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Market Seer John Mauldin Says a 40% Plunge in the Stock Market is Coming
Son of Texas and financial seer, John Mauldin, believes the stock market could shed 40% in the near future (SPX). John is the president of Millennium Wave Advisors, LLC, a Dallas, Texas based investment advisor, with $600 million in assets under management.
John worries that the velocity of money, an indicator of how many times a dollar is reused in the economy, is collapsing. This ratio, which is defined by the GDP divided by the money supply, bottomed at 1.15 in 1946. It then reached a mean of 1.65 in the fifties, sixties, and seventies, and peaked at a breathtaking 2.2 times in 1997, near the top of the Dotcom bubble. It has been retreating ever since, has recently accelerated down to the 100 year mean, but still has much farther to fall to get to the bottom of the 100 year range.
The collapse of velocity signals the end of a 50 year super cycle in lending. For you and I, this means lower economic growth for perhaps another decade. It is partly the result of banks getting generous funding from the Treasury, and then sitting on it. The bucks simply stop there. It suggests that no matter how much money the government pumps into the economy, it might as well be pushing on a wet noodle.
The gold bugs have got it all wrong, simply focusing on money supply growth and expecting hyperinflation. A lot of money can sit and go nowhere. The inflation will come back with a vengeance when the economy revives and banks finally resume lending. With so much new money being created in the last two years, the chances of the Fed being able to head this off are close to nil.
Similarly, the bond vigilantes may have to wait a couple of years for their big move down in the 30 year Treasury bond (TBT). When the bond markets call “times up,” the US will be forced to embark on some highly deflationary spending cuts. If this happens during a recession, it could be a disaster.
John thinks there will be a substantial slowdown in growth in Q3 and Q4. With anticipated federal tax increases of 2% of GDP in 2011 added to a further 1% in state tax hikes, the recovery will be strangled in its crib. That’s when the risk of a double dip recession explodes. Over 3-4 years higher taxes could add up to a burdensome 9% drag on GDP.
John says that emerging markets (EEM) will decouple from the US and keep powering up, as this is where the real economic growth is (EEM). Japan is “a bug in search of a windshield.” With savings rates falling and deficit spending soaring, it may only have a couple of years left.
John has been a gold bull since 2002 (GLD), when it was below $300/ounce, and isn’t backing off from that position, but prefers to own it against Euros at this point. He thinks the entire premise for the existence of the European currency (XEU) is questionable, and sees it eventually moving to parity against the dollar.
John doesn’t manage money directly himself, but outsources assets with market timers employing a number of different models. One firm he has particular success with is CMG in Philadelphia (CMGTX). He really only selects individual stocks in the biotech area, which he thinks have the potential to develop into a bubble, and has a variety of small cap and microcap holdings.
Not pulling any punches, John said that the Republican leadership of the last congress was “criminally incompetent” in the way they unnecessarily squandered surpluses and spent their way into oblivion, leaving us without dry powder to fight the current crisis.
John has an incredibly diverse past, which includes a degree from Rice University, a stint at divinity school, and time spent running a check printing company which led him into newsletters. John then rose to the top of the American Bureau of Economic Research, and entered the fund management business in the late eighties. Today, his two letters, Outside the Box and Thoughts From the Frontline, go out on the Internet to 1.5 million readers a week. John is the publisher of three investment books, The Millennium Wave, Just One Thing, and Bulls Eye Investing. To learn more about John’s many activities in the markets, please visit his website at http://johnmauldin.com/ .
To catch my entire insightful interview with John Mauldin on Hedge Fund Radio, please go to www.madhedgefundtrader.com/ and click on the “Today’s Radio Show” menu tab on the left. To see the data, charts, and graphs that support this research piece, as well as more iconoclastic and out of consensus analysis, please visit me at www.madhedgefundtrader.com . There you will find the conventional wisdom mercilessly flailed and tortured daily.
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Sure that isn't, John Maudlin?
xxxxx
This has been "Weekend At Bernanke's"
long egnough.
Turn up the house lights and show me the exit.
I thought we would be dead in the water by now and so did Kunstler, Denninger and various and sundry others. The truth is that as long as they can print dollars they can keep this going - even if they have to hand them out to people on street corners. Velocity means nothing as long as there is food on the shelves at grocery stores and gas at the gas station.
