The Greatest Bull

Only a fool couldn’t have recognized “it”. You bulls were right and I missed it. Obama crossed his legs in March of 2009 and gestured to the camera calmly recommending that “you” should buy stocks here they were a good investment. It was a bizarre moment in history where a sitting President after weeks of telling the American people over and over just how “bad” the economy was suddenly smiles and does a 180 on the “stock market” and says publicly BUY BUY BUY. Was there a partnership made between the government and the bankers? Maybe, or just maybe it was a coincidence that the recession was shortly declared “over” and the market has gone straight up now for over 6 years. 

Sure, its a ton of money missed on the long side of the “market”. Do share buy backs and massive executive compensation as a result make me feel any better with the artificial P/Es? Does the languishing median wages for the past 10 years make the economy any more palatable to the masses? Probably not to most but to many it may be considered a success. Many pundits constantly (and correctly) point out that QE did not work because we are essentially in a 2% growth rate that probably is not keeping up with true inflation. To be fair to QE proponents WHAT do you think the real economy would be if they hadn’t printed TRILLIONS to buy our debt and prop up their banks? 

So was that indeed the right choice? I’ll wager you would not like to see what things would have looked like around the world if they had not printed more debt. So here we are. We’re fixed and good times ahead…..right? They’ve kicked the can and pushed us out far enough that everything has fixed itself….right? We’ve controlled the media message. We’ve twisted our allies arms. Heck…we’ve twisted virtually every arm of every country in the world to keep this together. If they didn’t go fully along, we broke their arms and/or bullied them into compliance. We’ve stretched our armies beyond belief and expanded the spy grid into everyone’s bedroom to keep the glue together…..and so here we are…..we’re in a recovery. The stock markets tell you so. 

Yet something just doesn’t feel right. Now every country besides us seems to be in a race to debase their currency. Strong arm tactics are being exerted everywhere for capitol controls and negative interest rates. Never in my lifetime could I imagine a world this distorted with only MOAR distortion on the horizon as far as the eye can see. The Fed is talking tightening of course…they’re backed into a corner, but even the massaged economic numbers are showing slowing. So how does that work out? 

Greenspan, Dalio, and many mainstream banking gurus are sounding an alarm, and they seem to feel its going to be a very hard time ahead for the “recovery”. Maybe they know something. 

What happens when you’ve thrown trillions of dollars at your economy that you don’t have? What does the world think when you’ve bullied and browbeat them for the last decade? Maybe they’re growing weary of the wars and collusion of Central Banks. What happens when they say enough of the dollar supremacy and your ability to print endless amounts to enable you to bully some more? Maybe they develop an alternative to that hegemony. Surely not? Surely they wouldn’t want to leave that subservient role. I mean seriously who doesn’t want their daughters turning to prostitution after a medical education. Who doesn’t like a few million casualties to protect the hegemony. Human nature, maybe its more predictable than you think. People are getting more and more disgusted. gl