The macro picture for the world is dangerous. And high quality companies will not be spared the carnage if a market onslaught begins (which is looking increasingly likely).
The only problem is that this entire “crisis” was a lie. The US actually hit its debt ceiling back in May 2013, a full five months ago.At that time neither the Treasury Department, nor the White House, nor Congress talked about this.
According to King, since losing its peg, Gold has risen 37.43 fold since 1967. That is more than twice the performance of the Dow over the same time period (18.45 fold). So much for the claim that stocks are a better investment than Gold long-term.
Yellen is yet another academic with no banking or business experience what-so-ever. This makes three in a row (Greenspan, Bernanke, and now Yellen). The results speak for themselves.
I continue to read pieces in the media claiming the QE should not be stopped because it will hurt the recovery. I don’t understand this claim because there is literally no historical evidence that QE creates jobs in the first place.
No one and I mean NO ONE would place an order like this. It simply doesn’t happen. Anyone who is trying to unload a position of this size would do it in chunks over a period of time in order to not push the price sharply lower.
Remember how we were told time and again that Europe was saved? Remember how repeatedly we were told that the European Central Bank (ECB) would do “whatever it takes” to fix things? Turns out all of that was a total load of BS.
So the debt ceiling “we’re going to run out of money and the world ends” talk is not accurate. What is accurate is that playing games with your debt limits impacts other investors’ psychologies. And THAT is the real issue here.
Remember, every single Treasury and T-bill out there is utilized as collateral for millions of Dollars worth of trades. So if the big financial institutions begin to refuse to accept some US debt as collateral based on the perceived risk of a deb ceiling debacle there could quickly be capital call in the market similar to what happened when Lehman failed.
In the past, the Fed has been the fuel for bubbles. This time around, the Fed IS the bubble itself, with its balance sheet expansion driving ALL assets higher.
In plain terms, the Fed has proven beyond even a hint of a doubt that it is simply flying by the seat of its pants, with no clear game plan or eventual outcome in mind. The Fed is simply going to keep doing what it’s done for five years until something breaks.