The Age of Greed Will End With a Big Fucking Bang

But don't tell anyone because it's a "secret". Anyway, no one will believe you if you tell them that you can't borrow your way out of a debt crisis.

This time the psychopaths took their own bait. The magnitude of this clusterfuck ensures that Wall Street will be obliterated. Among other things...

Financial Death Star 2.0: 25 Megatons

Guaranteed to Obliterate Globalization (or your money back, literally)
Global Central Banks finally stopped dicking around with chump change and have now created a new and far more powerful financial WMD, roughly 25 times the magnitude of 2007-era subprime. The end result is record global debt, record money printing, record margin debt, record U.S. stock market, record leveraged loans, record home prices, record billionaires, record poverty, record foodstamps, record wealth inequality, record mental illness, record gun sales, record mass shootings, all papered over by record bullshit spewed by record dumbfucks.

This should do the trick... 

Terminator 2014: Rise of the Machines

Steven Hawking Warns of Our Best and Maybe Last Creation (May, 1, 2014)
“Success in creating Artificial Intelligence would be the biggest event in human history. Unfortunately, it might also be the last, unless we learn how to avoid the risks.”

Too late. Artificial intelligence is already rampant, especially in politics, business, economics and all other parts of the Idiocracy, and it's not as good as the average moron thinks it is. Meanwhile, the day when the average computer became smarter than the average human was about 35 years ago when the Commodore 64 was invented. Right now a Wii controller is smarter than the average dumbfuck. One of these things is getting smarter with each passing day, and the other one is watching Faux News and Jerry Springer...

Buy The Fucking Collapse (BTFC)

Everyone thinks that THEY will be the one who gets out ahead of everyone else...

The Branded Idiocracy: All Things Fake

PEAK DELUSION: All Aboard
Despite ever-increasing insanity, fewer and fewer people question the status quo. Consumer "ConnedFidence" is back at decade highs even though household median income is now $5,000 (10%) lower than when ConnedFidence peaked at the same level in 2007. And there's nothing but non-stop bullshit to keep incomes from heading much lower. This is what happens when a society has been lied to by sociopathic Mad Men for too long. It can no longer tell what's real anymore. It reaches a widely embraced state of manic PEAK DELUSION, after which begins the archaeological excavation.

The Butter Rich Ponzi Economy
Natural Economy-Rich Flavor (Contains No Economy)...

Blundering Towards Collapse

A society as cynical as this one doesn't need lies; it just has widely ignored corruption
For anyone who isn't watching the Kardashians 24x7 or otherwise searching for missing airliners, it's a widely acknowledged fact that in addition to the Fed printing money to buy stocks, this "cycle" has been all about financial gimmickry, pretty much anything and everything a totally corrupt society could come up with: Tax inversions, leveraged buyouts, debt-funded dividends, debt funded stock buybacks. These gimmicks are all of course public knowledge, but don't take my word for it, listen to the "Mad Man":

Everyone's Onboard for Another Ground and Pound

Belief in the Grand Lie is Complete
If you're wondering why everyone seems so fat and happy, it's because they are:  The Dow Jones Mind Trick has artificially manipulated the "consumer" sugar buzz back to decade highs. All while ETraders borrow unprecedented amounts of money to gamble in the same casino that robbed them the last two times.
   

Blowback. The gift that keeps on giving.

Guerrilla Warfare: Lose Moral Authority. Lose the War
 BIN LADEN WOULD LATER SAY that the United States had always been his enemy. He dated his hatred for America to 1982, “when America permitted the Israelis to invade Lebanon and the American Sixth Fleet helped them.” He recalled the carnage: “blood and severed limbs, women and children sprawled everywhere. Houses destroyed along with their occupants and high rises demolished over their residents…. The situation was like a crocodile meeting a helpless child, powerless except for his screams.”
[The Looming Tower (p. 151)]

Ignoring the Y2K (and Lehman) Indicators

In the Era of Risk Amplification and Oblivious Consumption Drones

Ponzi Capitalism: The Ultimate War Generation Machine

100 Years since WWI. What have we learned? Less than nothing

Tomorrow is the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the "War to end all wars". WWI. Self-absorbed cynics are surprised to find that 100 years later, human proclivity towards war is alive and well. They see a world wherein the top 85 billionaires own as much wealth as the bottom 3.5 billion, and they wonder "why can't everyone just get along?". 
Economic and political oppression leads to wars. Always. Every time. No exceptions.

