It has only been a few minutes since my previous blog post that was based upon a news announcement, this morning, that the Republican House of Representatives planned to offer its own bill to end the government shut down and debt limit crisis. Ironically, almost as soon as the new blog was posted (and, I’ll admit, I was very disturbed by this news), I saw the subsequent headline: Republican Leaders Back Off New Plan.
House Republican leaders struggled on Tuesday to devise a new proposal to reopen the government and alter parts of the president’s health care law after a plan presented behind closed doors to the Republican rank and file failed to attract enough support immediately to pass.
After more than two hours, Republican leaders walked back from a plan that had emerged this morning. Speaker John A. Boehner told reporters there were “no decisions about what exactly we will do.”
While I am amazed, and relatively pleased, at how fast all of this happened, it opens a question for me: Is it possible to accurately model human behavior of this sort? I wonder if Mandelbrot’s study of uneven shapes and fractile patterns offers a clue. Or, perhaps, Rene Thom’s catastrophe theory can be applied to the political/financial realm. Are we looking at nonlinear phase reversals? In the back of my mind, I suspect that there is an order to this apparent chaos. Some suggest that we should consider fluid dynamics.
It eludes me as I am not sufficiently expert in higher mathematics. But, I suspect others have a better handle on things, and I welcome pointers and opinions. One thing is clear enough, the financial markets have reacted very little to either the original announcement of a plan by the Republican House, nor to the announcement that the plan was dead. For my part, I seem to have had a visceral reaction to both announcements, as the implications seemed enormous to me. Now, I will have to make an effort not to be too caught up in the Republican political drama and posturing.
