Correlation is not Causation. It's Annihilation

Wall Street will be the last to know when an asset collapse is imminent. Not only do they have trillions in Fed money to play with and a year-end bonus in sight, but in addition the Fed has completely eliminated any feedback loop between the economy and the stock market. Which means that the financial media who have their nose up Wall Street's ass, will realize the risks only well after the fact. And the Dow watchers at home, multi-tasking The Kardashians, will figure it out sometime after that...

Life After Extend and Pretend

"...Shares crash, hopes are dashed.

People forget. Forget they're hiding.

Behind an eminence front - it's a put on..."

- Townshend/The Who

Right now, everyone is pretending. There are those who are pretending that this is all real, and know that they are just pretending. Then there are those who are pretending but have no fucking clue that they are pretending. Either way, everyone is pretending...

Competitive Advantage and the Wealth of Nations

The true wealth of a society is based upon what it can build, create, sustain and trade. Financial wealth held in stocks, bonds and other securitized paper assets is merely a transitory illusion. Competitive advantage in producing higher value added goods and services is the ultimate determinant of the wealth of nations, something the Asian nations figured out a long time ago...

Shrink-wrapped Society

The U.S. is going full Disneyland. Even the Tea Party is no more than a phony apparatus for billionaire interests, masquerading as a throw-back to Little House on the Prairie. This metamorphosis is a very cautionary tale for any country that doesn't assiduously separate private and public interests and otherwise allows itself to become 100% corporatized. 

Y2K Deja Vu: Blow-off Top

Those who say that there is no comparison to Y2K, either were not around then or have their eyes closed now...

Surviving a Deflationary Collapse v2.0

Prechter (EWT, 10/18/2013), came out today and fully clarified his stance on cash and t-bills. Fully in accordance with what I had inferred in "Surviving a Deflationary Collapse"...

Minsky v.s. Bernanke

A timely reminder as to how and why this global economic lunacy will end with history's largest bank run. Using debt to resolve a debt crisis is history's largest fool's errand aided and abetted by history's largest boatload of fools. 520 global interest rate cuts in five years has incentivized nation states to supplant private borrowing with public borrowings to prop up their economies. The Minsky Moment will arrive when the marginal borrower is no longer able to rollover its debts, causing a cascade of defaults as lenders pull back from the market...

Globalization Will Collapse. Please Be Patient

I just read David Stockman's polemic about the various issues afflicting the U.S. economy. The facts and data were excellent. Other than failing to identify the true root cause of the problem and coming to an altogether wrong conclusion, it was flawless. I suggest that it will be mighty hard to fix a problem when all effort is being put into ignoring its root cause...

Profit Killed The Prophet

Would-be "historians" are constantly obsessed with how Jesus died 2,000 years ago. What they should really be focused on is how his message got obliterated in the here and now...

Rage Against the Machine

The shutdown of the U.S. government this week was a symbol of the totally dysfunctional clusterfuck that has become the nation's capital. Worse yet, the attack at the Navy Yards two weeks ago, the attack on the Capitol Building this week and news of a self-immolation late this evening on the D.C. Mall are all blatant signs that social mood has peaked and rage is rising...

Rome Was Destroyed From Within

Years from now archaeologists will dig down through a mile of rubble and try to figure out how so many people could be conned into systematically voting against their own interests. It won't take them long to find the answer...