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"I’m Not Crazy, I’m Scared" - Why For One Trader, This Time It Is Different
Bloomberg's Richard Breslow, author of "Trader's Notes" is painfully accurate with his latest take on the "markets."
I’m Not Crazy, I’m Scared
The SPX flirted with all-time highs. The Nasdaq Index made 15 year highs; Chinese equities, and so many other equity indices are flying. Bonds sold off this week, but the German 10-year yield is still ~17bps, the U.S. 10-year yield unable to get beyond 2%, and Greek bonds had a two-day rally that would be truly impressive if it wasn’t on volume that made it just an exercise moving wide bid/offer spreads, representing sentiment not trading.
The USD is selling off on the view that Greece is saved, the Fed is scared, and a “we can’t sit with positions because it never works” mentality. The only really new thing the market needs to digest is that commodities may be nearing a bottom
Happy days seemingly, but there have been some very discordant and troubling comments from the creme de la creme of smart - and big - investors.
Over the last three days, we have reported that some of the most important investment voices in the world are more than a little scared about the ravenous appetite for risk playing out in the market, and the fact that they have been ignored is beyond unnerving. Central banks are driving all investment decisions, and what this implies is that they are in this trade so deeply that there is no obvious or practical exit.
Over the course of this week we have heard Larry Fink of Blackrock talking about the severe risks of investing in Europe; Bill Gross of Janus saying German bonds are the short trader’s dream; Pimco warning that markets have not addressed the potential of a Fed tightening (I remember 1994); the incoming CEO of Allianz, that TWO trillion dollar asset manager, saying, “We see generally meager growth prospects, political dangers and risks of a stock market crash.” Even Abby Cohen thinks it is a stock pickers world, not a buy anything and kick back world. And yet, the market didn’t even blink.
What is different this time?
Central Banks and their sovereign wealth funds have become the major players dominating market activity. One central banker after another has admitted they are fixated on market reaction to their comments and actions. They are relying on markets blessing their actions even though it was market dysfunction (and regulatory malfeasance) that brought us here. This is a dangerous situation. The focus must return to the REAL economy; we cannot trade our way out of past mistakes.
And we must look at commodities. One thing central bankers do, because forward curves drive all their forecasts, is extrapolate ad infinitum current trends into the future. No central bank in the world got oil right, and that is arguably the most important commodity in the world. Well, oil has made new YTD highs. Why do you think TIPs auctions have been blowing off the shelves? If central bankers have this wrong, their forecasts are wrong, and the Fed, for one, will be way behind the curve. I posit that a lot of central bankers will be tacking right if Brent holds above $63.
So the big question to ponder is why all these very smart people who control trillions of dollars of assets don’t seem to be voting with their money. If the biggest fund managers and thought leaders of the world were radically changing their asset allocations, wouldn’t we see it? Not if central banks are all on the other side of the trade. Maybe they think they can just hold to maturity. A wise central banker told me I should learn to live with central banks being the dominant force in the market, whether I like it or not. I, unhappily, think he is right. Oh, how I wish Louis Rukeyser could get them on his couch.
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Had dinner last year with an individual high up in one of the world's top investment firms. The takeaway: dollar will collapse, sometime in the next 20 yrs or so. Market can continue to go higher (overall) for much longer than people think. At absolute minimum, $collapse is several years away, marked by deflation followed by inflation.
I think complexity theory would indicate it's impossible to predict when. What people do is see the number of fault lines, and they wind up making their warnings in the form of timetables (e.g. 2 years out, this fall, etc.)
As typical on Zero Hedge, the article above grossly understates the magnitude of the problem:
Central banks are based upon ENFORCED FRAUDS. Therefore, to say that "central banks are driving all investment decisions" is actually to state that ENFORCED FRAUDS are driving all investment decisions. That is correct, but, merely recognizing that is still way too superficial a view of the deeper problems, for which there are NO obvious or practical exits.
We are living inside of a Bizarro Mirror World or Wonderland Matrix, where everything appears to be proportionately backward and absurd to the degree that the fundamentals are based on being able to ENFORCE FRAUDS.
I regard this five minute clip from one of the Pirates of the Carribbean movies as a metaphor for the situation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9La6AXq8yXY
Up is DownHowever, the full story is much more hyper-complicated than merely one inversion. There are levels upon levels of inversions, which includes that most of the "solutions" based upon inverting one inversion is not enough, since there were more than one level upon which things were inverted!