Even if deliveries stopped, the government would take that over and hire people to unload the ships, refine the oil, harvest the fields, drive the trucks and man the checkout counter.
Deflationists need to explain the price of gasoline.
All I hear from Douchinger and others is that the printing has been totally swamped by credit deflation, yet a bag of Doritos is now $3.67, and a gallon of gasoline for my 91 octane car exceeds $3.
Despite a DXY bounce to over 82, gold still stands at support in the 1090s. The most relevant commodities are not *anticipating* a deflation-driven price collapse.
The equity uptrend since March 2009 is a bear market rally contained within a much larger downtrend that started in 2000.
In early 2007 I warned of an impending stockmarket crash.
I confirmed an equity bottom by early April 2009.
From mid 2009 onwards I warned of an impending USD rally and it's got much further to go.
The proprietary indicators I use in my technical analysis can identify trend changes before they occur.
http://www.zerohedge.com/forum/latest-market-outlook-0
Health *Care* Reform is an extremely Stealth Way for the Government to Induce inflation. Its rather ingenius, and Insidious:
Force ALL companies and people to Buy Health insurance. This forces small companies especially to raise price on services and products in order to cover costs. Laying off people is a second option, but even less desireable. Once this goes full circle everything is more expensive across the board in the US...this might take 5+ yrs...but the net effect will be deflating the Debt.
Of course the fking side-effect is we people have LESS to spend. Its here, so we better prepare for this.
All companies buy health insurance anyway, one way or another. in case you haven't noticed, the number of small companies out there (that aren't one many "consultancies") has been falling like a rock for the last two years. Much above 30 people for a company and state regulations if not federal ones mandate health care anyway. Of course, many companies have been optimizing their profits by employing part time labor, essentially avoiding this particular burden. In good years, they pocketed the difference, in bad years they fired the labor. The cost for their healther care was then borne by the public health care system, usually in the triage center of last resort, the emergency room - just another example of capitalist systems privatizing profits and externalizing the costs.
It's not a perfect bill - there are some sections that are especially odious, in fact - but overall, this will at least have the benefit of keeping people healthy who would otherwise be a drain on the health system. it's generally far cheaper to keep people healthy than it is to pay when they aren't. As to inducing inflation? The health care sector is one of the few industries that is in fact continuing to inflate, typically at the cost of removing money from the public that could be spent on more productive (velocity inducing) expenditures.
Of course, we could just give tax breaks to those people that make over $1 million a year so that they can go out and buy yachts, cars and luxury goods and cause trickle-down economics to work. Oh, wait ... we just did.
Since you decided to bring politics into it, what does the great John have to say about the current democratic regieme? Should we assume their hand on the fiscal-tiller (congress) these last 5 yrs, and most immediately the executive has been a model above reproach?
Idiot.
Some items:
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Consider for the moment, that crisis is a discontinuity in historical trend data. The extrapolation of historical norms breaks down when a crisis point is reached. A big part about understanding financial models is to understand when they are broken. You see a lot of "smooth line" talk about trend movements, but at the same time acknowledge that Congress will probably not act until forced to (crisis). These two modes are incompatible.
Maybe its a form of denial. Perhaps it is hard to contemplate a world where your skills are rendered moot by forces beyond your control.
You will see buyers for Tresuries right up to the point you don't. This is not a soft landing, and will not follow the trend data.
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In reading the text, I am confused about how the velocity of money is looked at in detail, but no mention of de-leverage of debt, and the premise that government directed programs produce the efficiencies neccessary to create real growth. It also may be prudent to re-evaluate the velocity of money as it relates to wage growth (unemployment).
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A substantial slow down in growth? In Q3, Q4? Let me rephrase, substantial slow down in growth when Government stimulus is removed, or becomes ineffective as investment.
If I may: GDP = Government Spending.
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When government intervention has bastardized the true economic engine of the US, I find myself trying to understand what the equity markets really represent. The valuations do not make sense, especially the financial sector. Also, how do you establish price when accounting practices, and government invlovement hide the true "intrinsic value" of the corporation.
Why would you invest?
Okay, so I play the tape. Also lets say I have the expertise and trading speed to exit the majority of my positions (under 10 million) in a matter of 15 minutes before a reversal in buyers. The fact that I can play the tape, has no bearing on the actual underlying fundamentals in the economy.
