RiskAverseAlert

Big Money Is Bullish While Small Money Is Bearish

Good stuff. Thanks for the heads up.

New York Fed Treasury Spread Model: Zero Chance of a Double-Dip Recession

Pssst... The Fed is bankrupt. (Did we need more proof?)

So, uh, tell me... during those previous periods when we were coming out of recession, when had the Fed's balance sheet doubled in a mere matter of months? How can anyone NOT appreciate what this means in matters affecting confidence? Truly, the current period finds no precedent worthy of comparison such as you make.

But then again... Those who staged a 1929-like buying operation earlier this year need this kind of obfuscation in order to offload the dead equity whose only hope going forward is nothing but burden and pain.

Another Crisis Looms Right Around the Corner

There is one consideration missing from your rising taxes thesis: our crippled economy is an absolute nightmare, as you say. So, how are taxes to be raised? Seems impossible. Thus, a sovereign debt default dwarfing Dubai World must be looming, no?

Options Trader Monday Outlook: Stuffing the Futures for Thanksgiving

Regarding CME-driven surges, I think what one must appreciate about these (and you more or less allude to this) is that the interest behind it is stuffed with inventory it wishes to unload. Probably the greater hope is a wider interest will develop among money managers, precipitating follow-through buying on increasing volume. That this is not occurring presents a risk that those who supported the market during the first three months of this year (as witnessed by a spike in the volume of shares exchanged) eventually will become the very element whose actions lead stocks to "fall of their own weight."

The Twenty Year Stock Bubble Is Still Inflated

Trust me! I won't be surprised at all. Anyone with their head screwed on straight (and this includes Mr. Buffett, and now Mr. Gross) in their own way sees how equity is doomed to be dead money.

Fed Maintains the Emergency Rate While Saying 'All is Well'

Your last two takeaways are interesting. Per understanding the other side of the trade I am curious to know when Buffett's BNI takeover is slated to close, for it is then an attack on equity as currency might more likely ensue.

Ten Reasons for an Imminent Stock Market Crash

Seems March '09 lows likely will be defended for some time to come, because failure to put a floor under the riskiest financial assets (equities) might suggest the failure of the lender of last resort in its effort to stabilize a broke down Ponzi scheme (structured finance).

Is This a Sucker's Rally?

Everything on the technical front reads bearish. Everything. And then, too, fundamentally, with debt increasingly crowding out equity and with the means to further leverage this debt now slumbering with T-Rex it would be difficult imagining circumstance where equity is more easily assumed dead money. That criminal prosecution of the greatest Ponzi scheme in recorded history -- structured finance -- has been restrained is a loud-and-clear clue that, time is being afforded for the riskiest of assets to be passed off onto suckers. That there is even any doubt only makes me wonder how rapidly might total collapse unfold. In other words, how big might be the price gap separating suckers from knowledge they have been had?

Even with Growth, Markets Have a Long, Hard Road Ahead

Ben Bernanke saying it is a near-certainty we are out of recession is no more credible than Allen Schwartz claiming no liquidity problems at Bear Stearns two days prior to the firms collapse. The Fed is a hopelessly bankrupt shipwreck presiding over a bunch of well-dressed gangsta wannabes who are but one serious Congressional inquiry away from being transformed into so many scurrying rats, isn't that right Mr. Lewis?

If it was all manner of lying that brought about last year's crisis, then what could make anyone think truth suddenly reigns supreme? Equity remains dead money until such time as transparency and accountability are revived. And anyone believing otherwise plainly is a sucker bringing truth to the adage that, a fool and his money are soon parted...

Is a Crash Impending?

I quite agree with the late-2001 similarity. I also recognize how Dead Financials Offer First Whiff of Weimar Germany Redux.

Why Another Stock Market Collapse Could Be Imminent

The technical case pointing the stock market's intermediate-term path of least resistance lower is rather compelling. Yet just when the market might crash -- indeed, whether a crash might even be forestalled -- remains a mystery no matter the past, and no matter whether you feel as I do that, March bottom in all probability will fail.

Considering how bad were the market's internal readings last year -- for example, NYSE new 52-week lows were of a multi-generational magnitude -- it's possible further selling along the path of least resistance (lower) over the next few years might never accelerate as rapidly as we saw last year, yet over the duration major indexes might still be clobbered back to levels last seen 15-20 years ago.

Confidence Games and Ponzi Schemes: No Way to Run the World's Largest Economy

"You see, consumption is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it is very necessary - people have to buy stuff. But, like most everything else, it is best done in moderation..."

Mmmm... How about it is best done with utmost intention at raising one's productive purpose? Such consumption could, indeed, become quite prolific. Yet if one were to moderate this, then might not one's productivity be compromised? So, your call for moderation is much too vague and easily misconstrued...

"After years of spending freely - much of it funded not by income, but by taking on record levels of new debt - consumers are now pulling back."

And that is THE MAJOR ISSUE underlying many problems we presently face. This issue has been largely ignored for far too long. Now that debt can no longer be expanded to mask THE problem, we are returned to the very reason the United States of America was formed in the first place (i.e. in opposition to tyranny). I am speaking specifically of the INCOME problem. While INCOME was being robbed we were allowed to go into debt under the false premise income would recover. Bzzzz. WRONG. And now comes either one of two things: revolt (demanding a return of our capacity to generate abundant income) or fascism (which underlies most calls to consume less).

"Nowhere is confidence more important than at the Treasury Department and other government agencies that manage the nation's money."

Agreed. And those Mars rovers have yet to find benevolent alien life willing to backstop Treasury's profuse bleeding of debt. BIG PROBLEMO.

Your attack on Medicare and Social Security smack of fascism. To call these programs a "Ponzi scheme" without addressing the INCOME ISSUE is a fraud.

"The entire world has been duped into believing that asset prices can continue to rise indefinitely and that we'll all eventually grow wealthy as a result."

Well, I believe the Dow Jones Industrials Average could fall to 3600 TOMORROW and still remain in a long-term uptrend, so there's some truth to the idea that "we'll all eventually grow wealthy." However, sometimes the "long-term" does not match up with one's lifetime, so I generally agree with your premise.

No, confidence games and Ponzi schemes never end well ... but I do know of one REVOLUTION (1776) that ended FABULOUSLY (and thank God for Alexander Hamilton)...

When Will the Music Stop for Government Bonds?

Fascists like Mises bore me. I prefer vicarious American's, like Hamilton. Wanna duel?

This Recession Isn't Over: Now for the Hard Part

This may not be my father's recession, but it sure is his full-blown collapse.

Why the Dow Is Headed to 6000

Equity is DEAD money. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

Why do people find it so hard to understand that, with a mountain of debt existing higher up on the accounting food chain, and with capacity for servicing it continuing to collapse (just keep your eye on that moribund real estate market), equity in all forms is at incredible risk of being indiscriminately sold simply for the sake of raising capital that's needed higher up in the financial food chain?

What do you think was behind last year's equity sell-off? This risk remains intact. Dow 6000 is a terribly optimistic forecast.