Assumptions

All societies live and die by their assumptions. This one will be no different. The default assumption of this current Ponzi economic model is that the human population can continue growing and wasting egregious amounts of natural resources, with no dire consequence to the human race. Unfortunately, below we see just the latest overwhelming proof that this is wishful thinking of the highest order. So while I am sickened to realize the extent to which the human race has desecrated this planet, I console myself with knowing that the consumption-oriented lifestyle driving this dramatic increase in pollution (including carbon), is itself premised upon false and unsustainable assumptions...

Greed and Kapitalism

Why is it that when the market was at its low after Lehman in March 2009, no one wanted to own stocks. Yet, now four years later, no one can think of a reason not to own them, even though today's rumour was that North Korea is now preparing for war with the South...The Dow was up 67 points on the news - yet another all time high (yes, we also got news of fewer jobs outsourced this month than last month...). 

Pure blinding greed, that's all. Nothing more, nothing less. So if people are not acting particularly rationally at this juncture, we have to take into account the fact that they are guzzling the Kool-Aid by the barrel full...

Vertical Takeoff and "Landing"

People reading this blog think "this guy writes the same fucking thing every day!".  That's right - global policy-makers propagate the same asinine policies every day, and then I point out how ludicrous they are, every day. The beatings will continue until morale improves...

Just today we learned that North Korea threatened the U.S. with a pre-emptive nuclear attack. The Dow reached a new all time high on the news...

Something Wicked This Way Comes

No surprise, Obama's election, re-election, the "economy", and latent calls for gun control are all factors that have been a boon for "militia" group recruitment. Some take exception with the criteria by which these "clubs" are branded as militias. That's not the point, the point is that there is a clear rallying cry for these groups to galvanize around, and unless the definition of a "militia" has changed in the meantime, the current set of circumstances is having a major impact on affiliation i.e. a 10x increase since 2008. Apparently when Bush was in power, the militia-inclined deemed their country to be safe, even though they were being sold into slavery the entire time...(I don't know where they got that picture of Freddy Krueger with an M1 carbine).  Full article here...

Lord of the Flies

This society is Lord of the Flies writ large. The adults left the building a long time ago and their infantile descendants have taken over the planet. We need not wonder why the developed nations turned their backs on the abject poor in the rest of the world, when they don't even take care of their own...

The Silence of the Lambs

Yesterday we learned that there are more billionaires than ever - 10x as many as 1987. The gap between the ultra-wealthy and working poor has never been wider in the U.S. The "Atlas-like" CEOs of Ayn Rand lore take home a mere 244 times what the average American makes in a year - by far the biggest CEO pay gap in U.S. history. And today, not coincidentally, the Dow just hit a new all time high, eclipsing its last peak from 2007. All it took was $9 trillion in global Central Bank dopium, and $7 trillion in U.S. debt, to get the market back to a level that it first attained six years ago. As ZH points out, in the meantime a near doubling in the number of people on foodstamps, an 80% increase in the national debt, 5 million fewer jobs, none of which apparently matters when the Dow is at new highs..

Peak Greed

Robbed By a Bank
No surprise, following the hold-up of the middle class known as the bailout of 2008, subsequently, the middle class has become ever-more marginalized by the very same people they bailed out; meanwhile, the wealth of the ultra-rich has never been higher. Just today we learned that the number of global billionaires hit a new all time high...

The Band Played On...

Everything we are told now is pure propaganda, strictly to maintain appearances. The geriatric set have a death grip on the U.S. political system and the last thing they want is change. They are fully aware that the ship is keeled over and heading for the bottom, but they have convinced themselves that since they are on the upper decks, that the water line won't get to them, in their lifetime...

Bernankenstein's Boomerang

Don't Try Buy This At Home...
The mother of all ultra-bearish rising wedges, with an overthrow above the top trendline to get the bulls lathered up. As we see, the market is keenly aware of that upper trend line which it tested earlier this week. If you read the linked description of a rising wedge, this one meets all of the listed criteria. The most wicked aspect of a rising wedge, is that it gives the appearance of an uptrend, even though the upper trend line is not keeping pace with the lower trend line, requiring bulls to defend the same price levels over and over again, exhausting buying power on the way up, as evidenced by the declining volume. Compare the rally from 2003-2007 to this one. That one was a smooth uptrend with relatively little overlap between uptrend segments. This rally by contrast has been a lurching affair, as the market junky halted periodically to vomit all over itself, waiting for its next hit of monetary dopium. The HFT bots will see to it that Bernankenstein gets his boomerang back sooner than expected...

Wilshire 5000 (U.S.) Total Market Index

Extreme Event Risk

The amount of complacency at this juncture, is staggering. The Idiocracy at large have literally been stewed in their own juices. Whereas the "fiscal cliff" debacle just 8 weeks ago was cause for non-stop angst and hand wringing, including a week long market sell-off leading up to the event, today, the fiscal "sequester" went into effect, which includes an automatic reduction in U.S. government spending equating to apparently .6% of the economy. Yet, it was completely ignored even though fourth quarter GDP growth was a mere .1% (recently revised from negative .1%). And on top of the sequester cuts, the impact of the recent tax increases resulting from the fiscal cliff clusterfuck-o-rama have yet to be factored into GDP...