There are now globalized systems of electronic monkey money frauds, backed by the threat of force from apes with atomic bombs, inside of the established systems of MAD Money As Debt, backed by MAD Mutual Assured Destruction. That MADNESS is almost impossible to cope with, since everyone who is relatively successful WITHIN that systems was able to do so only by being some sort of professional liar or immaculate hypocrite, which adapted to operate INSIDE and take advantage of MADLY ENFORCED FRAUDS.
The debt controls depend upon the death controls. It is not merely that money IS measurement backed by murder, but also that it MUST necessarily be, because the production of destruction controls production. The entire political economy has been built on a foundation of financial frauds, which were able to be enforced, despite those frauds getting exponentially worse, due to those debt slavery systems having an inherent structure which drove that to happen, so that we ARE now looking at debt insanities, and the ways that those are going to play through WILL result in death insanities, BECAUSE, ALL OF THE MULTIFACETED EXPONENTIAL GROWTHS HAVE "OVERSHOT" IN EVERY WAY ...
However, everyone who was relatively successful through operating through those established systems, and/or having careers within the controlled opposition to those established systems, have vested interests in continuing to perceive the world in ways which are based on bullshit, which are backwards and absurd, but which WORKED as systems of organized lies operating robberies, which got away with doing that by presenting themselves as the opposite of what they were really doing. THE PARADOXES ARE human beings and civilizations necessarily operate as entropic pumps of energy flows, but the social successfulness of pyramid systems based on backing up lies with violence, for generation after generation, resulted in the biggest bullies' bullshit world view becoming almost totally dominant. Therefore, while everything operates as general energy systems, the concept of entropy was deliberately developed to become as backwards, and therefore, as absurd, as humanly possible.
Social systems based on successfully enforcing frauds are simultaneously maintaining attitudes of evil deliberate ignorance. The ruling classes are relatively able to "tell a lie often enough and it will become the truth." However, the more successful they are at doing that, then the more society becomes based on believing in bullshit, and the more that society deliberately ignores any other rational evidence or logical arguments, which would contradict the existing systems of social successes based on being able to back up lies with violence, while the contradictions and cognitive dissonances due to those processes automatically become worse, faster, since those socially successful lies NEVER become "the truth."
THE PARADOXES of the spirals of more radical truths ARE that there is nothing but the dynamic equilibria of different systems of organized lies operating robberies, in which frauds are symbolic robberies, and the currently most dominate systems which are doing that were made and maintained by the international bankers, as the supreme gangsters, the banksters. The bond holders tend to be the pyramidion people, inside of social pyramid systems, whose problems are now due to final failure from too much social success based upon enforcing frauds.
There are double whammy dilemmas there because of the ways that production is controlled by the production of destruction, while that production of destruction is most socially successful when done through enforcing frauds, in the most deceitful and treacherous ways possible. Moreover, that must necessarily be the case, because human beings necessarily operate as entropic pumps of energy flows, which have necessarily promoted an inverted, utterly backward, conceptualization of entropy. Therefore, the most important form of human labour is when some human beings work to kill other human beings, because the production of destruction controls production in those ways.
Eventually, the astronomically amplified magnitudes of the debt insanities WILL provoke matching levels of death insanities. Meanwhile, the established systems continue to attempt to double down, again and again, on being able to continue to enforce their frauds, while facing their own double-bind paradoxes, or self-created Catch 22s.
Articles republished on Zero Hedge from Phoenix Capital have been pointing out that the bond numbers are NUTS! E.g.: "As Bad As Things Were in 2007, They Are MUCH Worse Now" had stated:
"Nowhere is the debt insanity more apparent than in the OTC derivatives market. As of June 2014, the notional value for this market was $691 TRILLION. This represents nearly 10 times global GDP. ... We are talking about just derivatives here."
Inevitably, as Phoenix Capital wrote, "any normalization means a crisis magnitudes larger than the 2008 crash. That crisis WILL hit ..." 2007 was the last apparently "normal" year. We are never going back to that old-fashioned sense of "normal" again. As Zero Hedge has phrased it, we first went into the absurdities of the "new normal," while more recently we have developed levels of absurdities which have become "paranormal," due to everything being based on enforcing frauds, which systems are getting more rigid, and therefore actually more fragile, due to the increasing levels of the practical impossibilities of continuing to enforce bigger frauds, at an exponentially accelerating rate.
