Wednesday, August 30, 2017

Race To The Bottom. Buried By Bullshit

Shorts are covering ahead of Trump's latest attempt to bullshit his way to 4%, 3%, 2% GDP growth. You know, by borrowing more money...

Global asset pump and dump, Fake global reflation, borrowed GDP, fake OPEC recovery, retail annihilation. All paid for with printed money and obscured by a bubble of idiots...

Careful what you wish for



2008 was the wake up call, but the stoned zombies weren't ready for the party to end. So starting with the massive bailout and doubling of U.S. debt, the economy went under the bus for the sake of the casino. Only history's most vacuous generation could make that separation, with the aid of printed money to offset the torrent of deflation. The Idiocracy needed a handy narrative that would place stock market performance ahead of economic performance and for that they turned to the myth of Amazon. In other words growth at any (all) cost became more important than economic viability. Now featuring the highest number of retail bankruptcies in U.S. history. Now the entire narrative is collapsing in real-time, but don't as always, don't take my word for it.

Meet Amazon the Ponzi retailer for the Ponzi generation:



"Amazon has been ‘buying’ sales for the past 15 years, considering profits have not been its primary focus — unlike other retailers...Amazon posted a 77% drop in quarterly income last month even though its second-quarter revenue was up 25% from the prior year"

Adjusting retail sales for inflation and the size of the U.S. population, this is what you get:

Per capita real retail sales

"We import people and then we pretend the economy is growing"




"The Atlas-like croupiers of the day scratched their heads as to why the 'Conomy wasn't growing"




"I can't put my finger on it, but something doesn't feel right"





And if Amazon doesn't dominate any one retail category (other than books), why are the leaders all imploding?






This week it was Best Buy



"Then Amazon got into art work"



Away from retail, here are some key financials:









Largest cap stocks:



Waterfall collapse in progress...






This short-covering rally compliments of sheer bullshit:



10 months of misallocated capital later...

"Don't expect any specifics, just bullshit as usual"