Showing posts with label Deflation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Deflation. Show all posts

Monday, June 22, 2020

2020: The Year Of Living Dangerously

This society is now boxed in by a lifetime of bad choices. The noose is tight...










I attempt to approximate the political center - people who just want to get on with their lives amid a sensationalist spectacle that has enraptured the media. Ahead of the election, the nutjob level has been turned up to level '11'. Just when we think it can't get any worse, it gets worse.

First on the COVID hoax. Via Visual Capitalist, below are the average daily deaths from all causes, heart disease (leading cause of death), and COVID. As the linked facts show, over-consumption is the leading cause of death via the two key vectors of heart disease and cancer. 

In other words, McDonald's likely kills more people per day than COVID. But because heart disease and other lifestyle-related diseases are self-inflicted, we ignore those risks. It's clear on the COVID hoax that the old age home panicked. We are constantly told that the shutdown was ordered by the "experts". Which explains why it was officially history's biggest clusterfuck. Every country, state, and locality has different "experts" on pandemics. Recall that the global consensus on climate change was viewed as stifling denialist viewpoints. This gong show is denialist reward for a complete lack of consensus. I hope they're enjoying it. 

But don't worry, the re-opening is on the way to becoming the new greatest clusterfuck of all time. 





Within the U.S., based upon the average daily death rate, COVID deaths so far equal two weeks of deaths from all causes. Yes you read that right. The worst pandemic in modern history is equal to two weeks of Big Macs. If McDonald's brings back their Supersize menu, the COVID death rate will be a rounding error. 

Which is where this gets interesting, because for those who have over-imbibed on the consumption-oriented deathstyle, the fear is very real and rational. It's not COVID that is putting people at risk, it's a lifetime of bad decisions that has put people at risk. Smoking, diabetes, obesity, and alcoholism are the leading complicating factors. This should be called the Super Sized pandemic.

The rest of us are now hostage to the bad decisions made by this panicked corporate Idiocracy:


Per the CDC: "For most people, the immediate risk of becoming seriously ill from the virus that causes COVID-19 is thought to be low."


Another topic I wanted to touch upon is this new censorship drive coming out of Big Tech as part of the George Floyd protest movement. Zerohedge was recently demonetized or demonized however you want to look at it, by Google, due to their politically incorrect conspiracy theories. That can happen when you cede editorial control to random nutjobs. Fortunately, I can't be demonetized, because I have never been monetized. My opinion is that those who comment on markets should eat their own dog food and make money from the markets. If they really know what they are doing.

Anyways, it's not Big Tech that is censoring the alt-right, it's the advertisers behind Big Tech that are realizing they can't have their lingerie ads posted next to neo-Nazi symbology. As a reminder, we live in a corporate Borg of like-minded idiots. They are not capable of accepting the truth or reality. Now this mindless Borg and their corporate overlords are exercising mob control over what they deem acceptable. Shocking, I know.

Again, the irony of corporate media oppression now impinging upon the conservative movement, can't be overlooked. It's ALL self-inflicted pain from a lifetime of bad choices. 

From an economic standpoint, the Black Lives Matter movement will go nowhere until everyone acknowledges that the current economic paradigm monetizes poverty. This model can't possibly fix poverty, because the corporate model is now wholly dependent upon ever-lower labour costs to increase profits and grow stock prices. Going in reverse would implode the stock market. And we all know that Trump Casino is now America's biggest Church with the largest congregation, and Trump as high priest. The economy can wither and die for all they care, as long as the casino keeps going higher.

So instead of any progress fixing economic inequality which happens to be the de facto business model of the day, we can expect more empty talk. Because after all, that's what this society loves most.

Until it all explodes amid epic rage and margined out stay-at-home gamblers shocked that in every bet there is ALWAYS a winner and a loser. And Dave Portnoy has put them all on the same side of the ledger. The side that gets monetized for fun and profit.

If it wasn't him, it would be some other con man that they were following to their logical conclusion. Which is exactly how Trump became GOP leader following the epic failure GW Bush. He was the next lowest common denominator.