These days, the physical economy, and everything that flesh and blood people do, has become a relatively trivial aspect of the virtual world of astronomically amplified "legal fictions" piled one on top of another, as a Tower of Babel of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, in which their ouroboros of incorporated robberies, through symbolic frauds, has exceeded the physical economy, and all the flesh and blood people, by orders of magnitude!
By and large, people who pretend that they are getting "prepared" for the foreseeable future are indulging in nostalgic nonsense and romantic fantasies. Of course, I not saying do not attempt to become "prepared." What I believe is that after one fully faces the facts regarding the magnitude of the avalanche of problems, which are automatically getting worse, faster, at exponential rates, one eventually is forced to conclude that it is NOT possible to become "prepared." In my view, what it would actually take to become effectively "prepared" would be enough political transformations to cope with the development of globalized electronic frauds, backed by atomic bombs. Anything less than that is not really in the same order of magnitude as those problems actually present.
Theoretically, one would have to better understand a problem in order to perhaps be able solve it better. However, better understanding of the ways that civilization is controlled by Huge Lies, backed by Lots of Violence, for thousands of years, getting worse at an exponential rate, does NOT lead to any easy ways to resolve that situation, other than through their own MADNESS most probably driving things to go out of control, into fits of self-destructions. Ideally, enough people would understand enough that money is measurement backed by murder. Such an understanding of money, and the markets that use that money, would then enable the human energy systems to be integrated with the industrial and natural energy systems. However, the ways that the "markets" work now is through triumphantly ENFORCED FRAUDS, which get away to the maximum degree possible with pretending and presenting themselves that they are somehow NOT ENFORCED FRAUDS, so that all of the "markets" are as rigged as the "money" supply.
The irony is that those few who do recognize the degree to which the debt controls are backed by the death controls then tend to still propose bullshit "solutions" based on the same old-fashioned false fundamental dichotomies and related impossible ideals, that the markets should NOT include fraud and murder, which the real markets actually DO, and must necessarily DO. Hence, there are deeper and deeper levels, where the lies are different at every level, regarding the ways that: "Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."
We ARE living inside of a Bizarro Mirror World, or Wonderland Matrix, where everything appears proportionately backward and absurd, to the degree that everything is controlled by ENFORCING FRAUDS. However, the few that go through the process of facing those central social facts STILL tend to want to go back to "normal," where the social situation is NOT that the government is the biggest form of organized crime controlled by the best organized gangs of criminals. However, ironically, that kind of nostalgic nonsense or romantic fantasy is what makes resolving the real problems more realistically become too politically impossible.
Most people want to continue to rely upon using DUALITIES to perceive their world. They do not want to use UNITARY MECHANISMS. However, at the same time, progress in physical science has gone through prodigious series of profound paradigm shifts, to develop better UNITARY MECHANISMS, which have transcended the old-fashioned common sense DUALITIES, in the most basic ways regarding the common sense ideas regarding time and space. For instance, progress in quantum mechanics and the special theory of reality have made the technologies that allow for globalized systems of electronic monkey money frauds, backed by the threat of force from apes with atomic bombs, inside of the established systems of MAD Money As Debt, backed by MAD Mutual Assured Destruction.
BUT, BUT, BUT, at the same time, there has been no such progress in political science, because that would require surpassing those paradigm shifts in physical sciences with matching paradigm shifts in political science. Despite that there have developed systems of electronic frauds, backed by the force of atomic bombs, that the political economy is NECESSARILY based upon ENFORCED FRAUDS is still being deliberately ignored and/or denied. Rather, there is mostly runaway MADNESS, in the form of debt insanities, headed towards provoking death insanities.
When one goes through enough of the spirals of more radical truths, it becomes clearer that money is NECESSARILY measurement backed by murder. Therefore, the only genuinely better monetary systems would require better measurements backed by better murders. Of course, that is precisely why those problems are so intractable, and so, we are defaulting towards runaway debt insanities provoking death insanities. Theoretically, human beings could understand themselves and their civilizations in ways which were consistent with physical science, and the general laws of energy systems in their environment, as well as in the physical realities of their economic activities. However, the main obstacle to doing that would be that enough human beings would have to become willing and able to face more of the basic facts about themselves, and especially regarding the degree to which they have all been brainwashed to believe in the biggest bullies' bullshit world view, which includes that there is a core of organized crime, surrounded by controlled opposition, which is actually controlling civilization, because there were reasons how and why that was actually selected to become so!
