Roaring Interest Rates

Courtesy of Tim Knight at Slope of Hope

There is no nuance to what I’m going to say: interest rates are pushing higher, and this is going to be a millstone around the neck of the world economy.

Now, the permabulls have been conditioned over the past six phony years to refute any assertion that anything could be bad for the market. Yesterday, for instance, when I snarkily pointed out ETSY’s horrible performance (which, incidentally, is shadowed by today, which has brought the stock to a new lifetime low). one of the more perpetually bullish Slopers remarked that ETSY’s rotten performance was a sign of a healthy bull market.

The conjecture, I suppose, was that since there were actually some IPOs going down, it showed what a prudent, rational market we were in.

Wrong, wrong, wrong!

Months before the NASDAQ bubble burst in March 2000, the crummier stocks started dropping badly. Indeed, three months before the Internet bubble spewed creamy white loss goo over everyone’s faces, plenty of well-known Internet stocks had already been cut by 50%, 70%, or even more. ETSY, I contend, is – – like Angie’s List – – simply a particularly bad stock, and its rotten performance certainly is no assurance that the market is populated by people in their right minds.

Having said that, I offer the chart below. Bonds are falling to pieces, and interest rates are roaring higher. Need I remind you that the whores of D.C. and the Federal Reserve have put the United States $18 trillion in debt (and I’m not even talking about unfunded liabilities) and that each basis point in interest rates simply makes the country worse off? To say nothing of the fact that the entire globe (China, the Eurozone, Japan) are likewise awash in debt which, last time I checked, is sensitive to interest rates.

The floorboards are beginning to bow and splinter, people. Can you hear the crackling, or would you prefer to go on deaf to what your senses are telling you?