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Guest Post: You Can't Fool Mother Nature For Long: Financial Markets
Submitted by Charles Hugh Smith from Of Two Minds
You Can't Fool Mother Nature For Long: Financial Markets
Constant State and Central Bank intervention and manipulation is not the foundation of a free, transparent market--it is perception management in service of Elite control and looting.
You can fool Mother Nature for awhile, but not over the long-term. That's the theme of the week. Every day I will take a look at a segment of American life that is currently based on the supposition that we can dodge reality essentially forever.
Correspondent Chad D. recently summarized the profound lack of authenticity in the American experience:
Have you noticed that Americans often don't experience REAL things: REAL food, Real water, REAL relationships, REAL money, REAL freedom, REAL peace of mind, REAL living, REAL leaders, etc. I know you've gotten flack for your extensive use of "simulacrum," but it's so true. Most Americans have no idea what REAL is.
Thank you, Chad. Let's ask just how real our financial markets really are. We can start our inquiry with this thought experiment: where would the stock, bond and commodity markets be if all Central State and Central Bank intervention and manipulation were prohibited?
Where would the stock market be if the Plunge Protection Team (PPT) didn't manipulate the stock market via massive purchases of ES S&P 500 futures contracts? These massive purchases are always executed in sparsely traded pre-markets, maximizing the ramp-up effect, which then triggers momentum chasing buys from high-frequency trading machines.
Voila, ramp-and-camp Mondays, which studies have found account for the majority of the market's gains last year.
Remove ramp-and-camp Mondays triggered by massive PPT futures purchases, and where would the unmanipulated market be?
What if unemployment statistics were unmanipulated, i.e. the number of people in the workforce didn't magically decline by millions every year? What if the bogus "Birth-Death Model" was banned as mere fantasy job creation? Where would the unmanipulated market be then?
Where would bond market yields be if the Federal Reserve were unable to print money to buy hundreds of billions of dollars of mortgage and Treasury bonds?
We can also shed light on the difference between a real free market and a simulacrum of a "free market" by asking: does anyone seriously believe the stock market would be higher if all market intervention and manipulation by the Central State and Central Bank (and their proxies) ceased?
We can extend this by asking: what if public companies were banned from issuing "beat by a penny" pro forma earnings and other accounting tricks?
What if the "shadow banking system" was outlawed, and all assets and liabilities were transparent? Does anyone seriously believe the fragile financial system that depends on shadow banking for its dodges and profits would survive transparency and marked-to-market accounting?
Americans have no real experience of free, transparent financial markets or of rigorously transparent accounting by their Central State, the Federal Reserve, public corporations or the financial sector. They have been presented facsimiles of accurate statistics and accounting, and simulacra of transparent markets.
Average Americans are responding to this systemic destruction of truth and fact by exiting the stock market--and that is just the start. As I described in When Belief in the System Fades (March 12, 2008), the Elites benefitting from the Status Quo depend on the active participation and complicity of millions of citizens.
When those participants' faith in the Status Quo's fairness and transparency declines below a critical threshold, then they withdraw or limit their participation, and the system enters a self-reinforcing death spiral.
To go back to the key question: does anyone seriously believe the stock market would be this high if the Central State and Bank and their proxies weren't constantly intervening in the market and manipulating data?
Intervening in supposedly "free markets" for the purposes of perception management and political spin ("everything's great because the market is up!") is ultimately an attempt to fool Mother Nature. The Powers That Be have succeeded in manipulating markets since 2007, but reality (Mother Nature) eventually shreds the phony facade of perception management.
As the European attempts to fool Mother Nature (i.e. unmanipulated markets that are free to discover price and price risk) disintegrate, does anyone seriously think the PPT can prop up the U.S. stock market with its usual pre-market manipulations?
When Mother Nature reasserts reality, the frauds, scams and facades will shred like tissue in a hurricane. Maybe that process of reverting to reality is finally about to begin.
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Closing the barn door after the horse is out isn't very helpful.
Freedom is slavery. Didn't get the memo?
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Does anyone need greater evidence that the system is controlled by sociopaths? They lie to perpetuate the charade rather than advise preparation for massive change. Well now, that would spark some panic wouldn't it. One need look no further than the recent FOMC minutes to debunk any claim of superior knowledge on the part of experts.
Maybe thats their way of 'natural selection'....the smarter more 'useful' people are more likely to survive whats coming as theyve prepared and planned for it at least somewhat...the real idiots have no idea, just mesmerized by green stocks... and will be suddenly wiped out when they see fit. VOILA!
Laziness is the defining characteristic of Americans these days.
Americans want government to think for them and protect them so they don't have to think for themselves nor protect themselves.
Americans want to believe things are ok so they don't have to exercise any due diligence.
Americans want to believe the contract is fair because reading the fine print takes too much effort.
Their laziness makes Americans perfect targets of looting, in a long slow general way via currency debasement, and in fast direct ways like stealing their brokerage accounts via (planned) bankruptcies of various firms.
TPTB know Americans are too lazy to fight back. So they get bolder and bolder in their looting sprees.
Somewhere down the road it'll be massive grab of retirement savings, done under the cover story of "protecting them" or "national security" or some nonsense like that.
