All Time High Fraud

Central banks are sponsoring mass stupidity and rampant fraud. The masses are now convinced it will continue forever. They are apparently unaware of the cardinal rule of pump and dump schemes - one must get out BEFORE they end, lest they become the greater fool of record...

One thing all of today's rotating pump and dump schemes have in common is that they are driven by fraudulent narratives. From Gamestop to SPACS, to Crypto Ponzi Schemes to Ark Funds, to economic cyclicals, they are all predicated upon a zero sum view of markets. One person's gain is another person's loss, and the losses are piling up silently in the background. Somehow this society's moral collapse has always remained one step ahead of the latent economic collapse, now papered over with 20% of borrowed "GDP". 

We can blame central banks all we want, but no one forced these people to believe these fraudulent narratives. For example no one forced them to believe that the post-COVID economy will be better than the pre-COVID economy, and yet based upon valuations and investor positioning, that is the assumption. 

Notice that the IMX positioning indicator is higher today than it was pre-COVID. Based on the ubiquitous view that only liquidity matters:

I read two bearish articles this weekend and now I understand why people are so one-sidedly bullish. Both articles cited various risk factors but then they concluded in a very ambivalent way that central bank liquidity can keep this party going indefinitely. In other words, today's "bears" share the consensus view that central banks are invincible:

MW: The Stock Market Has A 'Binary' Feel To It

"With all of that said, I could be wrong. This bubble-blowing bull market might rage on for three more years without looking back"

RIA: Market Surgest To Overbought As Investors Go ALL IN

"This does not mean “sell everything” and go to cash. We remain in the seasonally strong period of the year, psychology remains extremely bullish, and liquidity is still flooding markets"

"Over the next few weeks, there is little reason to be “bearish.”

If this is the bearish viewpoint, imagine the bullish views at this juncture. First off, given the murkiness of the economic outlook, today's forward P/E valuations are rife with fraud and deception. As far as technical overbought metrics, those haven't mattered since the election. And today's lopsided sentiment tells us that a lot of people will be wiped out by reversal, but it doesn't pinpoint the date.

Ironically, it's this implicit view that central banks are omnipotent that is by far the greatest risk to markets. This consensus view is encouraging people to do very stupid things with money right now under the belief they will get away with it forever.

In the corporate credit markets all manner of Ponzi borrowers are currently being funded. How bullish is it that central banks are now funding record junk bond issuance?

“It’s really hard to keep up with the issuance...Now the pendulum is shifting a little bit toward more aggressive behaviors”

In 2020, annual sales zoomed past the previous record by over $100 billion"

Emerging markets borrowed record amounts of money in 2020 and now they are facing rate hikes and currency declines, putting pressure on their ability to service their record debt load. All resulting from bullish "free money":

 

The SPAC market I've said many times is this era's stock market version of subprime, riddled with fraud. 2020 was a record year for issuance and 2021 has already surpassed 2020 on IPO issuance and doubled 2020 on impending listings.  

The housing market is now back in bubble territory.

In other words, Gamestop and Bitcoin are chump change next to what is going on in large scale financial markets.

But the biggest fraud of all is this fantasy global recovery that consists of stock market prices front-running a fictional economy.

Deja vu of last time:

"On the morning after Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy in 2008, most Federal Reserve officials still believed that the American economy would keep growing despite the metastasizing financial crisis"

"The transcript for that meeting contains 129 mentions of “inflation” and five of “recession.”

What the Fed didn't know in September 2008 is that the economy had already been in recession for NINE months. Why didn't they know that? Because their own crisis-driven policies were bidding up risk asset markets and commodities, creating a feedback loop of market-driven "inflation" having nothing to do with the real economy.

They fooled themselves. 

Meltdown Is A Crowded Trade

Somehow Wall Street convinced the dumb money that a 16 day bear market corrected an 11 year bull market. How did they do that?

We just learned that more money flowed into stocks in the past five months since the election than in the twelve YEARS prior:

Which perfectly fits the definition of a broadening top:

"In the broadening top formation five minor reversals are followed by a substantial decline"

It is a common saying that smart money is out of market in such formation and market is out of control. In its formation, most of the selling is completed in the early stage by big players and the participation is from general public in the later stage"

This past year was the Dow's biggest annual gain in history to an all time high. As we note from the chart above, the other two massive gains in the past two decades came at the beginning of the cycle. Which is why today's herd is convinced this is a whole new cycle. After over a decade, they finally came off the sidelines and bid up their own stonks to ludicrous valuations and now they assume there is another fool to follow. 

