This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Carl Icahn Reiterates "We Are In A Major Asset Bubble"
A month ago, Carl Icahn told told CNBC that he was "very nervous" about US equity markets. Reflecting on Yellen's apparent cluelessness of the consequences of her actions, and fearful of the build of derivative positions, Icahn says he's "worried" because if Yellen does not understand the end-game then "there's no argument - you have to worry about the excesssive printing of money!" Today he follows up that warning with an op-ed that states "we are in a major asset bubble that continues to grow," supporting Stiglitz comments that "these very strong stock market prices are in a sense a symptom of the weak economy, not a symptom that we are about to have a strong recovery to our real economy."
Excerpted from The Bottom Line by Carl Icahn,
Currently, I believe that the facts “reduce” to one indisputable truth which is that we must change our system of selecting CEOs in order to stay competitive and get us out of an extremely dangerous financial situation.
...
We can no longer simply depend on the Federal Reserve to keep filling the punch bowl.
Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen recently commented on our Monetary Policy at the International Monetary Fund saying, “Monetary policy faces significant limitations as a tool to promote financial stability.” She continued that, “Its effects on financial vulnerabilities, such as excessive leverage and maturity transformation, are not well understood and are less direct than a regulatory or supervisory approach.” Yellen’s comments suggest, and I agree, that we are in an asset bubble.
Adding to this, Standard & Poor’s issued a report just a few days ago titled, “How Increasing Income Inequality is Dampening U.S. Economic Growth and Possible Ways to Change the Tide.” In it they say: “Our review of the data, as well as a wealth of research on this matter, leads us to conclude that the current level of income inequality in the U.S. is dampening GDP growth, at a time when the world’s biggest economy is struggling to recover from the Great Recession and the government is in need of funds to support an aging population.”
There is also a dire situation regarding pension funds which supports the view that Main Street Americans are the ones falling victims to entrenched CEOs and Boards doing poor jobs at running companies. A study by Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, calculates 85% of public pension funds going bankrupt in three decades and only able to achieve 4% returns on their assets. These inexcusable numbers are mainly due to pension and mutual fund managers “voting with their feet” or simply voting for current management of companies in their funds, regardless of their effectiveness on shareholder value.
Our current system of corporate governance protects mediocre CEOs and boards that are mismanaging companies and this must be changed. With this system we will not meet the needs of Main Street America, nor will we be ready for when the asset bubble we have today bursts – whether it is the next one, five, ten, or 20 years. Nobel Laureate and professor of economics at Columbia University, Joseph Stiglitz recently told CNBC, “These very strong stock market prices are in a sense a symptom of the weak economy, not a symptom that we are about to have a strong recovery to our real economy.” He also said, “In the United States, from 2009 to 2012, 95 percent of the gains went to the upper 1 percent. Ordinary Americans are using up their savings.”
...
I believe that America needs [shareholder activism] to correct the economic course we are on and push back against the approaching storm clouds resulting from the many problems we face today, including a major asset bubble that continues to grow.
- 20575 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -


Why can't we rely on the federal reserve to prop up the market?
As soon as they Quit Printing $ the game ENDS.
The US is amidst its THIRD giant bubble in less than 15 years.
How many more iterations of this bubble cycle will it take before the Fed realizes that the US is now a complete BUBBLE ECONOMY? Stated otherwise, without bubbles, the US economy would cease and collapse.
All true. But they don't care because they don't care about economics, this is about politics.
It will tank if the Fed gets out of the way.....
Not gonna happen ICarl ICant
It will eventually tank bigger if they don't, and they won't because they can't.
The money printing will end when the dollar ends. History tells us as much.
It is of no benefit to mistake evil genius for incompetence. Bubbles are what they want.
I CON can go fuck himself
Ah, Carl Icahn. I like to see them falling in line behind the collapse.
That's the key, I don't think they intend to quit.
Exactly. They're going to keep riding this pony right on into the ocean.
