Fed Chair Yellen’s Amygdala Loaded for Bear

Is the Apocalypse getting closer? You bet your ass!

Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet Yellen said Thursday that she expects the Fed to raise interest rates later this year and then continue gradual increases thereafter during a University of Massachusetts address that ended with her seeking medical attention.

A spokesman for the university said the 69-year-old was fine after being checked out by EMTs and was to continue her schedule which included a faculty dinner at the home of Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy.

A spokesman for the Federal Reserve Board said, “Chair Yellen felt dehydrated at the end of a long speech under bright lights. As a precaution, she was seen by EMT staff on-site at U-Mass Amherst.” He confirmed that she planned to continue with her schedule.

Yellen was delivering the annual Philip Gamble Memorial Lecture at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in the Fine Arts Center Concert Hall.

Yellen appeared to lose her place in her speech and said, “I think I’ll stop here.” As faculty thanked her EMTs rushed up to her and walked with her into a waiting room where she was checked out.

Notice that she was so screwed up in the speech that somebody watching said, “Holy shit! She’s having a stroke! Get EMT’s here now, and have them standing by at the ready!” It was much worse than they implied.

It is not a good sign when your Fed Chair’s amygdala is in such high gear that she strokes out in the middle of a speech at a college. I seriously doubt she got to that point because she hadn’t had anything to drink. You’d get thirsty long before you started confusedly mumbling nursery rhymes.

This is the amygdala. When your brain is sequentially loading visual processing circuits, then logic circuits, then facial expression circuits, those brain regions are loading and then resting and recouping. Meanwhile, the amygdala is going non-stop during it all, monitoring everything from facial expressions around you, to subtle biofeedback, to ideas in the back of your mind. Add a little factoid, like maybe that the end of the world is in five days and everyone is going to blame you, and it is easy to up the amygdala’s metabolic rate just fast enough that the blood supply can’t replenish things quick enough.

Once that begins, there are physiological feelings – I’d imagine like what someone having a stroke would begin to feel. Occasionally vision will be affected in some way. That data gets added to the feed, and now your amygdala is firing even faster. Not only will everyone blame you – you won’t be able to escape because you’ve just gone blind and the whole left side of your body is paralyzed!

The results can range from a transient confusion, to a full lights-out situation. What is funny is that libs seem accustomed to these little events. When they have them, they sit around a bit, and then go right back to what they were doing as if nothing happened. If I’m suddenly dragging a paralyzed leg behind me as I hop on one foot to my next appointment, I’m going to see a doctor about that at some point, even if it goes away five minutes later. But not liberals. To them, a weekly stroke is just a normal occurrence. I sometimes wonder if the stroke seems normal because even at rest their brain feels fucked up and overloaded somehow.

I’m guessing that here, the transient confusion instead of a full-on drop-and-possum is a good sign that we still have a bit of time left to prep, blood-moon or not. But have no illusions – it is coming and the rabbits know.

Apocalypse cometh™