The last time the Dow gained a similar amount year over year was March 2009 through April 2010. Then the market exploded in early May in the infamous "Flash Crash". Of course, this time around the gain is larger and the risks are 10x in magnitude. 

Picture their reaction when what they thought was the beginning of a new bull market turns out to be a retest of last year's low. And when that fails, it turns out to be a retest of the 2009 low.

Epic shock and awe followed by epic rage.

Still, the vast majority of pundits remain sanguine. Wharton Finance professor Jeremy Siegel sees 30% upside from these levels.

He like so many others is convinced that printed money is the secret to effortless wealth:

"I think interest rates and inflation are going to rise well above what the Fed has projected. We’re going to have a strong inflationary year. I think 4% to 5%”

Got that? The Fed will lose further control over interest rates but stonks will go up regardless. High quality financial insight from a renowned Ivy League Ponzi schemer. 

What I showed on Twitter is that the weekly AAII retail bull - bear indicator is at the highest level since 2018, confirming the Ameritrade IMX positioning indicator:

Bears keep getting stampeded by dumb money, so what we see via the NAAIM survey is that deja vu of last year, active managers have decided if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. This week they took their risk exposure off of crash levels back up to last year's pre-implosion level of fat and happy:

Here we see the current state of large cap Momentum stocks. The largest holdings are: Tesla, Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia, Amazon, Paypal, Adobe, and Google. The Full Monty.

It has now retraced slightly more than .618 fibo of the wave 1 decline. Also we see in the lower pane that new Nasdaq highs have been diverging massively since the top in February. This tells us there are very few stocks holding this gong show up now. Which means that the impending decline will be very fast and catch many people by surprise.

Unlike last year, the divergence between the average Nasdaq stock and the major averages (S&P, Dow, NDX) has grown acute and unnoticed:

My advice to bulls is to enjoy the ride. Because it's a one way trip.

SUPER CYCLE MELTDOWN PREVIEW

The January Gamestop debacle, the February Nasdaq crash, and the March hedge fund margin call should have warned gamblers as to the magnitude of what is coming. This year has already seen far higher volumes and far more brokerage outages than all of 2020. Last year's meltdown set a new record for the fastest high to low crash in history. This year's crash will beat that one by a country mile. Central banks, momentum algos, hedge funds, and over-leveraged newbie gamblers have collaborated to create the perfect recipe for a bidless meltdown of biblical proportions. One thing they all have in common, is that they specialize in ignoring obvious risk...

When Congress held hearings on the Gamestop debacle their sole concern was that brokers had blocked access to the pump and dump. They had no interest in the fact that every major retail broker was taken offline by the massive volumes. Of course that event caused an even greater rush of newbie investors into the casino. When the Nasdaq peaked and crashed in February, the down volume made last year look like a picnic. You don’t have to be a genius to predict what’s coming, but you do have to be able to fog a mirror.

We see via the IMX (lower pane) above that the decline off of the head of the head and shoulders top, got bought with both hands. And we now know that the most popular stocks were Tech stocks. However, one must ask what happens to down volume in this next decline?

It will be cataclysmic. 

Two weeks ago, several institutional brokers (Morgan, Goldman, Credit Suisse, Nomura) fought each other to dump stock from a single shared hedge fund client "Archegos", at any cost. They liquidated all of the holdings at any price to raise cash.

Now picture what happens when that liquidation process is repeated a hundred times over. This time around massively levered Robinhood newbies will be pitted against hedge fund managers who are on their way to new careers bagging groceries. One thing they have in common, they all over-own the largest mega cap Tech stocks.  

Another trade that got very crowded recently is the Yen carry trade. In times of financial turmoil, the Japanese Yen is viewed as a safe haven. However we just learned that hedge funds are shorting Yen at a two year high. They are extremely confident the one year+ RISK ON party is only getting started:

And yet we see here that dollar/Yen is extremely overbought and is already rolling over deja vu of February 2020:

Many people are of the belief that Bitcoin is the new safe haven. Safer than gold. Which is why it's now the most crowded trade on Wall Street:

We also just learned that cryptos took in record inflows during the first quarter: 

"Inflows into cryptocurrency funds and products hit a record $4.5 billion in the first quarter, suggesting increased institutional participation in the once-maligned sector"

When they say that the dumb money comes in at the top, in this case the dumb money are the hedge funds, which waited until it was up 1,000% off of the 2020 lows to finally go ALL IN.

Ever heard of a blockchain death spiral?