Living the Grand Lie: Three Decades of "Rational Self-Indulgence"

Detroit proves that Globalization is just a massive fucking lie

Under the textbook theory of "creative destruction", capitalism will destroy certain jobs and industries and create new ones in their place. Detroit has been experiencing "creative destruction" for decades now and we see that it's really all about destruction and very little creation.

It's a lot easier to eliminate jobs than it is to create new ones. This is a lesson the econo-dunces will learn the hard way when their faculty positions are eliminated and their next best option pays twenty-five cents on the dollar...

A Binary IQ Test: Do You Trust the Psychopaths on Wall Street?

If you said "no" then you are likely more intelligent than anyone you've ever met, and ultimately far more solvent... 
   

Ignoring the Lehman Indicators: In the Era of Risk Amplification

The dutiful money whores are following Wall Street straight into the abyss, no questions asked. All according to their "risk amplification plan"...

Crumbling Empire

No Pride. Just Hubris

This is THE ERA OF RISK AMPLIFICATION (I Get it Now...)

Globalization is to be obliterated. Fucking buried. I like it - thanks to legions of dumbfucks for coming up with the idea...

Ponzi Capitalism: The Real Welfare State

A world of fake choices, all predicated on the assumption of indefinite exploitation 

The asinine debate around "redistribution" continues unabated. Profits (% of GDP) have never been higher and wages never lower, however we're still being told daily by man-boys that the U.S. is teetering on the brink of "unfettered socialism". Give me a fucking break. One thing both sides in this ludicrous debate don't want to admit is that the heavy duty "redistribution" that is occurring is from poor nations to wealthy nations in the form of the globalized Ponzi trade scheme that has factory slaves working in Third World nations for ten cents on the dollar relative to what we make - exporting the wage deflation that makes 0% interest rates possible. Only a self-absorbed jackass assumes that cappuccino baristas deserve a wage that's 10x higher than someone making the latest iPhone...

Printing money to buy stocks: the dumbest fucking idea in history

The Fed is leaving ETraders high and dry

The Fed is reducing asset purchases into a weakening economy, leaving Etraders holding the bag.

Below, the Fed balance sheet with velocity of money. Fed attempts to encourage more reckless borrowing have largely failed (except of course at the Federal level):

Opinion Television: Choose Your Own Infotainment Enema

"From the most trusted name in fair and balanced bullshit"

"In general, the greater the understanding, the greater the delusion: the more intelligent, the less sane" - George Orwell, 1984

The best laid plans of truth avoiders, often go awry...

The Size of Collapse Equals the Size of the Bubble

Today's mega-bubble is a profit bubble, within a debt bubble, within a globalized ponzi trade bubble 
There is no way to compare today's "valuations" with anything in past history. Only the jackasses on Wall Street and ETraders still pretend that there is any rational basis for comparison. Today's inflated asset values are the end result of three decades of serial asset inflation now culminating in unprecedented outsourcing, debt-sponsored stock buybacks, rampant monetary inflation and 0% interest rates for six years straight.
Today's markets are priced for obliteration

The Business of Continuous Warfare

Roughly half of the world is engaged in some form of military action right now. The U.S. is NOT highlighted below because the U.S. conducts all of its 134 wars in other countries. The colour of that global operation is money green.

Careful What You Wish For

The HALO Crash scenario is now the only logical outcome

Any one investor can still get out of risk markets at this late juncture, but it's impossible for everyone get out or even meaningfully reduce risk, without generating a self-induced panic. Just as momentum has pushed the Dow to new all time highs for over a year now, so too will momentum fuel a feedback loop to the downside...

