now take all the money you’ve saved and aim it squarely at Wall Street investment banks intent on always staying one step ahead of the Fed’s regulatory reach. Hire brilliant people for the Fed’s Sup & Reg departments and pay them market rates. Rest assured this will be ground zero of the next crisis.

And mix it up. One of Rosenblum’s students applied for a job at the New York Fed. He came from a blue-collar background, spent seven years in the military, and earned his MBA from SMU on the GI Bill. Smart guy. But he couldn’t get to first base at the New York Fed. They hire people from Yale and Harvard and NYU – people just like themselves. Others need not apply.

Then the top Ivy Leaguers stay for two years and move on to bigger money at Citibank or Goldman Sachs. It’s a tribe that’s been bred over ninety years and slow to change.

But if the culture of extreme deference at the New York Fed (which also exists in District Banks to a lesser degree) is not quashed, regulatory capture will continue with disastrous results. The Fed must give bank examiners the resources they need to understand the ever-evolving financial innovations created by Wall Street and back them up when they challenge high-paid bankers who live to skirt the rules.

Regulators must focus on the big picture as well as nodes of risk. Interconnectedness took down the economy in 2008, not just the shenanigans of a few rogue banks.

Focus on systemic risk and regulation around the FOMC table. Create a post with equal power and authority to that of the chair to focus on supervision and regulation. Yellen talks about monetary policy ad nauseam, but when challenged by the press or Congress on regulatory policy she stumbles and mumbles and does her best doe-in-the-headlights impersonation. Markets need predictability and transparency when it comes to Fed policy, not guesswork, parsing of the chair’s words, and manipulation of FOMC minutes.

Finally, let nature take its course. Reengage creative destruction. Markets by their nature are supposed to be volatile. Zero interest rates prevent the natural failures of weak companies, weighing down the economy with overcapacity for generations.

Recessions might have been more frequent, the financial losses greater for some, but if the Fed had let the economy heal on its own, America would have been stronger in the end and the bedrock of our nation, capitalism, would not have been corrupted.

I could never have imagined how my near decade-long journey at the Federal Reserve would play out.

In the beginning, I had been a “risk radar” to benefit myself and those closest to me. I wanted to stay out of debt and make certain that my children had great educations and a foundation of financial savvy so that they could pursue their versions of the American dream.

But I realize now the stakes are much higher.

We’ve become a nation of haves and have-nots thanks to Fed policies that benefit the wealthiest investors, punish the savers and the retired, and put the nation’s balance sheet at risk.

As consumers on the receiving end of Fed policies, we must reform our education system so that the American dream can be accessible to everyone. We must campaign for Congress to stop hiding behind the Fed’s skirts.

And we must demand that the Fed stop offering excuse after excuse for its failures. Short-term interest rates must return to some semblance of normality and the Fed’s outrageously swollen balance sheet must shrink in size. And most of all, the Fed must never follow Europe by taking interest rates into negative territory.

No more excuses. The Fed’s mandate isn’t to have a perfect world. That only exists in fairy tales, dreams, and the Fed’s econometric models.

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#the fed #fed #the federal reserve #federal reserve #janet yellen #economics #finance #economy #us economy #investing #investment #investments #money #us dollar #global economy #interest rates

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