US equities closed the week at new all-time highs - and yay-verily the world of long-only asset-gethering talking heads celebrated this as in some way confirming their long-held 'belief' that the US is the cleanest dirty shirt and where-else are you going to invest (you dummy!!). Of course, reality is far different - as Seth Klarman noted, if it's all so great then why did Bernanke need to stick-save us again this week? [6] The bottom-line from the top-down is that the US is in fact the 2nd worst performing macro-economy of the year of the majors (2nd only to China) compared to expectations. What the following charts indicate though, is an interesting divergence between macro-reality and market-perception that is evident among the nations of the world that print money to save themselves... and those that are not (yet)...
NOT the cleanest dirty-shirt - not even close...
[7]
But let's dig a little deeper... here are three regions that are NOT printing money... seems like macro and market are tending to stay together reflecting some reality...
[8]
and those nations that ARE printing money...
[9]
Notice any difference?
Still a believer that it will all be ok?
[10]
Charts: Bloomberg and @Not_Jim_Cramer