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The 'Fragile' Potemkin Stock Market Conceals A Post-Industrial Slum
Submitted by James H Kunstler via Kunstler.com,
“Holy smokes,” Janet Yellen must have barked last week when Japan stepped up to plug the liquidity hole left by the US Federal Reserve’s final taper trot to the zero finish line of Quantitative Easing 3. The gallant samurai Haruhiko Kuroda of Japan’s central bank announced that his grateful nation had accepted the gift of inflation from the generous American people, which will allow the island nation to fall on its wakizashi and exit the dream-world of industrial modernity it has struggled through for a scant 200 years.
Money-printing turns out to be the grift that keeps on giving. The US stock markets retraced all their October jitter lines, and bonds plumped up nicely in anticipation of hot so-called “money” wending its digital way from other lands to American banks. Euroland, too, accepted some gift inflation as its currency weakened. The world seems to have forgotten for a long moment that all this was rather the opposite of what America’s central bank has been purported to seek lo these several years of QE heroics — namely, a little domestic inflation of its own to simulate if not stimulate the holy grail of economic growth. Of course all that has gotten is the Potemkin stock market, a fragile, one-dimensional edifice concealing the post-industrial slum that the on-the-ground economy has become behind it.
Then, as if cued by some Satanic invocation, who marched onstage but the old Maestro himself, Alan Greenspan, Fed chief from 1987 to 2007, who had seen many a sign and wonder himself during that hectic tenure, and he just flat-out called QE a flop. He stuck a cherry on top by adding that the current Fed couldn’t possibly end its ZIRP policy, either. All of which rather left America’s central bank in a black box wrapped in an enigma, shrouded by a conundrum, off-gassing hydrogen sulfide like a roadkill ‘possum. Incidentally, Greenspan told everybody to go out and buy gold — which naturally sent the price of gold spiraling down through its previous bottom into the uncharted territory of worthlessness. Gold is now the most unloved substance in the history of trade, made even uglier by the overtures of Mr. Greenspan. Personally, I think the more violently gold devalues for the moment, the more extreme the reaction will be when the first glimpses of reality pierce the twilight’s last gleaming of official US market intervention shenanigans.
All this goes on, by the way, because an essential problem remains: the world cannot pay back its accumulated debt and the money maestros of world finance don’t dare even try to unwind it in an orderly manner, fearing they will open up an international monetary sucking chest wound of deflationary doom. And this does nothing to brighten the prospect that evermore new debt can ever be repaid. All that remains are various three card monte maneuvers, hot potato games, and musical chair tournaments using the last kinetic rocket thrusts of global credulity to pretend that contraction is not already here, walking amongst us, like the ancient Harvestman of yore, swinging his scythe.
Of course, few doubt the reality of Ebola. And ISIS (or whatever it’s called) also works its ghastly hoodoo in the gummiest region of the world, and they both share an interesting feature these days: reporters are discouraged from going into either hot zone where the threat is that they will bleed out through all the orifices from Ebola or have their heads hacked off on video by ISIS. So we are not getting the best information out of Ebola West Africa and those parts of the Middle East where ISIS is at large. The situation is apt to be rather worse than we are being told. The financial markets shrugged off both these threats by the time Halloween rolled around, but I wouldn’t be so confident that story is over for either of these two ugly influences. If the world had a face, it would have fragility written all over it.
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Full on Christmas commercials yesterday during the NFL games replete with snow & Santa Claus. It's never too early to go into debt!
is it a straw Purchase to have a crate of SKS Rifles on my christmas list?
... if so, Santa please bring me:
1. 3d printer http://www.mendelmax.com/
2. a desk top 5 axic cnc machine http://www.pocketnc.com/
3. some more OPM 10 silver bars http://www.bgasc.com/category/10-oz-silver-bars-all-brands
They had a commercial with snow in it? Did they forget last years market catastrophe already?
Cheap money destroys the need for labor.
Automation becomes cheaper and industry is cutting work force.
Example from my neck of the woods: Farmer is "upgrading" to a fully robotic milking system for a million to save 60k in annual labor costs for two milkers
He couldn't afford to even dream of such a machine if it weren't for the cheap loans to buy and the manufacturer's ability to secure cheap financing.
That is why despite all the cheap money tricks, our labor force keeps shrinking.
Double painful is that the cost of labor cannot rise in light of cheaply affordable automation but the cheap money destroys purchasing power and labor is double fucked.
Fuck Bernanke and the rest of the thieving distorting gang.
Someone wake K-Hen so he takes his finger off the 'Buy Everything' key.
As long as they’re on the train they can’t be spending your money. bourgeois survivalism.
Anyone care to join me in a bet on how many ebola cases, in the US, are 'dicovered'
on Wednesday.
I'll take 10 to start.
Anyone seen Duncans' family in public yet ?
Wednesday headline: Grab Yer Ankles America!
Executive order on illegal amnesty as well.
Not to mention more bad news about Ebolacare:http://www.publiusforum.com/2014/11/02/unprecedented-obama-orders-insura...
"Anyone care to join me in a bet on how many ebola cases, in the US, are 'dicovered'"
Gene Rosen will find them, and Robbie Parker will commentate while Jeff Bauman coughs and wheezes in the background.
An American, not US subject.
if we can just get ISIS to contract Ebola, problem solved!
maybe not
would be suicide bombers might instead decide to contract disease ... and spread as much of it as they can
Obama hopes all those illegals he will give amnesty by executive order after the election will go out and spend their welfare checks on Christmas gifts to help the economy.
“Holy smokes,” Janet Yellen must have barked last week when Japan stepped up to plug the liquidity hole left by the US Federal Reserve’s final taper trot to the zero finish line of Quantitative Easing 3.
check the DXY
when the FOMC minutes came out a few weeks ago warning on usd strength ... 85.6 ... now? ... 87.3
stronger dollar will crush S&P earnings (sales and FX treatment on overseas profits) ... goodbye capex spending ... hello layoffs
recession near
If the US made anything anymore it would be a big problem.
Every cloud has a silver lining.
old yeller barked
you are insinuating that fundamentals matter any more
all that is left is the con(findence) game
a giant game of Three Card Monte
"Merry Christmas people and I want to thank you for our most profitable quarter ever. We are looking to do ever better next quarter. Please hand me those envelopes."
"Are those our Christmas bonuses?"
"No. Pink Slips."
legalize pot, that will fix everything
I'm doing my best to help enable the post industrial slump by voting with my wallet until this shitshow comes down. Everyone else should be too.
Whats a wallet ?
THat leather thingy where I breed my moths ?
I quit Hollywood and TV years before Obola and cut all my spending as soon as he was selected by the Zogligarchs.
Buy like Yellen.
Load up every CC you have and then cut them up in pieces.
They really don't expect you to pay them off anymore....
Of course they can hide it .
See how the masters did it .
https://www.academia.edu/9095548/Shakespeares_Secret_Diaries_
https://www.academia.edu/9094752/Why_is_the_Parthenon_not_round_
https://www.academia.edu/9096538/Great_Hidden_Treasures
Potemkin/Zionist Village.
An American, not US subject.