The Temple of Greed is Already Collapsing

These are the last days of Extend and Pretend and its farce spectacle. It's a policy that only ever appealed to feeble minded buffoons and their numerous acolytes. For anyone who doesn't mind a bit of crunch in their peanut butter, this vacation from reality has been one mind numbing rat race to nowhere...

If you think the lunacy has all gone into manic overdrive, you are not imagining things. The stock market is the ultimate barometer of social mood and when it hit escape velocity in early January, after four years of hand wringing, then all of the buffoonish behaviours of this era hit overdrive as well.

Collapse Is Already Underway

But this rapid retraction of the "animal spirits" that we are now witnessing in real-time is not imaginary either. The blow-off is ending, even as I write. The Bitcoin phenomenon, while a side show, was a manifestation of peak euphoria and delusion. The gold wipeout this past week was another canary in the coal mine. As ZH points out, gold was the canary in the coal mine pre-Lehman. Also, under the radar, the German Dax had a mini Flash Crash this week as well. As the Elliot Wave types remind us, social mood is the final arbiter of economic confidence, and now we are seeing manic euphoria morph into fear and risk aversion.

One Weak Pillar Remaining

So, we are seeing significant fraying divergences - similar to pre-Lehman - yet they are being largely ignored, only because the stock market is still holding up near all time highs. The crowd at large are fixated on the Dow, so as long as that pillar remains standing, they are oblivious to every other sign of risk. On Friday, with weak earnings reports from IBM and GE the Dow absorbed major damage, but staggered to an even close. All this means of course is that the crowd at large will once again be very late in realizing that the collapse is already well underway and it's too late to do anything about it...

...We Interrupt this Faux News, AC 360, media farce, manhunt, drone strike, sports game, election distraction to announce that during commercial break, the entire economy was sold to the highest foreign bidder. 

No need to come in on Monday.