On sure, they'll give you a "government guaranteed annuity" in exchange ...paid in steadily devaluing dollars worth far less than the assets they take now, and that "annuity" will have all manner of hoops you have to jump through ...designed to disqualify you from receiving it.
And lazy Americans will accept it. Maybe a little bitching and whining, but nothing more.
Yes it's government's fault, but it's also Americans' fault. There should have been a revolution long ago. Americans have all the guns they need, 400 million someone said.
But Americans are just too lazy.
Hence the government probably does represent the majority of Americans - lazy entitled victims of every sort who have little interest in being solely responsible for themselves and their family.
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The truth always reveals itself overtime. If you believ both of these to be true then it is just a matter of time before the consequences of lying and cheating and corruption in our financial system wreak havoc. I don't know exactly when, but I know the day is coming...grease up your guns, stock up on your ammo and food and print out photos of your favorite banksters...
If I had a dollar for every goofy moron like you predicting a revolution I'd be well off.
There will be NO revolution. EVER.
I don't think it's about fooling mother nature or anybody else anymore.
It's all about what people choose to believe.
there are those who believe we are all aboard the good ship lollipops and sunshine, and no matter what storm or heavy weather rocks the boat it will always righten itself and stay afloat because the captain is a good and wise captain. and if he's not then you can always replace him with a new captain from the other side of the paradigm once every four years. besides the ship was designed to be unsinkable, regardless of the size of the iceberg the various screw ups at the helm crash us into...repeatedly.
that's the normalcy bias crowd, so it has been, so it shall continue to be, therefore, because the sky has not yet fallen before today it never will and by extension, fiat paper will always be worth something.
then there are those who believe we are, in fact, on the Titanic and have already hit the iceberg and taken on far to much water to have any hope of staying afloat. everything done by the PTB's now is nothing more than distraction, the band playing and the chairs being re-arranged is an attempt to convey and nurture the illusion that everything is going according to plan, that it is all under control. all the while those same authorities continue to make preparations for when the day comes that the passengers realize that not only is the ship sinking and there are not enough life boats, but those same authorities who are supposed to be responsible for our safety and security have done nothing more than secure their own safety. all the while robbing the rest of us of and putting in place a vast security network meant not to protect us as advertised, but to protect them from us once it dawns on even the most ardent normalcy bias individual exactly what has been going on and how much they have lost, given up and traded for a trip on the falsely advertised "unsinkable" Titanic.
now, I personally am a doomer, I believe the end, economically at least, is extremely nigh and debt will be remembered as the plague of the 21st century, but that's just me.
either way, I don't think it's about fooling anybody, it just about what we choose to believe, that the system will carry on in it's current incarnation, recover and flourish, or it is nearing a total systemic collapse. which one? I guess we will find out...
Everything is a choice... especially what one chooses to believe in, or chooses to deny the existence or importance of...
OMG, some fucking twit financial adviser on CNBC squeezing out the "have a balanced portfolio with proper allocation over the long term to make certain you have enough for retirement" turd.
They're working hard to resuscitate the corpse of "buy and hold".
Sure, sock that money away in the markets, so it can be: stolen, confiscated, or taxed into oblivion.
OMFG - she just said "no cash in the portfolio".
Fucking Vampires.
Make that no cash in her paycheck too.
A kid with a 2.8 mil trust fund called Clark Howard (radio show) and asked the best way to protect his money for a few years. When he gets out of school he wants to open a car body shop.
You can imagine the bogus advice he got. This is awful, the way the people are being misled.
Probably not. But consider Clinton's Homeownership Plan from 1995. While consumer credit and business loans are increasing, mortgage debt is still declining prompting The Fed to suggest that FHA, Fannie and Freddie lower credit standards .. Again.
HTTP://confoundedinterest.WordPress.com
The entire construct has been about getting people to "think" one can fool mother nature -- that was / is the basis of incdoctrination through strategically engineered incoherence:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exGYyV7yMpY&list=PL463AA90FD04EC7A2&index=3&feature=plpp_video
If the pen is mightier than the sword -- then the objective is about reducing the effectiveness of the instruments of conveyance and the litteracies... ie, 100+ years of dumbing down...
The very Nature of a debt/interest based system is that it must remain pumped. The very structure of it demands it.
www.perfecteconomy.com
google also got it before it was pulled
https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Azerohedge.com+robosigning+credit+cards
but the "cache" link hasnt appeared yet, it may do, before it disappears again.
maybe the info is of dubious quality?
Thanks for the link.
Smoke & mirrors, House of cards, voodoo dolls, whatever you call it, I'd guess most of you who post here know the real game is to extend and pretend and squeeze the very last drop out before the giant flush.
When I try & tell my friends and famly what's really going on, they look at me like I'm a reptilian from another planet.
"When Mother Nature reasserts reality..."
Reality? What reality?
If Mother Nature is really as powerful as you imply, the market would not have been manipulated so bloody fucking persistently every year.
The manipulation would have ended within a month, NOT decades.
The keyword here is PERSISTENCE.
Can Mother Nature overcome a formidable persistent force?
I don't think so.