David Stockman: Amazon Is ‘The Poster Child For The 11th Hour Mania’
“The historic relationship between trends on main street and Wall Street to go absolutely haywire.”
“The historic relationship between trends on main street and Wall Street to go absolutely haywire.”
So in the meantime…
It’s comforting. Sort of. But sort of not.
Well, Donald Trump just delivered what might very fairly be described as one of the most unhinged speeches the public has witnessed since his infamous “sons of bitches”/”rocket man” rant in Huntsville.Â
“In that cyclical context, the historic record leaves little doubt about the foolishness of pricing the stock market at peak PE multiples during the final innings of the business cycle.”
Of course this “fundamentals-based” excuse will be couched almost entirely in terms of the assumed sugar high from myopic fiscal stimulus and deficit-funded tax cuts.
“Last week’s twin 1,000 point plunges on the Dow were not errors.”
He’s apparently going to just go ahead and abandon GOP dogma when it comes to balancing the budget.
“We have crossed the fiscal Rubicon.”
“That’s right. The taxpayers and future generations be damned. Apparently, it doesn’t matter how many small businesses, farmers and entrepreneurs get elbowed out of the capital markets by Uncle Sam’s $1 trillion per year borrowing spree: Mitchels & Chuckles intend to keep the Washington Monument open and the Imperial City’s 3.7 million employees paid in full come hell or high water.”
The “old days” are gone.
“Or maybe it is VERY BAD and the markets are finally catching up to the reality that Donald “Art of the Deal†Trump is president.”
He could “fire back”.
“There is selling pressure and profit-taking across the board.â€
“Indeed, they are the proverbial elephants in the room, thereby giving rise to a considerable irony: To wit, the GOP party of the elephant, which is supposed to be the palladium of financial rectitude in American politics, has forgotten about them completely.”
“Donald Trump is walking himself right into a miserable trap. He and his putative “advisors” are apparently so blind to the severe headwinds facing the financial markets and the deep structural impairments plaguing the US economy that they have eagerly embraced a veritable fairy tale.”
“America’s economy is faltering not from too little infrastructure spending, but from too much debt—-$67 trillion of total public and private debt, to be exact. So it appears that the bond vigilantes are returning from 24 years of hibernation just in the nick of time to put the kibosh on the Trumpite/GOP’s latest hare-brained scheme to balloon the public debt.”
“Somehow the Donald managed to say less during his 15 minutes of fame at Davos than even the swamp creatures he abhors might have offered up. But the pity of it is that the whole thrust of what he did say was dead wrong.”
“That’s right. Heisenberg reminds us this morning that we are in undisputable record territory. It has been fully 395 trading days since the market had a 5% drop, and that’s never happened before in all of recorded history.”
“This brings us back to the mystery of what’s driving the US stock market higher than all others. It’s not the “Trump effect,†or the effect of the recent cut in the US corporate tax rate. After all, the US has pretty much had the world’s highest CAPE ratio ever since President Barack Obama’s second term began in 2013.”
“Cash is reality”.
So what do you do if you’re an analyst or a fund manager in this scenario?
“Bannonism just gave a thin veneer of ersatz nationalism to what was otherwise the Donald’s own dogs’ breakfast of protectionism, nativism, xenophobia, jingoism and strong-man bombast.”
“Yet there is something about Michael Wolff’s tirade that deeply resonates, albeit on the other end of the Acela Corridor. We are referring, of course, to the ‘idiots’ who are buying the S&P 500 at 2735 and earnestly debating the pros and cons of bitcoin at $16,000.”
Throw in a little of Kuroda’s patented Tinker Bell dust and the fact that margined Japanese FX traders are sitting on a ¥3.2trn unrealized gain in Bitcoin, and you’ve got a recipe for … well, for more mania.Â
“That refers to Wall Street, Washington, the Dems and the GOP, and all the far and near corners of the planet which are implicated in their collective follies.”
“America first?”
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