When one compares, both empirically and theoretically, the real ways that human beings operate as entropic pumps of energy flows, one recognizes that it both is the case, as well as must be the case, by definition, that civilization operates according to the principles and methods of organized crime. However, the biggest and best organized gangs of criminals have been able to promote their kind of backward bullshit that somehow they are not doing that, while their controlled opposition groups promote matching bookends of bullshit that nobody should do that.
Only that which actually exists can actually evolve. The only things that actually exist are the dynamic equilibria of different systems of organized lies operating robberies. The established systems are becoming extremely unbalanced, due to the degree that the biggest bullies' bullshit world view has been able to become so totally dominant. Thus, the current conditions, wherein the banksters operate through privately controlled banks being allowed to make the public "money" supply out of nothing as debts, while governments enforce those frauds against everyone else, and even against those governments themselves! Inside of those MAD Money As Debt systems, too much "money" made out of nothing drives inflation, while too much of that "money" disappearing back to nothing drives deflation. Meanwhile, the MAD Hatters are attempting to get that just right. However, just the right amount of ENFORCED FRAUDS is difficult to achieve, especially since that has to be done quite obliquely, through means where those doing that will not publicly admit what they are really doing.
There are deeper radical truths regarding the superficially correct observation that: "Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored." The FACTS about natural selection pressures have always existed, and those drove the development of human systems of artificial selection, through the paradoxical developments of murder systems whose successes were based on backing up deceits with destruction, which morphed in financial systems based on ENFORCING FRAUDS. The central facts regarding natural selection have always been that, after life exists, then death controls direct the evolution of that life. Those same central facts necessarily apply to human life.
However, the extreme paradoxes have developed that, while natural selection became internalized as human intelligence, that intelligence was primarily applied to become better at being dishonest, and backing that up with violence, in order to deal with the biggest selection pressures, which were other human beings. Hence, the history of warfare, and then, the history of political economics, which is actually a subset of warfare, but which is deliberately presented backwards, as IF economics is, or only should be, based on production, while the production of destruction should not control economic activities, despite that it does, and must do so.
The Wonderland Matrix that we are amazed by and lost within has become electronic frauds, backed by the threat of the force of atomic bombs. In my view, the only genuinely better resolutions of those kinds of problems would be to go through sufficient intellectual scientific revolutions, which would enable using more UNITARY MECHANISMS to understand the solve political problems, rather than continuing to presume upon the DUALITIES, promoted by both the biggest bully banksters, and their controlled opposition groups, based upon false fundamental dichotomies and the related impossible ideals.
I REPEAT: money is NECESSARILY based on measurement backed by murder. There are NO realistic solutions which could exist outside of that, because it is NOT possible for human beings to stop living as entropic pumps of energy flows. However, at the present time, we are obviously headed towards the established systems that back up debt controls with death controls spiraling OUT OF HUMAN CONTROL, as debt insanities, provoking death insanities. The future will emerge out of the hyper-complicated ways that the dynamic equilibria between different systems of organized lies operating robberies develop, which will be especially hyper-complicated because the most dominant organized crime gangs doing that will continue to deliberately ignore and/or deny that is what they are really doing, while their controlled opposition groups will similarly promote moralities based upon the impossible ideals that nobody should do that.
The "solutions" to the political problems that we ARE living inside a Bizarro Mirror World, or a Wonderland Matrix, where everything is proportionately backwards and absurd due to the degree that everything is controlled by ENFORCED FRAUDS, is analogous to that scene in the Pirates of the Caribbean movie that I linked above.
We have to go THROUGH the looking glass. We have to become cynical enough to flip things right, by turning them upside-down. The double whammy absurdities are due to not only that governments are the biggest form of organized crime, controlled by the best organized gangs of criminals, but also, to presuming that it is possible that things could actually exist in any other way.
That is the source of the tremendous IRONY in this assertion made in the article above:
There continues to be presumptions made about the "REAL economy" which are utterly unrealistic! The "REAL economy" could not be purely based on production, because the production of destruction controls production. Furthermore, that is necessarily the case. Therefore, the central banks are expressions of how the history of warfare changed into the history of economics, so that backing up deceits with destruction become ENFORCING FRAUDS.
It is grossly mistaken to regard the "REAL economy" in the ways that the article above wants to do, as do the vast majority of people, who want to continue to believe in the biggest bullies' bullshit view of the world. However, actually, things are quite the opposite of that, and indeed, opposite to that on level after level, through apparently infinite tunnels of deceits, or layers of ENFORCED FRAUDS.