Because Carl is short right now.
Major asset bubble? Kinda Like HLF?
HLF is probably less of a bubble, more of ignorance. In the market, investors probably understand that the Fed has propped it up. But they're riding the wave. Whats the point of investing again? Oh yeah.. to make money.
Somebody wants you to sell.
More useless paper-pushers talking their books...
same as it ever was.
How is this new/s?
Because all these CYA statements going public tell you we are close to a major
correction/collapse..
That, or its all in Zimbabwe style, which didn't work out too well long term for stawk
values.
When MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell calls Obama's claim of bad intelligence a 'farce' it's a signal that they can see this thing is about to implode and are finally giving thought to their own career integrity.
When the clowns at CNBC start to interview people other than Faber who claim things are going pear-shaped and without mocking them a la Santelli, that will also be a signal that the big 'pop' is near.
"Don't need to be a weatherman to see which way the wind blows."
Relevant to paperbugs.
He has billions, yet he still wants more.
He can't die soon enough for me... same goes for Buffet.
Maybe Ebola Edith will cook for him.
Speaking like a good radical egalitarian... Wishing death upon someone because they want to be as rich as possible.
and how many people has he fucked over in his quest?
Survival of the fittest, BITCHEZZZ!!!!
looks like he's not "surviving" all that well, i would say dead within 1-2 years? and then...hell or maybe reincarnated as a "goliath grouper"?
His DNA bling will survive VERY well. It's all about sex, power, and DNA bling.
HeHe. "goliath grouper."
dat's not rayciss.
Crony capitalist insider trading criminals like I-con do NOT make the world a better place.
He's a selfish, narcissistic psychopath. Same goes for Gates, Munger and Buffet.
Buffet's the worst IMO. His ice cream eating, coke swilling, ukulele playing, grandpa persona is 100% manufactured.
Tell us something we don't know. There isn't any reason why the asset bubble could expand much further.
With Federal Reserve intervention and printing this bubble can get much bigger. It's what the Fed does best. Blow bubbles to historic levels.
If Icahn actually believes his own bullshit, then it's like a junkie reacting to his dealer going out of town for the weekend. 'Oh my god, I'm gonna die!'
We don't need shareholder activism, we need to end the fucking FED, the chamber of commerce, institute term-limits for Congress and let all companies from here on out know that if you go bankrupt, you will not be bailed out, no matter whose dick you suck.
You wouldn't need termi limits for congress if the Federal government were strictly limited to the powers that was granted to it.
You would have trouble getting people to actually want to serve their country by doing that basic, mundane, low dollar work and not having people spend millions for a lifetime job that makes them wealthy beyond belief.
All this crap from the king of crap means is........the ass wipe is shorting the market and wants to ensure his payoff.
Fuck him. He made billions on the system and now that it's on the death that he helped to create bed he starts pointing out all that is wrong with it. Fucking parasitic asshole.
It would have been nice if the system would have just taken its own course
Would we be better off today
"We" might be, but the country is run by and for the benefit of the top 10%. They are better off with the current system. As long as they trickle down enough, the "we" will be ok.
They're on the "short list".
Weak and old oligarchs go first.
What is it about 10% that you don't understand? 10% is 30 MILLION people.
Don't you have anything better to do than troll ZH comments?
No, I work for a TBTF Zombie bank in IT. What are you doing?
Regardless of what kind of parasite Icahn is...he's definitely correct that many corporations have crappy execs and totally bullshit boards of directors. It's the total corruption of the boards of directors which has done the most to destroy capitalism in the last 50 years...but whatever...chances of that changing...zilch.
And the asset bubble Icahn complains about? Maybe true...but also propaganda for his PE biz. Kind of reminds me of an Asimov story...where you analyze the article and end up with zero information.
he should know, he helped blow it
Arrest him and redistribute his stolen wealth.
"We can no longer simply depend on the Federal Reserve to keep filling the punch bowl."