All Ponzi Schemes Collapse Suddenly and Violently

This One Will Be No Exception.

The Biggest Trading Disaster In Human History

Has been in silent preparation for five years now. 
The Age of Hazardous Immorality will end with a big fucking bang. A society that doesn't learn from its mistakes gets buried by its mistakes...

The Days of Rage: Batten Down the Hatches

The frontiers of the Globalized Empire are disintegrating in real-time. When the Dow catches down to reality, the facade will collapse like a cheap tent...

Keep Dumping Until Shit Breaks

Wall Street's tried and true IPO Strategy
Wall Street's IPO Pump and Dump had a bit of a "hiccup" here in July with only 9 priced so far, but never fear, 20 more are scheduled before the end of the month

Freedom Incorporated

Ban Contingency Lawsuits aka. "ambulance chasing"
No country run by and for lawyers will ever be "free"

HFT: Wall Street's Zero Day Virus

I just read this article about a hacker attack on the Nasdaq, called "How Russian Hackers Stole the Nasdaq". You can't be serious. Russians didn't steal the fucking Nasdaq, they wrote the Nasdaq. High Frequency Trading (HFT) is the biggest zero day computer virus in the history of mankind. It's Skynet...

The smart money has already left the building

Bagholder: "a bagholder is a shareholder left holding shares of worthless stocks"

Lifestyles of the Rich and Disgusting

One thing all of these ultra-wealthy celebrities and billionaires have in common is that they are all totally oblivious as to how most of the world lives. Which is all the more egregious given that they constantly flaunt themselves as the ideal to be emulated, despite the fact that the odds of achieving their level of wealth is the limit approaching impossible...

Slowly at first, then all at once

This latent disaster has conned all but a handful of people. Ok, you and me. The media are back to discussing Malaysian airliners, Wall Street has its head in the feed bag; and the comfort-seeking masses always look away when they're bent over the log
In summary, the economy is slowing sharply, Europe is self-imploding (yes, again), small caps are tanking, recession stocks are rolling over, bonds are rallying and the Dow Jones Illusional Average is now held aloft by layoff announcements from Wintel. Willy Gates wants to monetize his shiteware while there are still morons willing to spend five minutes re-booting. Too much truth for one day? There's an app for that, it's called "CNN"...

Alice in Blunderland

We've been hearing about downed Malaysian airliners for half of the year. And for the other half of the year, all we've been talking about is the Ukraine. 

So now we can talk about downed Malaysian airliners IN THE Ukraine. 

Who makes this shit up? No blog can possibly compete with these headlines...

A Gold Standard Can't Fix Corruption

Money ultimately is never backed by gold or anything else for that matter

  

Money is only ever backed by the integrity of the prevailing government, which in turn is backed by the integrity of the prevailing society...

Life is Wasted on South Park Nation

Corporate profits are worshipped above life itself. This experiment is ending - God will render final verdict on the new Sodom and Gomorrah
This just in: Microsoft to layoff 18,000 employees (20% of the workforce). Because $22 billion in annual profits is not enough.

Twilight Empire: Fifty Years of Blunders

Nothing was learned in Vietnam

Next year marks the fiftieth "anniversary" of the U.S. invasion of Vietnam. Vietnam is called the "10,000 Day War", because the French and Australians had been fighting insurgency in that country long before the U.S. got involved.

The Soviets had their denouement in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989, immediately after which the Soviet Empire collapsed. Of course, the British had three failed wars in Afghanistan long before the Soviets, prior to the dissolution of that empire. None of this "history" deterred the Milton Bradley strategists in the Pentagon from trying their own fiasco...

