Great Depression

There is an old Wall Street axiom that goes "Sell in May and go away, come again after St. Leger's day."  Of course, as with all Wall Street axioms, they are viewed by the media to be "valid" only if they work every single year. The reality is that no axiom, investment discipline or strategy works all the time. It is the cumulative effect over long periods of time which defines success or failure. Today's selected readings, both for and against this particular "Wall Street wisdom," provide some statistical insight.

Taking another peek beneath the only headline that vacuum tubes and algos care about, namely the headline establishment survey print, reveals another mockery of a "recovery", because in addition to the farce that 1 million Americans were added to the "not in labor force" number, a breakdown of jobs added by age group reveals more of the same. Namely, in the one most important age group for jobs, those workers aged 25-54 which represent the bulk of the US labor force and are also the best and most productive group, the total number of jobs tumbled from 95,360K to 95,151K, a drop of 209K!

The "not really most important jobs data ever" is out. Here are the results:

Jobs soar higher by 288K, far higher than expected 218K, and well above the 203K revised
Unemployment rate 6.3%, tumbles from 6.7% and well below expected 6.6%
Average hourly earnings M/M +0.0%, Exp. 0.2%; Average hourly earnings all employees Y/Y: 1.9%, Exp. 2.1%

Challenging a Sacred Cow of Banking Dogma

"The leaders of the Developed World have chipped away at the solidity that would ordinarily justify confidence in their leadership, markets and currencies, such that confidence can be lost at any moment. If confidence in a sound system is unfairly lost, then countertrend forces can act to stem the panic and restore stability. But a justified loss of confidence in an unsound system would generate much more damage and be, for a period of time and price, unstoppable. That result is what governments have risked by their poor policies, their lack of attention to the risks posed by the inventions of the modern financial system, and their neglect of the fiscal balance sheet. Since this combination is relatively new, particularly the enormity of Developed World debt and obligations, as well as the complexity and extraordinarily high leverage of the financial system (especially given the size of derivatives books), there is no way to tell exactly how it all will end. Badly, we guess." - Paul Singer

What you have to realize is that this trend is inevitable... we are hopelessly lost in a declining spiral vortex of debt and corruption that will only change with war and civil unrest.

Bad Government and Central Bank Policy Are the MAIN CAUSE of Runaway Inequality

A ‘Perfect Storm’ of demography and debt will economically and financially doom almost every country on earth. It will be TEOTWAWKI – ‘The End Of The World As We Know It’. No, it’s not the end of life or even the end of civilization. However, when it’s all over, nothing will ever be the same and that includes the disappearance of much of the middle class.  The good news - The storm won’t last forever. The bad news is there will be much more pain before it ends unless you make an effort to understand what’s happening and why.

The similarities between 2007 and 2014 continue to pile up. And you know what they say - if we do not learn from history we are doomed to repeat it.  Just like seven years ago, the stock market has soared to all-time high after all-time high.  Just like seven years ago, the authorities are telling us that there is nothing to worry about.  Unfortunately, just like seven years ago, a housing bubble is imploding and another great economic crisis is rapidly approaching.

The "developed world" has finally come full circle.

This 42 year economist from French academe has written a hot new book which, as one review puts it, "exposed capitalism’s fatal flaw." One can see why the White House likes Piketty. He supports their narrative that government is the cure for inequality when in reality government has been the principal cause of growing inequality. The White House and IMF also love Piketty’s proposal, not only for high income taxes, but also for substantial wealth taxes. The IMF in particular has been beating a drum for wealth taxes as a way to restore government finances around the world and also reduce economic inequality. Expect to hear more and more about wealth taxes. Expect to hear that they will be a “one time” event that won’t be repeated, but that will actually help economic growth by reducing economic inequality. If the Obama White House, the IMF, and people like Piketty would just let the economy alone, it could recover. As it is, they keep inventing new ways to destroy it.

So far we have experienced 7 million foreclosures. Beyond that there are still 9 million homeowners seriously underwater on their mortgages and there are millions more who are stranded in place because they don’t have enough positive equity to cover transactions costs and more stringent down payment requirements. And that’s before the next down-turn in housing prices - a development which will show-up any day. In short, the socio-economic mayhem implicit in the graph below is not the end of the line or a one-time nightmare that has subsided and is now working its way out of the system as the Kool-Aid drinkers would have you believe based on the “incoming data” conveyed in the chart. Instead, the serial bubble makers in the Eccles Building have already laid the ground-work for the next up-welling of busted mortgages, home foreclosures and the related wave of disposed families and social distress.

With all that has been written in respect to Thomas Piketty's new book "Capital", you would think someone would remark on the odd coincidence of timing of the rapid rise in inequality that the Professor is so upset about. It’s the issue of the hour. Yet when it comes to the timing at which this phenomenon presented itself, nada. Omerta from the liberal intelligentsia. What could have marked 1971 as the year the picture began to change in respect of inequality in America? It turns out that was the year America defaulted on its obligation under Bretton Woods to redeem in gold dollars held by foreign governments and the era of fiat money began.

The following is a new ad campaign in Britain. As we have warned numerous times - muddle-thruugh has failed; Martin Armstrong notes, the politicians have squandered everything and now they are hunting down capital everywhere and the view is people have to pay whatever they demand or you are just a criminal. Nobody even bothers to look at what they are doing to the world economy. These advertisements are appearing everywhere and they will only succeed in created the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression.

For seven years through 2012, the number of Californians aged 50 to 64 who live in their parents' homes swelled 67.6% to about 194,000, according to the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and the Insight Center for Community Economic Development. Many more young adults live with their parents than those in their 50s and early 60s live with theirs. Among 18- to 29-year-olds, 1.6 million Californians have taken up residence in their childhood bedrooms, according to the data. Though that's a 33% jump from 2006, the pace is half that of the 50 to 64 age group.