That's the problem; it is (or should be [or used to be]) the Fed's job to "take away the punch bowl just as the party gets going." Where is William Martin when you need him?
Hope is the air inside a bubble...
Helps us all breathe when we get trapped
Carl makes it sound like printing more money won't eliminate "the end game". Why would anybody want the game to end?
just fucking die already, you old lizard
i'm long gold here with a short cock. if this trade goes south, i will never get layed again.
That tickled my belly, thanks!
everyone, including the dead, dumb, and deaf know when you counterfeit too much of any one thing - it goes down in value.
obama - the big eared dummy-in-chief and yellen the gaping cunt of cunts don't care because they are too busy licking the taints of the powers that put them in power.
Signed,
The middle-class is horseshit
Entrenched mediocre CEOs and boards = incompetent and narcissistic boomers
I don't get it. If the USA can print funny money at will and everybody still uses it, why not print a million dollars per year and per American citizen, give it to him/her to spend as he/she will and have a massive economic boost as a result?
Everybody knows it's fake money anyway, so why beat around the bush?
because your million could not buy a bread.
more you print, less value it has.
Useing your logic, (which I agree with) What will be the effect of the over 4 trillion in Fed balance sheet expansion?
We won't even include the 17 trillion in bogus debt already spent by .gov
Instead of making 300 million Americans millionairs, We have made several thousand Americans Billionaires.
The USA actually has been printing funny money *at will* and giving it out for as long as I can remember. If you are complaining...you must not be getting any of that counterfeit loot (just like me). Did you see the article today on patent workers "working from home" but not actually putting any time in? Yeah, those f*ckers are getting some phony cash. All the gold plated state and federal pensions? Yup, them too. Police and firefighters boosting their pensions with fraudulent overtime? Guilty. Bailouts for the banks? Printed and distributed. More expensive contracts for the defense companies? Boom...done. Maybe your turn is coming next? Unfortunately, the only winner in a counterfeiting scheme is the person/group that spends the money *first*. Oops.
Soon as I win the Lottery I'm going to go public and say it only encourages gambling and should be ended.
Best comment i have read on here in weeks!! Well done!!
My expectation:
Order to trigger Triple Lehman will be signed before December 31st 2014.
Why?
World is abandoning USD and disregarding USA due to Quantitative Easing, which is basically Financial Aggression from Bank Lobby to world assets.
Either financial wipeout, or USD no more
Why would the financial system "order" itself destroyed? Everybody on Big-Corp welfare gets wiped-out. Seems a good war with Vlad and his ISIS supporters would be much more lucrative and beneficial for everybody that matters.
No.
A financial wipeout, fixes the system, it does not destroy it.
It only destroyes the weakest links and comes out stronger
Re: It only destroyes the weakest links and comes out stronger
Wouldn't it wipe-out the wealth of the top 10% AND the top 1%?
No. It would wipe the wealth of the 10% which is insolvent.
Only few of them are insolvent, mainly bank lobby.
The rest are ok
Well, seems kinda risky for the top 1% top purposely take that step. There's nobody "in-charge" to make a decision like that. The top 1% is 3 million people, and the top .1% is 300k people. I doubt they could agree on pizza toppings.
"Major Asset Bubble" "I own lots of Herbalife" blah blah blah
Smug jerks like Icahn can't resist an "I told you so" even if they are being hypocritical.
Cue Icahn on CNBC after the next crash saying with self-aggrandizing relish "Back in August of 2014 I told everyone..."
Hey man the bullshit vitamin and supplement business us lucrative, the Latino community really eats that shit up, they got a 12% diabetes rate they're desperate to be thin and caucasian, they got Mayor Villaraigosa on their payroll like Ameriquest.
The offshoring has its consequences: the losers, the manufacturing base; the winners, the financials feeding off their offshored production.
