Timely Economic and Market Comments

It is no coincidence I posted that the stock market as a percentage of GDP was in the ozone and that Robert Schiller’s earnings calculator were screaming warning signs just weeks before the market started gyrating wildly to the downside in 2018.  There were some external factors pointing to a very overheated market.

As I noted in a few other posts the last few months, sentiment indicators are at wildly high levels. I also noted some of these back before the collapse in 2008 as signs of impending doom.

In the last few months, we saw stock market enthusiasm at 96%, the National Association of Manufacturers with a 95% percent optimistic sentiment and the Business Roundtable CEO outlook with the highest sentiment numbers in recorded history. Back before the collapse of 2008, I noted whenever business enthusiasm is universal, it’s nearly always a sign of impending doom. CEOs, politicians, Wall Street pigmen and the like are so isolated from reality of what the underlying dynamics of the economy are like that whenever that type of group is in agreement, they are a perfect litmus test to the contrary. Or, as Swift noted, “Whenever truth appears, the confederacy of dunces is aligned against him.”.  In this case, the truth is underlying reality that class and hierarchy is so insulated from in their ivory towers and gated communities. I realize this is so against what society has told you but the people running corporations and our nation are generally f@cking idiots.  Those who make it to the top of class and hierarchy are those most willing to stomp on the face of their fellow man.  Or, as Lord Acton noted, almost all great men are bad men.  They are not geniuses. They are the most pathological people in society. Some people are finally figuring that out.

As I noted a few years ago, I shut down my data service and no longer calculate any quantitative models in the financial markets, but I do have access to much of the publicly available data out there. To that point, broad monetary aggregates in the United States are in serious trouble.  They are not yet contracting but we are close. Without delving into it, which I’m too lazy to do because I don’t really care, I don’t know why. Could be interest rates backing up.  Remember, with this much debt in our society created by rent-seeking corporations, just a small tick in interest rates will more than wipe out any tax cuts that have been recently passed.  Could be the Federal Reserve be reducing its exposure to the repo market or not fanning the flames of liquidity with their actions or it could be something else.  If it is the Federal Reserve sopping up some liquidity, it could potentially be positively influenced in short order. But that’s assuming it’s a liquidity issue the Federal Reserve is creating or can ameliorate.  Or, it could be the system in the early phases of crisis again where liquidity is being destroyed faster than it can be replaced.

Remember, we’ve been through two or three generations of financial engineering in this nation. Destroying corporate balance sheets, financial foot notes with fraudulent accounting, the waiving of accounting standards in 2008, cutting worker benefits, busting union salaries, raiding pension funds, using slave immigrant labor, H1B Visa fraud of foreign workers taking American jobs, sending good jobs overseas to shitholes like China, India and Vietnam, getting more and more tax breaks, rent-seeking behavior that has created parasite corporations and on and on and on and on. At some point, the financial con games will be exhausted and the shit will hit the fan. There’s a limit to financial trickery and fraud.  That’s when the Federal Reserve and central banking in general will likely collapse as noted on here many times.  Or, the Federal Reserve will need a bailout the next time as it has played a pivotal role in this thievery.

Regardless, we see how the monetary aggregate data is impacting the economy in a few metrics that have been released recently.  Home sales are the lowest in years (and they are blaming low inventory.) and manufacturing output has fallen substantially to the lowest in six months with a broad decline in demand. 

All of this was happening while major stock market indices were acting out the finality of a pattern R.N. Elliot labeled as a throwover, which is an exhaustion pattern.  Now, that doesn’t mean imminent changes in trend but it is a major warning sign.

Just remember that all of this happened before any talk of tariffs. But, if this trend continues, the lying liars we call the status quo will blame this on Trump. And, they’ll blame it on tariffs. Another example of the confederacy of dunces aligned against the truth. Or the propaganda of what Trump calls fake news. But, what Thomas Jefferson also wrote about as the lies of gazetteers. (The news has always been nothing more than lies and bullshit controlled by society’s masters.)  That is, this nation was founded on tariffs and supported by the Founding Fathers.  More on that and the f@cking idiots (and morally bankrupt) we now call free traders in the next post.

Let me end with a few recent links that may be worth reading.

Elon Musk is a Messianic Huckster. To be honest, Elon Musk is one odd dude. He made his money in the tech bubble fleecing society and now has parlayed that into rent-seeking businesses that survive through government handouts. There’s a recent article about Tesla where quite a few engineers have noted the company is a disaster and 40% of its throughput it rework. And, Musk has bet the company on a strategy that involves never-before levels of automation. He’s having trouble ramping up production so we’ll see.

Big Data for the People. Taking back our lives from our financial overlords. A very good article on the use of our personal data to exploit us for profit.

Nassim Taleb on why Goldman Sachs collapse would be the best thing for humanity. Taleb is one man who used to be part of the club and gets it. And, who has the courage to speak the truth.

Oprah Winfrey – the neoliberal capitalist. I’m going to hit this one hard again in another post. Oprah is a favorite of the faux intellectuals in the Democratic Party. I suspect she would be eaten alive in a runoff with Trump. She talks a good game but is really one of these prosperity preachers that have become so popular in our Godless society. Her excesses and extravangances would have made King George blush in 1776. She definitely hides her authentic self which is very repulsive to anyone who values human dignity and has a disdain from those who have stolen it from us.

Survellience Valley. Many people realize Silicon Valley was created by the military industrial complex. This goes a step farther in explaining how released government documents shows Silicon Valley and the Internet were both created out of the 1947 National Security Act talked about so often on here. And, that they were both created to spy on people and destabilize governemnts around the world. And, how now that has been turned against the American people too.

Book on China may get parliamentary protection. I’ve been writing for longer than any source I am aware of on the coming conflicts with China. And, that we are in what I would call a Nash Equilibrium with China. One that neither party wishes to break due to their own benefits. Along comes Donald Trump and he tells the truth.  China, in concert with American corporations has stolen our wealth, our jobs and our economic determnism. You can thank our capitalist masters and Washington politicians for turning a backwater communist nation into a formidable giant that shares absolutely no ideals of a free or democratic or constitutional, human-rights driven society. 

Italian elections throw a wrench in the neoliberal European Union.  Federalism is dying. Everywhere. The EU was created in an attempt by European politicians to create a federalist economic corporate power to steal some of that good ole American home cooking.  In other words, to create a consolidated fascist corporate government capable of looting the people of Europe and the world as the United States loots its people and the rest of the world.  The EU federalist model will collapse just as the United States federalist agenda will collapse. It’s just a matter of when.