The danger I see is that the FED (Greenspan) has been too effective in selling the people and congress on the idea that the market is an absolute barameter of economic success. What happens if the market declines to true valuations? The preception would be one of panic, a run for the exits. When in actuality it is only a correction.
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I am also amazed at the failure to acknowledge real estate price in terms of any Macro-economic stance. Any reduction in price, is a huge hit to the "economy". The vast majority of Government/FED intervention has been to prop up real estate prices. It is really unbelievable the amount of bad real estate debt purchased through all avenues and we do not see a sharp recovery in price. This is monumental fail. All this wasted investment on bad debt. How do you have velocity when you squander Trillions of dollars on bad debt, in the form of derivatives with poor price discovery.
Just think what we could have done if we used this money for productive investment.
Mark Beck
Mark,
Very much inclined to agree, with the one caveat that I don't know where such productive government investments truly are. Infrastructure may be an obvious one. We've had comparatively little such investment, even at the maintenance level, for more than forty years, and it shows, but with cities large and small shrinking (take a look at Detroit recently?), infrastructure investments a la the 1950s/60s seem counterproductive.
Education? Nice in theory, in practice you have a disfunctional system that is facing its own moment of truth as Google essentially replaces a dozen years of pedantery. I can take advanced computer science courses from MIT online now for free, yet the number of people that actually avail themselves of this option are small.
Energy investments? Sure, given that we've probably plateaued on global oil production and are less than a decade away from doing so with natural gas. Biotech? An industry that employs a few thousand highly capable people to improve the longevity of the average person, even as we exceed the holding capacity of the planet.
Manufacturing? We have some of the highest wages in the world, we have been exporting jobs to SE Asia for the last forty years, and demand for manufactured goods is now lower than it was in the 1940s.
The transport sector? Like infrastructure, a good idea, but we need to get away from glamourous bullet trains and start thinking about reshaping public perception about getting around in cities where gas shoots beyond $6 a gallon - in the middle of a recession.
As you point out - the system is broken, but it's broken just beyond the banks ... they just happened to get in line first to get the soup in the soup kitchens.
Once faith in the financial system collapses, then faith in a nation's currency collapses. Once a nation's currency ceases to exist, then faith in the institution of the government itself - not just who helms the government - collapses. All of the energy inputs are receding from the system, and like all complex systems in that situation, this one is beginning to spin ever more widely out of control. Things are going to get ugly.
the natural gas will last quite a bit longer than 1 decade, unless usage multiplies
It's not about how long it will "last," it is about how long production can grow.
Peak is not the same as Empty.
Oil will last forever. But we will not be able to get it out of the ground at increasing rates. Given that our entire model of civilization depends upon continuously *increasing* rates of energy input, it is doomed when energy inputs cannot be increased. This is the simplest explanation of the peak phenomenon.
If you take an ecosystems look at it, think about deer on an island. The island produces food for them at whatever rate the plants grow. At the point in which desired consumption rate of the growing population meets the peak rate at which food can be supplied by the ecosystem, you transition abruptly from a climate of growth to a climate of increasing scarcity and competition for apparently diminishing output.
3 to 5 percent less supply than demand for OIL
and this fucking World will be nuts. Thats all it will take.
With gas demand from China up 27% YOY for Jan,
we are on the precipice.....(mexico and Venezuela output way down.
Ghawar next)
Money is a credit derivative.
The price of money is the cost of credit. The unit of measure of the cost of credit is not really $, that is an afterthought. Duration is the true unit of measure. One pays for debt with time.
Credit, not money is therefore the true medium of exchange.
Gold is not money because it is not a credit derivative. The value of gold is eternal and that is what is barbaric about the metal, it is disobedient towards "civilization" and its schemes.
It is a store of value because it is only dishonestly valued using currencies as a unit of measure. Few things are more antithetical than a paper price for gold. The following ratio is essentially upside down gold/dollar.
Gold is the distrustful metal and as such is the discount principle personified. It is the pure enemy of credit. Gold cannot be genuinely owned in any other way than physical possession. Gold by proxy is merely a monetary phenomena.
Gold is a higher unit of measure than currencies. A grievous error, a severe misunderstanding, a mistake only "advanced people can make" occurs when gold is valued using a fiat unit of measure.