"The Hot Housing Markets Are Mostly Out West and the Laggards Are in the East": Marketwatch today:
The top five markets by single-family home prices are: the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, Calif. area at $899,500; the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, Calif. area at $769,600; the Anaheim-Santa Ana-Irvine, Calif. area at $691,900; the Honolulu, Hawaii area at $678,500 and the San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos area at $504,200.
The cheapest five markets by single-family home prices are: the Youngstown-Warren-Boardman, Ohio area at $78,600; the Rockford, Ill. area at $85,300; the Emira, N.Y. area at $87,800; the Decatur, Ill. area at $90,900; and the Toledo, Ohio area at $95,900. (Note that the NAR didn’t have data on Detroit.)
http://blogs.marketwatch.com/capitolreport/2014/08/12/the-hot-housing-markets-are-mostly-out-west-and-the-laggards-are-in-the-east/
Survival of the fittest, BITCHEZZZ!!!!
SMART Technology, Big Data Unicorns, & Psychographic Triggers
There is nothing wrong with global communications; it’s working just fine, collapsing contracts made to be broken. We have the zombie on the table, dissecting it for all to see, but the old empire propaganda root, debt as accounting income chasing debt as accounting asset, died fifty years ago.
Physicists employed to program other automatons, who have subjected themselves to the gravity of peer pressure History, to buy ever cheaper crap at ever higher prices, on the assumption that an irrational market can outlast all intelligent investors, with SMART technology built for the purpose, is nothing more than an extension of gravity, going backwards more efficiently.
So, where’s the new education system, without which the empire majorities have sentenced themselves to demographic collapse?
The problem with deduction, making assumptions about an open system from within a closed system, is that every moment spent in the process causes the closed system to contract relative to the open system, because the answer is always wrong, and nothing is learned. Life is about doing, and no amount of observation can replace it.
The sexes exist for a reason, to make a battery. You cannot raise boys to become men in a female dominated culture, or girls to become women in a male dominated culture. The balance of power rests on marriage, for a lifetime, to employ NPV. Government of, by and for artificial borders is a derivative of civil marriage chasing its own tail, trying to prove it’s the integral, with management of specialization, obsolete at its inception.
If quite a few individual investors couldn’t outlast an irrational market, you wouldn’t exist. The only possible outcome of civil marriage is economic discharge. Its market in war, the second derivative, stupid competing with stupid, has no winning hands, but that never stops the critters from playing MAD.
The parties to civil marriage examine each other as enemies with one eye, while the other shops for replacements, for when the inevitable occurs. Who is on the axis of good and who is on the axis of evil, when the divide and conquer filter collapses, depends entirely upon arbitrary perspective. It’s not the DNA creating such stark contrasts.
The empire extortion queue charges you $2k to smog a used car, not because there is anything wrong with the car, but to replace the electronics to ensure that you continue paying the extortion, while automatons employ more automatons to add additional layers of extortion, paying them with nothing more than an entitlement promise, a future share of extortion, growing ponzi inflation to make the entitlement worthless, for all but a few, to reseed the ponzi.
Social collectivists build their lives around peer pressure extortion, and predatory capitalists exploit the stupidity, to hunt you down and force you to compete with stupid, to give your self away. The critters only want what they cannot have, something for nothing consumption, and you are the meal ticket. Be about your business, before the occupiers man their toll booths.
The majorities hide behind sociopaths accordingly, which must now go to war against each other, because demand is falling, supply is growing, the finance costs to hide all the dead inventory, in plain sight, is exploding, and the critters cannot change their habits. The Bay Area is the destination of hot money because global majorities depend on it for bait and swap apps to distribute their SMART extortion infrastructure.
If you want your children educated, you have to educate them, and if you educate them, the State majority will cut you a thousand different ways, because that is what it is bred to do, of, by and for feudalism. The only difference between nations is words on a piece of paper, the false assumption proffered that artificial borders separate the empire.
