Just feeling really vindicated over here right now about calling the economy The Imaginary Number Game for the last 15 years. As Drew Carey says, the rules are made up and the score doesn't matter. It's about status. It's about being in the club. This is why you and I live and die by the imaginary number game. Yet people like Trump can, by the numbers, be more catastrophic failures in greater debt than we could ever imagine for stretches of decades, yet still continue to live richer than we could ever imagine. Because if you're in the club, your status will always provide cushion and bounce-back from any fall. What's it take to be in the club? Not imaginary numbers. It may play a part in gaining or losing membership, but the core of the status game is social, not numerical. It's about having social connections to the club, serving the interests of the club, and, above all, convincing others performatively that you're in the club. Being known as having status is self-fulfilling, and trumps the rules of the imaginary number game always. This is the difference between a homeless person who goes to prison for 20 years for stealing $20, and someone like Trump who can walk around spending millions casually while being hundreds of millions in debt. It's all a big lie. Imposed on the majority by and for the few, who only pretend the rules exist to provide mechanism for the legitimacy and execution of the power of their status over the majority. As soon as that's not what it's about, it doesn't exist. As Alan Moore puts it, history's greatest magic trick.