99% of gold bugs are monetarists in disguise. The signal value of currency denominated gold prices are therefore inherently deceptive. The "price of gold" rests on the assumption that gold/$ is a meaningful representation of value. This is a Kantian problem, placing a lower concept on par with a higher concept "just because it is can be done". These people will confuse a falling gold price as a fall in value, it is not, it is an indication of a shift in paradigm. The same people will confuse a rising gold price as a rise in value, it is not, it is an indication of the ascendancy in credit markets. Though profitable for those who are long this perpetuates the misunderstanding that gold is money.
An essential, overlooked and often ridiculed attribute of gold is its mystique manifested through "hoarding".
What is an illiquid physical gold market an indication of? What does it mean when the paper price of gold declines even though physical deliveries are up? Systemic stress in the credit markets, a decrease in the faith we place in central banks can cause the physical gold market to disappear. Abscence manifests itself through hoarding, gold disappears from view, the physical gold market disappear from all eyes blind to culture and sociology. This perpetuates the myth that gold is just an inflation hedge, a misunderstanding so violent it becomes barely comprehensible when a true understanding of gold has been reached.
Beware a falling gold price
Hurrah! GOLD VALUES CURRENCIES!
At last, someone else gets it but presents the message with such complexity, that the average Joe won't understand it.
In today's world of QE....Buy a falling gold price.
I read John Maudlin every week for several years and bought and read two of his books. I appreciated his explanations on many investing/economic subjects, as well as his generally positive outlook.
In general, I don't bother to read his newsletter any more. His analysis seems to be premised on a system where: (1) the Federal Reserve and other components of the financial regulatory system operate with integrity and in the best interest of the citizens of the United States as a whole, (2) there is a functional regulatory system that is effective in identifying, preventing, and punishing those who commit financial fraud, and (3) that financial fraud does not occur on a massive scale. I like his analysis, but I don't find it useful in trying to make sense of the extraordinary circumstances we are in today.
I stopped reading his newsletter for pretty much the same reasons.
I think he's too enamored with himself and his image of the 'well connected' persona - so he prefers to feign ignorance of the lie that is 1, 2 and 3.
If he ever allowed himself to acknowledge the truth about 1,2 and 3, deep down he probably knows that he doesn't have the guts to go out on a limb and seek to expose it.
All in all, he's just another spineless suit pretending that he's some big shit in an honorable business.
I get *really* sick and tired of idiots who think that the QTM is the be-all and end-all talking shit about "gold bugs."
Look, if gold bugs are expecting to "make money" on the inflation trade, then there are better leveraged vehicles.
The ones I know are stockpiling things of WORTH, because a freakin deflationary tidal wave makes DEFAULT or DEVALUATION on FRNs inevitable.
The debts CANNOT BE SERVICED. The future WILL NOT SHOW GROWTH necessary to pay the interest on today's debt!
It is a mathematical spiral.
So, what, the FRN is going to go UP in value? King dollar? The end of the road on this spiral is fatal collapse of the implicit VALUE of the FRN, which is and always has been a PROMISE TO PAY at some point in the future. FRNs are NOT wealth, they are fucking CREDIT.
The world is AWASH in FRNs. At the FIRST SIGN of impending default by the sovereign that backs them, EVERYONE HOLDING will stampede for the exits. That means into ANYTHING real.
THAT is inflation.
So, the banks are SITTING on reserves because they shouldn't lend; I agree! There will be no credit-driven inflation - this is NOT the typical business cycle.
If I am right, and energy supply has peaked for the ENTIRE hydrocarbon lifecycle dating back 500 million years, then ANY promise depending upon aggregate growth in energy supply MUST be discounted. And that is precisely what the FRN IS.
Cash flow matters...real things matter...promises like the FRN *will be discounted*. Permanent backwardation.
trav, thats not inflation, it's a currency crisis. but loss of purchasing power is inevitable
Anyone else out there notice this?
Hahahackhackha! Good luck, Johnny! You're not one of us!
Paperbugs never mention what would happen if the GLD scam were to be exposed. We can skip the inflation/deflation debate - total collapse will wipe out 100% of electronic/paper holdings. If it ain't in your hand, you don't have it all.
Read your 2nd to last sentence again...for the mouthbreathers here, explain what a FRN is if not a paper holding.
FRNs' only purpose is to service debts that you can default on.