War is a problemsolution for the majority because it tries to prove that it can adapt the environment to itself, rather than adapting itself. The corporations do not hire and train physicists to explore space, but rather to consume space, trying to eliminate your exit, eliminating their own exit, from implosion. What’s the problem?
The sad fact is that empires of majorities are always treading water, faster and faster, until they drown, only to be replaced by the next majority, same as the old majority. Scaling five thousand years of gravity is not for the feint of heart, but hiding your children in a group to avoid reality is not the answer.
History is not a suspense novel. Labor has no interest in solving repetitive closed system problems, but the majority loves to solve the same problem, over and over and over again, creating emergencies for the purpose. When the majorities get done hammering each other as nails, they forward the winning sociopath.
Labor will do what it always does – give the critters another technology to build new cartels around, and raise children, to bypass the resulting gravity. If you are expecting sympathy from those being hunted, get in line, to get on a train, to see a doctor, to get the latest drug, like all the others.
My daughters understand what I am talking about better than anyone else on the planet, so they have no need of an appeal to the majority for equal rights at the end of the FILO bankruptcy queue. Putin is KGB and he has a lot to lose, so he isn’t going to pick a fight with labor. But the socialists are stupid enough to declare war on labor, so they will try to give Putin nothing to lose.
In the meantime, if you need a car, buy an old Honda Accord and install a terminal box for your meter, leaving the empire behind to compute itself, instead of chasing wires with monkeys, to feed an 800lb gorilla. Working for the cartels is like watching paint dry, while the critters run around in circles, acting like the process is rocket science. If you want to find labor, learn to build meters, to bypass stupid.
Build two sandboxes, one for you and your spouse, and another for the majority, so your children can see the majority vote to turn its sandbox into a sewer. And begin with the foundation, in the basement, where you will find someone who has done it before.
The path to the future is a spouse, who will tell you things you do not want to hear. You have to be patient, especially at the end of an empire cycle, because there aren’t many of those around, but, when the time comes, you’ll know.
There are two ways to look at a battery. Choose the compliment that appears to the majority to be the opposite. Don’t make a decision, one way or the other, because of your parents. You complete the economic mobility circuit as you move forward, leaving the empire majority to build its toll booths, taking short cuts with your design, with no idea what you are going to do next.
Gravity is, what you chose to make of it, and regardless of what the majority says or does, it’s youre a* in the fire. The majority blows up its cave, with words, every time, trying to control a derivative with a derivative. Adjust the gap.
The old man is in the basement, expecting the integral, not in the penthouse, managing derivatives of derivatives, all of which depend upon the elevator. Economies are built from the bottom up, and operated from the top down, regardless of ponzi mythology. Which sociopath or majority controls the perception of the past, with artificial borders, is irrelevant to labor.
War, over artificial scarcity, is business as usual. Checkers or chess, it's all the same to labor.
Interestingly put, kevinearick.
So now this predatory blood sucking leech has some sudden damn concern for the same middle class this MF'r has been fleecing and stealing pensions from since TWA and is now the champion of reform?
May his gene pool cease to exist and scabies infect his erogenous zones after being raped by 1000 aborigine's topped off with a MERS infected camel.
Any ZH reader has known this fact for ages! Funny how real information can be found all over ZH, but yet inside the media bubble, this real information seems unable to penetrate. Odd that he noticed a bubble now, the Fed. has formed earths greatest asset bubble and has been for 4 years now!
Standard Operating Procedure at the FED since 1987 = New Chair Satan, higher rates, crash, then more massive printing. We are again in the eye of the monetary storm.
.......for the past 35 years!
Fuck Carl Icahn and his ilk. He has made his money stealing from companies, hurting workers, small investors, consumers and taxpayers. And all the current articles laud him as a great investor. With a little digging, I found an article from 1991 that provides insight into how Icon works.
"The first of the money men descended on Simplicity Pattern Co. in the autumn of 1979.
By the time they were finished a decade later, a company that once had $100 million in the bank was more than $100 million in the hole."
