The Corpuscle

You may recall the stories after September 11, 2001 about certain, somehow mysteriously still unidentifiable parties who apparently bought airline stocks short, or long, or sold their shorts, or bought their long-johns, or whatever it was they did that allowed them to end up making -- you should pardon the expression -- a killing on the disasters of that day.

Now, I'm not a big advocate of these notions that the world is run by secret societies, or that there are certain groups of the rich & powerful who have secret meetings in Redwood forests somewhere and dress-up in strange clothes to perform bizarre ceremonies and... wait, I guess that last part really happens, but you know what I mean. I don't believe in the Illuminati or the Elders of Zion or any of that crap.

Still, I think most of us know by now that the deck of life is stacked against most of us, and I think the stack breaks out this way: there are those who have inside information, and there are those who don't. We see this all the time in the supposedly Invisible Hand of the Marketplace. Of course, the only thing that's really invisible in that instance is the inside information that will make you a killing, and the only people to whom it's invisible are the shmucks like me who don't have access to it because we don't know the right people.

But as I say, or if I haven't said it yet I will say it now: inside information does not an Illuminati make.

If you read Imperial Hubris by Not-so-Anonymous-Anymore, you might recall the author making mention of the relationship between tapes released by bin Laden and the approaching attack on 9/11. We've had a number of tapes from various al Qaeda clowns lately. It doesn't mean anything, I'm sure.

The prices of precious metals on the commodities markets are at their highest levels in years. I'm sure it means nothing.

Nevertheless... lately... I've been having the creeps.