Demographics

"Over the next couple of years, China is likely to be the biggest source of vulnerability for the global economy."

Last month, the United States Supreme Court declined to take up a case involving Arizona’s and Kansas’s attempts to require proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections. The refusal of the Supreme Court to hear the case yet again sends a message to state and local governments that the federal government shall continue to centrally direct election and immigration law. The net effect is an imposition of a migrant subsidy scheme across all states regardless of the local economic and demographic realities, while ignoring the fact that residents of certain states bear a greater tax burden in subsidizing migrants.

The reality is that financial insecurity is rising for everyone...

"...If the S&P500 were to come down by 50% look at the bright side. The Millennial generation can finally buy into America’s future at a good price. Look at what they are facing right now: very little return on their savings and very lofty prices that they have to pay to invest in their future.  So we often forget that these wrenching dislocating financial events, particularly for older generations, can create opportunities for the young, and often create space for something more durable for the times to be built. So I’ll just summarize it with Schumpeter’s phrase: creative destruction. That’s how I prefer to see what happens in a Fourth Turning."

Assuming "growth" will fund all promised pensions and entitlements is magical thinking. We're going to have to do better than indulge our Spoiled Brat Economy mindset because "we wuz promised." What we were promised based on faulty assumptions, faulty projections and wishful thinking no longer matters.

"A judicial victory doesn’t automatically translate into a political victory, let alone a policy success."

In a free society, debate is over only when the people decide it’s over.

"Investors have experienced many mood swings, some institutionalized irrationality, as well as treacherous trading conditions in the first six months of 2015. The wacky has become the norm."

"Racial and ethnic minorities now surpass non-Hispanic whites as the largest group of American children under 5 years old, the Census Bureau said Thursday. The demographic rise of minorities comes at a time when heightened racial tensions make headlines from St. Louis to Charleston, South Carolina, and as minorities lag in education, earnings and labor market outcomes."

Markets that have been cut off from the monetary spigot often present far better opportunities...

"We have a problem with this, and that is central bank hubris. They now think that they are omnipotent, because, essentially the government has said we are going to pass over all control of the economy to the central banks, they say to everybody else including financial market participants that “you don’t know, you don’t understand, we have our models and they are right”. And that kind of hubristic approach is when you sow the seeds of your own destruction."

Homeownership rates for young adults in America are projected to decline steadily through at least 2030, a study shows. Contributing factors are low wage growth, shifting demographics, and of course, student debt. 

As we noted in Part 1, this central bank fueled boom will ultimately be paid for in the form of a prolonged deflationary contraction. On the morning after, of course, it will be asked why the central banks were permitted to engineer this fantastic financial and economic bubble. The short answer is that it was done so that monetary central planners could smooth and optimize the business cycle and save world capitalism from its purported tendency toward instability, underperformance and depressionary collapse. In Part 2, the whole case for this sweeping and unprecedented Keynesian demand management by the monetary authorities was a crock. Accordingly, the days of the Warren Buffet economy are indeed numbered.

It just blows our mind, that in the face of almost every indicator having collapsed over the first 6 months of this year, market ‘pros’ just act as though it isn’t happening!  It’s impressive to watch the insanity, the denial, the delusion, that has become the basis of the steady state market. What is continuing is us extending ourselves again on the very assumption that the American Consumer will rebound to its peak strength.  Because there are those few all powerful economic cannibals that profit on policy rather than economics, we will continue down this flawed path until the legend of the Almighty American Consumer succumbs to reality.  And that day my friends will be an ugly one for the record books.

"Qualified households will be unable to move from renting to owning as housing-cost burdens, slow wage growth and student debt make it harder to cobble together even a modest down payment," WSJ says. As homeownership becomes increasingly unrealistic, demand for rentals will only increase, driving further increases in the cost of rental housing. The question then becomes this: what happens when a family that can't afford a down payment can no longer afford to pay the rent?