Now, let's get down to some hardcore facts and data and leave the bullshit to everyone else we know.

Year to date returns by major sector.

Here we see that mega cap internet stocks are up over 20% on the year and the average U.S. stock is down -20% on the year.







The S&P peaked two weeks ago, since then it's been all mega cap Tech stocks and junk stocks. Here we see Mega Caps up six days in a row:





Here we see the difference between the market low in 2009 versus now.

The crash ratio is currently still in extreme territory and cash balances remain near all time lows:







Biotechs were on fire today, and we now have a new best performing lockdown stock:











Dave Portnoy's latest scrabble pick was "RTX" Raytheon Technologies (United Tech + Raytheon):





I think we all see where I'm going with this.

History's biggest out-of-control ego trip is about to explode with great farce. 







Friday, January 3, 2020

Prepare For Hardest Landing

The Banana Republican playbook is a total disaster: geopolitical, economic, financial, environmental, healthcare - just greed all around. The lesson NOT learned from 2008. The party of greed, hate, war, and circus clowns has one more lesson to learn: GAME OVER, MAN...





I am 100% convinced Trump is the Anti-Christ. Although aside from his sordid personal life, ongoing tax evasion, serial bankruptcy, hate mongering, incessant lying, and abuse of power, I have no actual proof. Nevertheless, every time the casino hits a new all time high he comes out with some Black Swan announcement that tanks the market. This time it was war with Iran. The one country in the Middle East the U.S. hasn't tried invading. It would be highly ironic and yet fitting if this is the event that begins meltdown. After all, most of the Faux News audience couldn't find Iran on a map if their life depended on it. They just know that we are the good guys and they are the bad guys...

Prepare for Keynesian bombing of foreigners

aka. Republican Second Term Election Strategy 101:






This is the end of the oil rally





As of mid-day Friday WWIII is getting bought with both hands in the U.S., but the overnight is where the damage will be done...






It took several months but Zerohedge finally admitted that the Fed is monetizing Trump's deficit. This has been obvious from the first day's of the repo crisis, and something the Fed themselves have admitted. There is something about being a Trump supporter, a gold hoarder, and an ad-sponsored conspiracy propagator that prevents the truth from seeing the light of day. I can't put my finger on it. 

Nevertheless, contrary to Zerohedge assertion, this is not true "helicopter money", since none of it has been made available to the masses. This same type of monetization of the deficit took place back in 2009 during the darkest days of the recession, however, it has never been attempted at record over-valuations and in a Tech mega bubble.

A fool's errand of the highest order.





We are still very much in a deflationary environment, which is about to be made 10x worse when the mega bubble explodes. At that point, I expect it will take some time before the Republicans decide to bail out the middle class, if ever.

Time, and rioting.

In the meantime, the death of the Treasury bull market has been greatly exaggerated. I expect a new plunge in long-term bond yields to all time lows approaching the zero bound.

Full disclosure, I am not long Treasuries at this juncture. And as we see from 2009, I would consider such a position a rental.

This is my opinion, not advice.





I also expect the very crowded gold trade to get duly monkey hammered. These speculators have been front running central banks all year, under the premise of imminent "reflation".

We've seen this movie before and it doesn't end well for gold.





More importantly from an economic standpoint, after the crash and the rioting, I expect a sea change in political mindset. Eventually.

When today's mega bubble in arrogance explodes, today's exceptional Idiocracy will realize they are not too good for "socialism" after all. Quite the other way around. How could they know anything about "socialism", when they think that capitalism is a decade of monetary bailouts for the rich. What I mean in any case is merely a rebalancing of the economy back to where it was in the two hundred years before Supply Side criminality became the order of the day.

When they finally admit that they don't know anything about anything, that is when I expect real helicopter money to arrive. Around the same time that Sean Hannity is no longer the most popular vacuous blowhard on television, and Big Donny is wearing an orange jumpsuit. Handed to him by his own party of delinquents.  

In the meantime, one of these bailouts is not like the others:







Prepare for hard landing