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Once the Bubbles Pop, We’re Broke

August 31, 2018

Once the Bubbles Pop, We’re Broke

I hate to break it to you, but the everything bubble isn’t permanent.
OK, I get it–the Bull Market in stocks is permanent. Bulls will be chortling in 2030 that skeptics have been wrong for 22 years–an entire generation. Bonds will also be higher, thanks to negative interest rates, and housing will still be climbing higher, too. Household net worth will be measured in the gazillions.
Here’s the Fed’s measure of current household net worth: a cool $100 trillion, about 750% of disposable personal income (DPI):
Household net worth has soared $30 trillion in the past decade of permanent monetary and fiscal stimulus. No wonder everyone is saying Universal Basic Income (UBI)– $1,000 a month for every adult, no questions asked–is affordable, along with Medicare For All (never mind that Medicare is far more expensive than the healthcare provided by other advanced nations due to rampant profiteering, fraud and paperwork costs–we can afford it!)
And we get to keep the Endless Wars ™, trillion-dollar white elephant F-35 program, and all the other goodies–we can afford it all because we’re rich!
We’re only rich until the bubbles pop, which they will. All speculative bubbles deflate, even those that are presumed permanent, And when the current everything bubble pops, net worth–and all the taxes generated by bubble-era capital gains–vanish.
Take a look at the Federal Reserve’s Household Balance Sheet (June 2018):
$34.6 trillion in non-financial assets
$81.7 trillion in financial assets
$15.6 trillion in total liabilities ($10 trillion of which is home mortgages)
$100 trillion in net worth
So $25 trillion is in real estate. When the housing bubble pops, $10 trillion will go poof. Maybe $12 trillion, but why quibble about a lousy $2 trillion? We’re rich!

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why The Markets Are Overdue For A Gigantic Bust

June 10, 2017

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Why The Markets Are Overdue For A Gigantic Bust

It’s just not possible to print our way to prosperity
Let me begin with a caveat: confirmation bias is an ever-present risk for an analyst such as myself.

If you’re not familiar with the term, ‘confirmation bias’ suggests that once we’ve invested time and emotional energy into developing a worldview, we’ll then seek information to confirm that view.

After writing about the economy for so many years, I’m now so convinced that we can’t print our way to prosperity that I find myself seeing signs confirming this view everywhere, every single day. So that’s the danger to be aware of when listening to me.  I’m going to keep repeating this mantra and Im going to keep finding data that supports this view.

Based on lots of historical inputs, I have concluded that Printing money out of thin air can engineer lots of things, including asset price bubbles and the redistribution of wealth from the masses to the elites.  But it cannot print up real prosperity.

As much as I try, I simply cannot jump on the bandwagon that says that printing up money out of thin air has any long-term utility for an economy. It’s just too clear to me that doing so presents plenty of dangers, due to what we might call ‘economic gravity’: What goes up, must also come down.

Which brings us to this chart:

The 200 bubble blown by Greenspan was bad, the next one by Bernanke was horrible, but this one by Yellen may well prove fatal.  At least to entire financial markets, large institutions, and a few sovereigns.

It’s essential to note that more than two-thirds of the net worth tracked in the above chart is now comprised of ‘financial assets.’  That is, paper claims on real things.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Wow!!! The Fed Gives A Giant Fuck You to Working Class Americans!!

March 13, 2015

Wow!!! The Fed Gives A Giant Fuck You to Working Class Americans!!

I was shocked today by the absolute gaul of the Fed releasing a statement about Net Worth in America reaching record levels.  Now I get that they are under extreme pressure to sell the story that everything is rainbows and butterflies.  But surely they understand that working class Americans are going along with the story because they really don’t have any say in our nation’s policies anymore.  That doesn’t mean they want it thrown in their faces that the Fed has spent 6 years now inflating the wealth of the top 10% so much that it actually lifts the total wealth of the nation’s citizens to record highs.

The ugly reality is that the bottom 80% of Americans experienced none of that gain.  That’s right a big ole goose egg.  And so when the Fed via its ass pamper boy, Steve Liesman, start banging on about the fact that some sliver of society is being handed extraordinary wealth while the working class has lost 40% of their net worth since 2007, well a big fuck you right back at ya bub!  The Fed is very aware that the bottom 80% of Americans own less than 5% of US equity markets.  And so the Fed is very aware that its manipulation of stock prices such that it creates immense unearned wealth to those in the markets doesn’t reach the bottom 80%.  So why celebrate the results of the stock market price manipulation??

It is embarrassing that our policymakers are either that inconsiderate or that stupid to celebrate such a brutal dislocation between the haves and have nots.  I don’t know what one can even say about the Fed making a celebratory statement like that today.  It is somewhat beyond words.  And really paints the picture as to how little thought goes into the lives and well being of the bottom 80%.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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