At some point in the Prisoner's Dilemma, the Point of Recognition is achieved that attempting to repay in FRNs is futile. THIS is when the collapse phase of the FRN ensues.
The ONLY demand for FRNs in a deflationary spiral is to REPAY DEBTS. This causes the liquidations that the fiatbulls expect will drive down the price of oil and gold.
EVERY SINGLE fiatbull has *announced* their intention to convert 100% into gold oil land chickens bullets at the "trough" of the deflation, right at the zenith of the "priceless" dollar. They hope to hold onto their FRNs long enough to be the last man standing.
I got REAL bad news for you guys out there...there ain't gonna be nothing worth shit left to buy at that point. You cannot be the guy in the nightclub fire trying to scavenge digital cameras, cellphones, and people's wallets who are trying to stampede out of a building burning to ashes. You're either out the door when you see the first smoke, or you are in the stampede.
Shit is right now smoking. Who gives a fuck about the "price" of gold or oil when you can borrow, convert the FRNs into real things, and then just freaking default?
In fact, the lead fiatbulls like Douchinger say that we can and should just selectively default on USTs owned by China. So if the USG is going to default on ITS FRN obligations, won't everybody else?
LOL - you can't eat flat-screens!
Those ahead of the herd are thinking, "It doesn't make any sense to [worry about my credit score]. Get ready to batten down the hatches - let no credit card offer go unreplied!
Here comes more global liquidity:
World’s Biggest Pension Fund May Change Benchmark Indexes
They only have one shot to reflate this sucker, and they're pulling out all stops! Bubble Ben will do whatever it takes to avoid deflation. Stay long stocks and corporate bonds, but choose your sectors wisely.
right right, good advice leo - because problems like deflation occur only when someone doesnt want deflation to occur. So the dopey Japanese and their endless stimuli plans over 20 years, the problem they had was they didnt want deflation to go away vs the crack crew we have at the fed now, who DOES want it go away. Man, this is easy.
Below from bloomberg - guess what, it aint working. For every dope in the world who thinks the Fed can push asset prices wherever they want to achieve so psychological objective, factually we know its not working. So after a 73% move the entire population missed, is the plan now to get everyone convinced the coast is clear for another 73% rise?
Stocks are going up because stocks are going up - the question to ask now is why is are the US indices (virtually) the only asset globally above the January high? Is it more likely that everything else joins the US indices, or the US indices joins everything else?
Americans are down on the economy and the markets even as stocks and growth indicators are up.
By an almost 2-to-1 margin Americans believe the economy has worsened rather than improved during the past year, according to a Bloomberg National Poll conducted March 19-22.
Among those who own stocks, bonds or mutual funds, only three of 10 people say the value of their portfolio has risen since a year ago.
During that period, a bull market has driven up the benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500 Index more than 73 percent since its low on March 9, 2009.
The article is demonstrating that people really don't know what has happened with their account. The market has advanced more than 75% and 70% of the people with accounts don't know it. What they do know is that it is still less than the all time high and they did not really understand the question.
Mauldin = economist, trader he is not.
I've been a subscriber to John Mauldin's newsletters for about 4 or 5 years now. Admittedly, he is no "market forecaster"; but his insights into our country's economy, and the global economy at large are always noteworthy reading.
He is one of the few American economists who understands the "Big Picture." He gets it, while most other economists, including Paul (take-a-baseball-bat-to-his-head) Krugman are nothing but Keynesian charlatans.
massive institutionalized financial fraud is the sine qua non of our global economic crisis. if mauldin slides past this, he's not "getting it" at all.
"massive institutionalized financial fraud"
Repeat as often as necessary.
The velocity of money thing has me intrigued since I still have the first buck ever made. As the nation watches in horror they will do the same as a survival instinct.
Never underestimate the replacement power of equities within a RE-flationary spiral...
I'm not disgareeing about a correction in the stock market, but it won't be for long. The US economy *is* the Stock Market!
Furthermore, unless you are constrained such as Greece, you will print away to fight off deflation. Deflation ultimately affects tax revenues. To not fight off deflation in an asset based/credit driven/consumption oriented economy is to commit suicide.
The one thing that governments are best at is survival. They do what they have to, to survive.
Yes, we may experience deflation... but the endgame will be brought about by inflation. No need to sell gold just yet.
There will be severe pain either way.
It is only the degree that is debatable.