Party Like It's 1929: BYOU (Bring Your Own Underwear)

The Dow is doing its part by holding up while everything real collapses in the background
Rupert Murdoch made an unsolicited bid to buy TimeWarner today and thereby assimilate the last part of the U.S. media he doesn't already own. It's hard to imagine how the "quality" of American infotainment propaganda could go any lower, but we are constantly surprised by a new lower common denominator. To wit, I keep seeing the same type of vacuous articles everyday, conjecturing as to why the pseudo-economy isn't "picking up steam". Why are jobless consumers not spending? Why are companies not hiring in the U.S. - when they can get labour in China for ten cents on the dollar? It's all a fucking mystery!!! It's been an "interesting" waste of time - these past few years - waiting for the morons at large to come to terms with the fact that their mass consumption party is already over and the only thing keeping it going is their own manic self-delusion, their fondness for borrowing themselves into oblivion, and their willingness to gamble in the same casino that robbed them the last two times...

A Collapse to Call Our Own

Collapse will be backdated to when the silent billions were enslaved to Globalization

When archaeologists "pinpoint" the beginning of the collapse of the industrial age, they will backdate it before this time, by decades. To the point in time when the ponzinomic pseudo-economy became a zero sum game between wages and corporate profits. It's not going to date from Dow collapse when an entitled few were startled by the sudden shattering of their sacred illusion.

Those of us still awaiting "the collapse" have what is known as survivor bias. Most people who will be ultimately affected by final collapse have already been ploughed under. They have no voice. A critical aspect of maintaining the illusion of the status quo is pretending that the people who have already been abandoned, just don't exist. It's a clear indication of some measure of callousness to discuss collapse as if it exists in the future, when for the majority it has already occurred...

Spain (Italy, Portugal) @ Full Ponzi (Revisited)

Instant insolvency, just add panic

Now we know who has (still) been buying down the yield on Spanish Ponzi bonds. Spanish banks. Unfortunately, unlike regular loans, bonds are "marked to market" daily meaning when they sell off, Spanish banks will be rendered insolvent instantly. Considering that Spanish banks hold ~37% of Spain's debt, that pricing "decision" will be made by the market for the other two thirds of outstanding debt, not by the banks. All it will take is for investors to realize that 2.8% is not an appropriate yield for ponzi bonds.
Momentum feedback loop: Gains from ponzi bonds have masked deep losses from loan write-downs. That sword cuts both ways...

Bull Trap: High Stakes Game

Bets by small investors on continued upside are at a 3 year high. Bets by large investors on a "Black Swan" event are at an all time high.

Billionaires are betting millions on financial collapse. ETraders are betting on a Tesla rally.

After all, "Nothing is solved and everybody knows it". Some people always know more than others...

The Days of Rage: The Last 48 Hours

Dow Prozac is wearing off and it's still at maximum dosage

Preparing for the HALO Crash

HALO: High Altitude. Low Opening
aka. Skydiving without a parachute

"Collapse is inevitable and everyone knows it"

The Almighty Power of Conformity
This Walmartized society is bounding merrily towards oblivion

"Even the high and mighty assembling at the Swiss resort recognize, now, that grotesque inequality is the greatest threat to world peace. Their answer: Party on!" (Jan. 21, 2014)
"The bottom half of the world’s population owns the same as the richest 85 people in the world.”

WEF: "Worsening Wealth Gap Seen as Biggest Risk Facing the World in 2014"

Well, not everyone "gets it"
"By almost any measure, the world is better than it has ever been." (Bill Gates, Jan. 2014)

Greed is Blindness

The Biggest Mega Bubble in Human History

This post is dedicated to all of the morons who keep denying that the markets are in a new bubble. Of course none of those people read this blog anyway since Faux News and TMZ take up so much time.
The collapse will be fucking epic...

The Globalization greedfest is ending. HALO Crash is on deck

Most people just assume that there will always be Third World factory slaves working for them in exchange for worthless IOUs

These new-fangled "socialist" accoutrements:  sovereign ponzi bonds, *special* dividends, stock buybacks are all compliments of Third World wage slaves and massive recurring trade deficits. Now the $25 trillion Financial Death Star 2.0 is already starting to implode and Skynet hasn't even had a system test yet.

Canary Meet Coalmine

There's a country we all know well, which in terms of organic growth peaked decades ago. Subsequently it has been using an "eight ball" of fiscal and monetary heroin in order to patch the ever growing crater where its economy used to be. The corrupt politicians take full advantage of the attenuating boom/bust cycle to get elected and then immediately renege on all of their promises for "hope and change". With each cycle of this recurring madness, there is less and less left of the real economy remaining, as fiscal debt has soared to log Ponzi levels. This malfeasance is allowed to continue because the government is controlled by cynical geriatrics who just want this all to continue during their lifetimes so they can dump the irresponsibly accumulated debt onto the kids. The latest iteration of this circus is now ending amid soaring inflation and stagnant incomes. The government is printing money to buy stocks in a futile attempt to keep the market from collapsing (yes, again). United States? China? (stop guessing)

Japan...

Is this good for the grandchildren?

Or does this all have the life expectancy of a mid-air grenade?
If every voter approached the polls requiring one question to be answered - is this policy, law, political buffoon, good for subsequent generations or just this one - then the vector would turn from down to up and this generation would start to pull its own weight as opposed to liquidating the assets created by prior generations.

Clearly, what we have today is the exact opposite, because I can't get through my day without some jackass telling me to my face, "I hope this all works during my lifetime". Hence, every decision is taken with an ever-shorter gratification in mind. And, big surprise, everything gets steadily worse, even as the surveyed masses decry "the nation [insert country here] is heading in the wrong direction". 

That's all there is to this entire fucking fiasco. Until this infantile behaviour ends, the vector is straight into the abyss, and no one has any right to expect anything different.
As we've learned from the untimely arrival of the Idiocracy, 500 years early, the future has a way of arriving way ahead of time.

Are You A Commie?

Because if you are, I can't like you

But if you're a Fascist, that's different. A Fascist is a reformed Commie who likes capitalism. Both embrace authoritarianism. The difference is that the Commie forces equality down your throat and the Fascist forces inequality down your throat. 

But the worst of all are those fucking "socialists..."

Game of Dumbfucks: Held Hostage by Morons

An army of Forrest Gumps are running the globe
As long as this clusterfuck works to the benefit of an ever-smaller and ever-wealthier minority, the globalized ponzi scheme will continue to discard more and more long-term employees with each passing day. All while Rain Man & Company wait for the economy to float back from China.

  

"Since 1929, all stock-market rallies have had something in common that this one doesn’t". I'll take a stab - an economy? Brilliant !

Artificial Intelligence: Precision Without Accuracy

Stocks are "fairly valued" when extrapolating the impossible into the indefinite future
I constantly read pseudo-intellectual Wall Street bullshit telling me that the earnings ratio for this that or the other asset class is x.xx which is x% above or below the "historical norm". I've even posted a few thousand of those stats right here. These pundits have the studied precision of a tea leaf reader handing out lottery numbers. Unfortunately, as we saw in 2008, those types of temporary pseudo-statistics represent nothing more than a set of interdependent asinine assumptions which conveniently extrapolate the impossible into the indefinite future. These half-assed guestimates have the shelf-life of a rotten banana. However, as we know, that won't stop the better part of the Idiocracy from taking advice from their esteemed roller coaster advisers that stocks are still "fairly priced", never mind profit margins being at the highest level in recorded history at the expense of a balanced economy. Yes, this is all just history's largest-ever circle jerk...

The Decaying Idiocracy: A Stagnant Monoculture

"Idiocracy"

"Advertising, commercialism, and cultural anti-intellectualism have run rampant and dysgenic pressure has resulted in a uniformly unthinking society devoid of intellectual curiosity, social responsibility, and coherent notions of justice and human rights."

The human race's greatest enemy is the human race. Like a 400 pound fat man, this society can no longer get out of its own fucking way.

Volatility Implosion Explosion

Life After the Dow Jones Prozac Dispenser

Adventures in Central Planning and mind control, destined to end with a big fucking bang...

Time to Pay the Piper: There's No Free Lunch

The bill is way past due on this five year vacation from reality
Now that the pseudo-recovery is "picking up speed", the Idiocracy has conveniently forgotten the Faustian Bargain they made between long-term jobs and the stock market. There is a price to be paid for all of this mindless mass consumption: $Everything (no refunds)...