Sean Hannity reminds me of what would happen if you pumped hot air into a pile of dog shit. A desecration of the truth that must not go unpunished, for this world to have the least semblance of right or wrong.
And unfortunately, not everyone has more decades to lose chasing empty souls down the road to Perdition.
Over the past four decades the U.S. stock market has gone full Ponzi. Stock buybacks are now 4% of GDP, equal to the U.S. Federal deficit by way of the tax cut. Whereas previously it was a means for investment, now it's become a means for disinvestment:
American Prospect: The Tax Cut Is Not About Investment:
"The Republicans’ Tax Act is supposed to provide companies with extra after-tax profits that, through productive investments, will create jobs for Americans. Instead of helping to rebuild the vanishing middle class, however, the tax savings will further enrich shareholders through stock buybacks and cash dividends. With share prices inflated by stock buybacks, the richest U.S. households will extract even more value from the economy"
Now we know why they purposefully accelerated large tax refunds. Its wasn't for the optics, it was to bolster the imploding economy:
Of course, compliments of Trumptopian smoke and mirrors, the Federal deficit aka. "Keynesian stimulus for hardened criminals" is obfuscating what is taking place in the real economy. Because if we take the Atlanta Fed Q1 GDP estimate and subtract out the chasmic deficit, we get this:
What I call "Honest GDP":
Getting back to the Hunger Games casino, once upon a time the stock market was primarily intended as a way of raising capital for companies - be that through initial public offerings or secondary stock placements. In other words, it was about facilitating real investment. Starting in the early 1980s, stock buybacks were legalized and the concept of maximizing shareholder value took center stage in corporate finance. From that point forward, the stock market became more about companies shrinking equity capital than raising equity capital. In other words, instead of facilitating investment the casino now facilitates disinvestment.
The agency theory of management posits that the shareholder is one level removed from the "unseemly" decisions that may have to be undertaken by management. For example outsourcing the entire company. Agency managers are incentivized to put shareholder first, country not first. I think we all see where I'm going with this. Privately held companies concerned about ongoing market access would have been far less likely to have undertaken the actions that have now led to trade wars. Whereas public corporations worried about next quarter's profits and operating under "free trade" had no such qualms. All of this economic dislocation took place under the imprimatur of MBA Finance. Conflict of interest is now embedded in the U.S. political system on a scale that no other country endures. Those Americans paranoid about trusting government need to start thinking about who is actually controlling it.
Now, under the auspice of "MAGA", the apologists for endless greed and free trade have re-invented themselves into stalwart patriots tasked with closing the barn door now that the horses are out. Trade wars to pretend that they were never willing accomplices to human history's largest estate sale. Be that as it may, their habitual plundering of the Treasury has taken the Hunger Games to its logical bad ending.
In taking their customary corruption to level '11' Full Donny, they have now put the all or nothing "system" at risk.
The "system" is now binary leveraged to the overnight futures market.
Along similar lines to what I said above, IPOs used to be about raising capital. However, the new breed of +$1 billion "unicorn" IPOs is all about insiders cashing in after a prolonged incubation period as a private company. This allows the insiders to keep a much larger share of the pie.
Which is why this entire New Year rally is compliments of Wall Street's IPO pump and dump machine. By way of priming the pump for record supply.
"We are about to get hit with a perfect storm of IPOs, and regardless of how good this new merchandise might be, I’m concerned that the market won’t be able to handle it all without taking, maybe, all stocks lower”
"Lyft publicly filed its IPO registration on Friday, kicking off what could be a record-setting year for multibillion-dollar private tech companies hitting the public markets."
I hope you enjoyed it
"I’m concerned that the market won’t be able to handle it all without taking, maybe, all stocks lower”
Overnight:
"Brendan Ahern, chief investment officer at Krane Funds Advisors in New York, which manages the KraneShares Bosera MSCI China A ETF, said: “I am almost crying. We have built the (ETF) in anticipation of this event."
KBA is up 24.6 percent so far this year."
Friday afternoon:
The all time high level of cash balances was March ten years ago.
The all time low level of cash was this week:
For the sanctimonious hypocrites aka. The conservative movement. The good old days of playing stupid are over.
Sadly, not everyone has another half century to waste wandering in the desert of failed ideas.
Sadly, not everyone has another half century to waste wandering in the desert of failed ideas.