I sold all my stocks this morning. It wasn't much at all, but with the end of QE I'm playing it safe.
Good move.
When she blows, there will only be a few seconds to react. getting your cash out of the broker account may also be a challenge depending how bad it is.
It may blow tomorrow or two years from now. Not worth being in the market by any measure. Sorting the market may even be worse.
Cheers mates.
Sounds Like you're blowing smoke in our face. Stay long stocks, the pension herd is shovelling billions into hedge funds taking leveraged beta bets!
Point taken but it seems that pension fund management hasn't exercised the best judgment in the past so I'm hesitant to follow their lead now.
Leo, just a personal note. I've noticed that you seem to take some heat here. I don't agree with many of your opinions but I appreciate your observations on the pension world so please keep up the contributions.
Well, Leo does do a good job on the pension front, but I've been disappointed to see his lack of comments on the solars lately.
Every day for months it was "Buy on the dips" and now, nothing.
From what I'm hearing, there's some truth to this... especially with public pension funds. Private pensions, for the most part, are doing exactly the opposite and are hunkering down.
True, read my latest:
Horny for Hedge Funds?
But public pension funds command more money, so they are far more influential in providing liquidity to hedge funds.
In round one of the great recession, taxpayers were sacrificed to bail out the banks. In the second round, banks will be sacrificed to bail out the government.
I like that. Meaning that you and I will be trampled twice.
No sooner than will we begin to recover from the first slaughter, we will be trashed by an even greater monster -- one with soldiers. Oh, joy.
"When the bond markets call “times up,” the US will be forced to embark on some highly deflationary spending cuts." The banks' sitting on their horde of cash and not lending it will be deflationary enough! No need for the bond vigilantes to do any heavy lifting.
"....time spent running a check printing company which led him into newsletters"
Perhaps Ben can give him a job printing dollars, he might be able to convince him that he has this whole financial crisis thingy "contained"....if only they had the time to bond!
Absoulutely, money that does not flow into the purchase of goods and services simply cannot increase inflation. But of course, government efforts to stimulate certain sectors certainly does. Any inflation that is seen throughout the develeoped world today is simply the flow on effect of higher energy prices in the manufacture of goods from oils low after the 2009 collapse and with new product inventory slowly reaching the consumer.
Also, in the event of a total economic meltdown, all credit money will be instantley destroyed, not to mention that savings may become atleast temporarily unaccessable. There is every chance that the dollar will be king in the states and around the world once again and that the government along with the Fed will choose not to hit the printing presses but to outright default on all liabilities. This is not some far out possibility, in fact, it is my personal opinion that this is the plan. C'monn now, Do people really believe that the government and the Fed are really a complete bunch of retards? Remember, time is the most precious commodity...
Also, I agree with kesuneit, if energy consumption is not increasing, then neither is economic growth thus demand for credit. And unless energy consumption rates can match and exceed consumption rates at the height of the debt binge, energy deflationary/inflationary forces are winning. It really is that simple.
Sigh...why can't people get it?
A default by the USA does *not* make the FRN go up in value. WTF is the dollar WORTH when the USA declares $50T of them null and void???
A collapse of the Euro does *not* make OTHER fiat paper issued by OTHER insolvent States go up in value.
The collapse of ENERGY supply, which is in progress, does not make paper based upon FUTURE promises to pay MORE energy go up in value.
It makes them go down.
In the deflationary climate we find ourselves in, PROMISES are what lose value.
I don't know how to state it more clearly than this.
If you wish to store your wealth in the paper notes of a bankrupt state, DO SO.
If you wish to store your wealth in the form of a negative interest loan to an insolvent institution (a bank account) then DO SO.
But stop telling me the fucking dollar, a fiat debt note issued by legions of INSOLVENT institutions, is going to be worth MORE because of an idiotic reading of nonsensical bullshit like the QTM.
Energy supply is collapsing so darned fast that NG is selling for 1995 prices. If the pols would quit applying the euthanasia technique to US assets prices of oil would also be much lower. Suicide is a death by choice and it is avoidable.
The USD in the short term has to be stronger, there is no point in investing in any other currency.
Remember that a lot of pople have shorted the USD and have ignored other currencies fundamentals.
The USD should *NEVER* be confused with a freaking "investment." LOL
"Investing" in a currency?!?!?!