Friday, August 6, 2021

Building The Perfect Ponzi Scheme

Today's bullish pundits can take pride in the fact that they have successfully participated in creating human history's biggest Ponzi scheme. All of the fraud and criminality from the past two cycles is rolled into one massive mega bubble. In doing so, they fully exploited the younger generations who have not the slightest clue how this level of fraud ends. They told them they were democratizing markets when all they were doing was democratizing bagholding. Today's ubiquitous sociopathic salesmen succeeded in leveraging a pandemic to create buying panics in everything that can be bought and sold from toilet paper to ammunition to McMansions, crypto Ponzi schemes, Ark ETFs, commodities, SPAC frauds, IPO garbage and of course S&P 500 stonks...





There are few if any pundits questioning this hyper bubble anymore. Skepticism peaked months ago. Why? Because from their point of view this Ponzi scheme is now flawless. It has achieved perfect extreme over-valuation and ALL IN risk positioning. In their minds, this Ponzi bubble has done nothing "wrong". On Twitter, I made the analogy of the Olympics - we celebrate the winners while ignoring the majority losers going home empty handed. It's called survivor bias. One troll asked recently if I ever make money. My response was never in Ponzi schemes. So far I have accurately predicted doom for crypto currencies, gold trades, Ark ETFs, Chinese stonks, and SPAC junk. In addition, I correctly predicted the rollover in bond yields which is something no mainstream pundits saw coming. Of course, the one prediction that remains elusive is that of the collapse of the major averages. Why? Because even as one after another sector dominoes collapse, the averages are seeing constant sector rotation. However, now we are witnessing breadth collapse in BOTH the NYSE and Nasdaq at the same time. And in addition, breadth has failed to rally during this latest "new high" in the S&P. The internals of the market are now the perfect analog for this speculative casino - a handful of winners and a majority of losers:




At this late juncture, central banks have totally lost control over risk asset markets. But they don't know they've lost control. Currently we are in the melt-up out-of-control phase which feels oh so good and is therefore creating a general sense of complacency and inflated optimism. However, this phase will morph into the meltdown out-of-control phase which will pull back the curtain on our Wizards of Oz. Needless to say the Tin Man and Dorothy won't be impressed by the gong show that ensues. 

One thing we've learned in spades is that a society bereft of dignity and virtue will never appreciate dignity and virtue. Instead they flock to all of the various charlatans who will gladly exploit useful idiots to their own means. The definition of "inflation" is that prices can only go higher. Even at this late stage, the specious inflation narrative remains dominant. We have achieved inflation sans middle class. Even the Fed believes it now.  


Here we see the velocity of money peaked twenty years ago when GDP growth and employment peaked in the U.S. The velocity of money measures the speed at which each dollar circulates throughout the economy. In an inflationary economy, the velocity of money sky rockets as consumers dump cash to hoard merchandise.





In summary, the magnitude of this fraud is directly proportional to the moral collapse of a decadent society in late stage self-destruct mode. ALL of the criminality of the past two decades has now been exceeded in this past year. A super Tech bubble with record junk IPO issuance. An even bigger housing bubble. Regulators asleep at the wheel, and of course wanking fucking bankers.