This society is lazy, corrupt, denialistic, and more importantly they don't want to change. So what to do but recycle greater amounts of insanity while pretending the future will be just like the past...
No matter what level of abnormality this society embraces, those who question it are the ones who are deemed abnormal. Imagine not propagating the fantasy that this will have a happy ending. Anti-social. It's up to our mainstream purveyors of denialism to keep this dual track fantasy running smoothly. The left informs us that the past will be canceled and replaced with a centrally planned monoculture. The right promises us that the disasters that led us to this juncture can be fixed by doubling down on the same ideology of greed and fraud that created them in the first place.
History will say they were all dumb assholes trapped in their own echo chambers of self disinformation.
The combination of the Trump tax cut and the pandemic bailout has put the U.S. firmly down the path of MMT: Modern Monetary Theory. The monetization of chasmic deficits. Those calling for exploding inflation are ignoring the fact that Japan has been down this path already. Nevertheless, the scale of these deficits is unprecedented and it indicates a society willing to do anything to avoid reality. We should never underestimate the lengths they will go to in order to avoid short-term inconvenience at any cost.
Which makes long-term predictions impossible, except to understand that the detonation of their financial weapon of mass destruction will likely lead to even greater forms of insanity. And anyone who questions it will be deemed unfit for the asylum.
At this juncture the majority of Republican governors have now canceled the ancillary Federal government unemployment programs - including the ones supporting the self-employed and long-term unemployed. Ironically they have greater confidence in the Biden recovery than Biden himself. Unlike Trump who constantly over-stated the strength of the economy, Biden is constantly informing people that this recovery has a long way to go.
And of course he is right. Based upon payrolls, the Wall Street recovery is years if not decades ahead of the economic recovery. Here we see that ALL of the Trump payroll gains were rolled back by the pandemic:
If we use oil as a proxy for economic activity we see that Energy demand is eight years behind this "recovery":
GDP is a useless indicator because year over year it's distorted by last year's lockdown. However, the CBO predictions for 2021 indicate a 1.8% annualized growth rate vis-a-vis 2019. At the cost of a 20% Federal deficit. Truly asinine.
All of which is why this society is plowing their savings into the Casino, because they are confident that the past 100 years of history will repeat into the indefinite future. And at peak Boomer retirement, no one can tell them any different.
I showed this chart on Twitter showing the inflation adjusted Dow. Real returns peaked in the 1980s and 1990s. Since then it's been a non-stop monetary bailout featuring record low interest rates and now MMT madness. One would have to be a dedicated denialist to assume that this brief foray above the Y2K breakout line can be sustained at record valuations and record money printing. Picture what happens when the numerator is going down and the denominator is going up, at the exact same time.
Everything has been poured into this epic con job - the economy, the future, the Federal budget, the Fed balance sheet. And yet it's still losing momentum and running on the glue fumes of monstrous lies.
In summary, this is truly a gambler's market now. Those who are fully invested in denial will find their future returns are deeply negative. The cost of believing in a fantasy propagated by an inherently corrupt society.
For those who buy low and sell high and ignore the relentless bullshit emanating from rampant assholes, it won't be so bad.
It will probably look something like this:
