No One Trusts Uncle Sam, Not Even Americans

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Geopolitical Tinderbox

Is it coincidence that geopolitical tensions are now rising at the same time that the stock market is in manic blow-off mode? Was it coincidence that the Arab Spring coincided with the 2011 winter/spring top in the stock market or that Occupy Wall Street got launched during the 2011 August market swoon?

There Will Be Blood

Just as we expected, these phony markets are only equipped to levitate higher, they don't do that slow downtrend "thing" anymore.

Just today, we got a glimpse into the future as multiple Italian stocks were halted. It's a binary market - one day stocks are going up for the umpteenth day in a row, the very next day, limit down. And these "circuit breakers" do nothing to restore confidence as they remove liquidity from the markets and force investors to dump other assets to raise cash. Zerohedge pointed to the recent declines in gold as likely being correlated to the Apple collapse.

The real issue is that so many volatility sellers have been selling volatility at low levels that there won't likely be any put option sellers around when the VIX spikes. That's a very similar situation to what happened during the 1987 crash vis-a-vis the "portfolio insurance" product i.e. it did the opposite of what it was intended to do - it accelerated the selling into the decline.

In any case, we are not likely to get too much more of a warning that when things come unglued worldwide, it will be fast and ugly.

Stocks Up, Economy Down

You can't make this shit up anymore. It used to be that Wall Street spent all of their time lying to us. Now they spend all of their time lying to themselves...

Deep Impact: Endgame for the Idiocracy

We are watching this movie in slow motion, so if everyone hasn't figured out the plot yet, they should be forgiven.

That said, if one looks past all of the lies, propaganda, newspeak and distractions, the endgame for the Idiocracy is in fact unfolding in real time...

Grin Fucked

I have to admit, the one thing this stagnant bloated society is really good at, is "communicating". Every minute of every day is filled with myriad radio, TV, and internet talk shows full of bullshit artists spewing forth on the issues of the day non-stop. It's the overwhelming preoccupation of a decayed society no longer capable of making and taking hard decisions, to talk incessantly as a proxy for action.

Unfortunately, that just means that society at large, stewing in a lethal cauldron of junk food and junk culture, is bent over the log getting grin fucked to death...

Extreme Greed

CNN says that market participants are exhibiting "Extreme Greed".  No shit...

(Click here to see their key indicators making up this index...)

My comments after the jump...

Race to the Bottom

Since the Davos Summit just ended, I thought we should educate the corrupt and callous attendees of the "Summit" as to why globalization has failed and was always doomed to fail...

Let The Banks Go Bankrupt...

A glimmer of hope amid the never-ending futile game of Extend and Pretend being played in the U.S. and Europe. Here the Icelandic President tells how the Icelandic economy is now outperforming the rest of Europe, by doing the exact opposite of what the Goldman Sachs-installed stooges are attempting across the Euro area:

The End of the Stock Market

The stock market has been rising for four years straight on ever-declining volume. Seventy percent of current volume is High Frequency Trading (HFT). If interest in the stock market, as evidenced by volumes, is low at these lofty levels, what will it be like on the other side of another "correction" ?