"In that decade, the money men:
-- Bought and sold the company four times and made tens of millions of dollars running up the price of Simplicity stock in threatened and actual takeovers.
-- Drained $100 million that Simplicity had in its bank account and investment portfolio.
-- Raided the company's pension funds on two occasions.
-- Issued bonds and borrowed from banks, sending the company's debt soaring from almost nothing to $100 million.
-- Sold off properties to raise badly needed cash after they had depleted the company's $100 million cushion.
-- Created so much debt that Simplicity could no longer generate enough cash to make interest payments.
-- Defaulted on the interest payments on bonds and bank loans."
"In August 1981, companies controlled by Carl C. Icahn reported they had acquired 1.6 million shares of Simplicity - 11.2 percent of the stock. By November, Icahn controlled 13.3 percent and had made a tender offer to buy an additional 18 percent - effectively blocking the NCC-Simplicity deal.
To fend off Icahn, NCC Energy enlisted the help of an Australian company, Waltons Bond Ltd., to make a counteroffer for Icahn's holdings. A month later, in December 1981, Waltons Bond paid Icahn's companies $26.5 million for their 1.8 million shares.
That transaction was especially lucrative for Icahn, whose businesses picked up a quick $15 million profit.
The scorecard read: Investors Posner and Icahn: $25 million. Simplicity, its employees and customers: reduced earnings and higher pattern prices."
"How to Ruin a Company"
http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19911103&slug=1...
He wasn't the only "activist investor" involved, but he netted a quick $15 million.
Where was the Justice department? If they did their job, this guy would be wearing stripes and not being touted as an investment sage on all forms of the Lame stream media.
Carl baby is short the market - that's why he's running his big fat mouth - again.
I'd like to see this market roll over too, but it would be nice to see Carl get squeezed for a few weeks - he deserves it.
Yellen admits: what we are doing is not going to work and we don't know what we're doing in the first place.
“Monetary policy faces significant limitations as a tool to promote financial stability.” She continued that, “Its effects on financial vulnerabilities, such as excessive leverage and maturity transformation, are not well understood and are less direct than a regulatory or supervisory approach.”
LOOK OUT BELOW.
"......Major asset bubble"?
More like a major ass bubble. Have you seen J.Yellen from behind?
"Yeah, thanks to you, fucker." - Bill Hicks
Regardless of what you name it the "Federal Reserve Nightmare" or the "Yellen conundrum", the box Ben Bernanke made when he painted both himself and the Federal Reserve in a corner remains. Bernanke has by passing the chairmanship to Yellen escaped from the QE trap but left the rest of us fully in its grasp.
With a policy of loose and cheap money and an inflation target of just 2% the Federal Reserve continues to please those gambling that not fighting the Fed guarantees profits.
As many Americans are forced to pay higher food, gasoline, and health insurance premiums, I wish someone would let the Fed know we have already passed their target. Any thought that inflation is not higher has come from the false illusion brought from lower payments on things like auto loans and mortgages, this is a one off and will not continue. Trouble lurks ahead. More on this subject in the article below.
http://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2014/06/exit-strategy-from-qe-remains-elu...
High asset prices are a symptom of a weak economy. They reflect the fact that capital (wealth) has no place to go, no productive avenue to create new wealth.
Rather, instead, capital is funneled into a system of speculation as the only place that returns (ethereal) can be quickly achieved which amounts to nothing more than a defacto Ponzi scheme.
SO I say that it is Wealth Inequality, or the system that creates this, and NOT CEOs per se, that is the REAL driver for these economic misallocations we refer to as asset bubbles.
Wealth Inequality is directly linked to mal-investment on one side and a collapse of consumer purchasing power on the other.
When its bursts, bureaucrats will just strip that last piece of meat off the bones of the middle class
Overall time, bulls are found only in the FED building, gloadman biolding, JPM building, .. and handful others. In short, bulls are few and far between. Yet the markets are firmly manipulated.