And from my home country, no less. This will be the gift that keeps on giving for the dunces who wrote this timely story...
h/t: Elliot Wave International (STU: Feb. 13, 2013)
It would have to be a competition between Australia and Canada for which country learned the least from the 2008 debacle. Everything that the U.S. (and many European) countries did leading up to the events of 2008, are now being repeated by these two aforementioned nations, under the illusion that their banking systems are superior to the rest of the world and hence impervious to a global financial meltdown. As I wrote in November, almost everything Canadians believe form the differences between their housing markets and those in the U.S., are based on totally false assumptions. In a nutshell, in the U.S. the lender bears the majority burden of interest rate and refinancing risk, in Canada it's the borrower, so we'll see how all that turns out for the middle class.
More importantly, these types of headline stories like the ones above, are exactly as we should expect after a four year rally that is now running on literally nothing more than exhaust fumes. Unfortunately, major bull rallies always begin on heavy volumes not on volumes that recently have collapsed to a mere quarter of what they were five years ago.
Bull Markets Don't Start From a Vertical Position
Granted this Central Bank sponsored HFT love fest has gone on far longer than any of us endangered species bears would care to admit, and that's the whole point. Bull markets start when investors are generally skeptical and there is capital on the sidelines, not when investors have been forced into the markets by zero percent interest rates and when every market pessimist has been taken out to the woodshed and shot.
The other similar story that caused me to shit a brick this week came from Barry Ritholtz telling us that the secular bear market was closer to the end than the beginning and that a new secular bull market was on the "horizon":
"Regardless of your answer to our broad question, there is one thing that I believe to be clear: We are much closer to the end of this secular cycle than to the beginning. Many optimists — most notably, famed technician Ralph Acampora — believe the secular bear market has ended. Even skeptics have to agree that we are more likely in the 7th or 8th inning than earlier stages of the game. Only the “America is Japan” crowd thinks we are in the 3rd or 4th inning."
Let me get this straight, the United States will be the first nation in the history of the planet that borrows its way out of recession, that outsources the majority of jobs and industries to foreign nations with no plan to get them back, and that monetizes trillions in debt to keep its financial markets levitated while policy-makers make speeches and campaign non-stop? Only the self-nominated "best and brightest" haven't figured out that this is all temporary.
The Only Bull Market Is In Bullshit
This would all be funny if we could pretend that this ongoing economic fiasco hasn't been going on for 13+ years, based upon accumulated excesses dating back decades, however we know too much at this juncture, to be so cavalier. The average middle class individual does not have the luxury to wax eloquently about new bull markets on the horizon as she watches her income and job prospects circling the drain. And it's precisely due to all of the various interventions I mentioned in the prior paragraph, that the process of rebuilding a sound economy after 2008 never even got started. Worse yet, these buffoons in politics and the media who constantly deluge us with their non-stop bullshit pollyanna propaganda are of course the most insulated from the daily economic realities and therefore will be the last ones to realize how fucking stupid they are. All at everyone else's expense again, of course.
The State of the Union:
This is what $5 trillion in additional Federal Debt Buys Under The Current Model...
Corporate Profits As Percent of GDP - Is This A Great Fucking Economy - Or What ?
This would all be funny if we could pretend that this ongoing economic fiasco hasn't been going on for 13+ years, based upon accumulated excesses dating back decades, however we know too much at this juncture, to be so cavalier. The average middle class individual does not have the luxury to wax eloquently about new bull markets on the horizon as she watches her income and job prospects circling the drain. And it's precisely due to all of the various interventions I mentioned in the prior paragraph, that the process of rebuilding a sound economy after 2008 never even got started. Worse yet, these buffoons in politics and the media who constantly deluge us with their non-stop bullshit pollyanna propaganda are of course the most insulated from the daily economic realities and therefore will be the last ones to realize how fucking stupid they are. All at everyone else's expense again, of course.
The State of the Union:
This is what $5 trillion in additional Federal Debt Buys Under The Current Model...
Corporate Profits As Percent of GDP - Is This A Great Fucking Economy - Or What ?