Suffering from a lack of writer's block are we? LOL
I agree, and when one sees that contradiction, even if in denial, the thought leads us to utter hopelessness and dispair. The show must go on and it will go on because it must go on, and thats the fucking insanity. Sometimes, I think life would have been easier, not knowing - taken the red pill instead.
the only sane response to insanity is to embrace it, otherwise you will become insane.
the bottom is in. russia saved greece. the eurasian link is established, sans usa as the primary player. the world is saved. the only world that matters are the cbs. it has been saved. you are another matter. if you do not know you are the fool, you are the fool.
play the cards you are handed. that is the only game you have. yea, i am a brave mother fucker. one day my 46" monitor will short circuit from the blood of my exploded heart.....you'll probably read about it.
Indeed, besnook, my comment above may be regarded as a sort of recipe for how to attempt to become more successfully insane, or how to embrace the insanities, as a paradigm shift to a different form of sanity.
In a profound sense, we already DO embrace the insanity, because, for generation after generation, we have adapted to living inside social pyramid systems which were always based upon backing up lies with violence, while "that is the only game you have."
How extremely paradoxical those double binds of social successes based on ENFORCING FRAUDS become does not matter to most people, who nevertheless have to resolve their existential dilemmas using whatever actionable intelligence they may have to "play the cards you are handed."
120 days of flyfishing the adirondacks for 6-8hr/day every year for the last 15 years begins to make sense of it.
it is an insane construct that defies any logic outside of a hardwire connection to control and be controlled. choose your side.
i go where everything makes sense.
Yes!
Those holding houses and stocks will win; those holding gold and cash will lose. The end.
Devolution indeed. History is not on your side.
So those owning hard assets and paper will win. But those holding hard assets and paper will lose.
preppers with food unpoisoned for family will be safest.
Demographically housing is doomed. As the boomers shuffle off the stage who and how many can take their place? The undocumented democrats swarming across the border? The ChiComs?
Useless fucking paper-pushers....
...the blood pudding is on me.
Tick tick motherfuckers....
Last look? LOL! Is the universe ending? More human arrogance clashing with the laws of physics and nature. Guess who wins dumbass?
The End of the Universe -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaImVFRpOR8
Is this going to be priced in, or will stocks continue to go up in spite of the end?
Isn't the old investment saying, "Better a year too early, than an hour late."
Utopia is in sight for hubristically gifted. They must sit around and sip wine and tell each other when we get to the other side and all the useless meat is dead and gone someone will have to craft our fine wine and sire our fine harum girls we must make sure enough skill types remain to service our pleasure. They think they are god. U silly fucks think you are human but you are cogs in a machine if that. More likely chaff on the floor of the universe and of no value.
We all wonder how long this could all go on for but what we discount is the possibility of a paradigm shift that could see in a totally different world where much of what we take for granted today will not exist and much of what we consider to be highly unlikely becomes the norm.
This makes me scared:
Why is this happening at this point in history?
As the world explodes in violence, war, riots, and uprisings, it is challenging to step back and examine the bigger picture. With airliners being shot down over the Ukraine, missiles flying between Israel and Gaza, ongoing civil war in Syria, Iraq falling apart as ISIS gains ground, dictatorship crackdown in Egypt, Turkey on the verge of revolution, Iran gaining control of Iraq, Saudi Arabia fomenting violence, Africa dissolving into chaos, South America imploding and sending their children across our purposely porous southern border, Mexico under the control of drug lords, China experiencing a slow motion real estate collapse, Japan experiencing their third decade of Keynesian failure, facing a demographic nightmare scenario while being slowly poisoned by radiation, and Chinese-Japanese relations moving towards World War II levels, it is easy to get lost in the day to day minutia of history in the making.
http://www.theburningplatform.com/2014/07/28/our-totalitarian-future-part-one/
http://www.theburningplatform.com/2014/07/29/our-totalitarian-future-part-two/
http://johnbeieler.org/protest_mapping/
THE PERFECT STORM (see p. 59 onwards)
The economy is a surplus energy equation, not a monetary one, and growth in output (and in the global population) since the Industrial Revolution has resulted from the harnessing of ever-greater quantities of energy. But the critical relationship between energy production and the energy cost of extraction is now deteriorating so rapidly that the economy as we have known it for more than two centuries is beginning to unravel. http://ftalphaville.ft.com/files/2013/01/Perfect-Storm-LR.pdf