Bitcoin evangelists will claim that it's a purely hypothetical event, however it has almost happened several times already. The idea is that if the price of Bitcoin crashes below the cost of mining each Bitcoin, then miners will leave the network en masse and the overall network will grind to a halt. Meaning anyone who owns Bitcoins can't sell them. Regardless of whether or not an outright network halt occurs, the congestion on the network could increase to a point at which there is no liquidity and hence no way to get out. Back in 2018, when Bitcoin crashed, the transaction fee to buy and sell a single Bitcoin reached a ludicrous $34. In other words, Bitcoin liquidity dries up when it is needed the most. When sales transaction volumes spike, miners leave the network.

This inherently unstable Bitcoin design is somewhat similar to high frequency trading in the stock market. Both HFT and momentum (CTA) algos remove liquidity when volatility explodes, because they are programmed to reduce leverage based upon the level of volatility. Which is why flash crashes are so common in today's market. There is no one on the other side of the trade.

It's called volatility targeting and it's a disaster waiting to happen. 

Which gets us to the chart of the day: This week so far has seen the lowest market volatility since the February 2020 top.

A Bollinger band squeeze is an explosive volatility event that takes place when volatility reaches a new six month low.  

Bollinger Band Squeeze:

"While it can be a real challenge to forecast future prices and price cycles, volatility changes and cycles are relatively easy to identify. This is because equities alternate between periods of low volatility and high volatility—much like the calm before the storm and the inevitable activity afterward."

Indeed. 

In summary, Robinhood/Reddit gamblers and hedge funds are all massively leveraged to the exact same Tech stocks and Bitcoins. The recent low volatility has created a feedback loop of ever-increasing complacency and leverage. Global gamblers have not even the slightest clue what is coming. 

When the global Nasdaq was at this level of decline one year ago, we see that bearish sentiment was much higher than it is today:

Due to central bank sponsored moral hazard, gamblers have now onboarded a lethal level of risk. 

Bitcoins, Treasury shorts, Yen Carry trades, Tech stonks, Biotechs, they are all the same trade now called "RISK ON". And it won't matter which asset class crashes first, because they are now all 100% correlated via margin calls. Margin clerks generally sell the strongest assets first. Which means that if they can't sell Bitcoins, they will sell Apple instead.

Conditioned To Implode

Central banks have gamified markets. Social mood has been reverse engineered to suck in as many risk takers as possible. Clueless newbies, propagating self-delusion, are right about one thing - this is nothing like Y2K. In this era there is 10x as much monetary heroin as there was back then. For addicted gamblers, the temptation to self-destruct is overwhelming...

One thing all of today's daytraders, gamblers, and 401k zombies have in common. They all believe that printed money is the secret to effortless wealth, and they've hit the motherlode. 

Before I get to markets, I want to revisit the delusional assumptions that abide this fraudulent "recovery". First off, given the insane amount of combined stimulus, it's impossible to know the state of the underlying economy. It's impossible for economists to pinpoint the true beginning and end of the recession, because it's been papered over with 27% of GDP stimulus. Regardless of whether or not this is  a continuation of the longest cycle in history, or we just experienced the shortest recession in history, what we know for certain is that for the first time in U.S. history there has been zero de-leveraging at the end of the cycle. Which is the key factor that separates this event from 2008. What until COVID was the longest expansion in history, is now officially the longest period of time between de-leveraging events. That distinction only matters if you're a bankster whistling past the graveyard. 

Which is why in his annual shareholder letter Jamie Dimon posits that this debt-fueled "expansion" is only getting started. His unwritten assumption is that we are now Japan and therefore debt no longer matters.

The debt cassandras are wrong again:

What Dimon is describing is what I penned several weeks ago in what I called "The Wall Street recovery". It's another recovery for the rich at the expense of everyone else. Which means that it will not feel like a recovery for most people. 

Dimon's critical miscalculation is to believe that the entire world is now Japan. Unfortunately however, Emerging Markets don't have reserve currencies and the ability to borrow infinite amounts of money. 

We are already seeing the beginning of a deflationary impulse out of China as they tighten up liquidity. It's the key difference vis-a-vis 2008 when China pulled the rest of the world out of recession:

"Credit curbs will drain liquidity from the stock market and pressure sectors with high valuations"

Can the U.S. borrow insane amounts of money from the rest of the world, explode global interest rates and global currencies AND pull the world out of recession? Surprisingly not. 

Which gets us to the markets. 

First, I will recap the first quarter. Markets got off to a vertical start in January fueled by stimmy 2.0. It was all going gangbusters until near the end of the month when the Gamestop pump and dump scheme almost imploded the global financial system amid record Nasdaq volume and widespread broker outages. 

For some reason, that near disaster inadvertently caused an even bigger inflow of gamblers to the casino. The last week in January saw a 500% increase in Robinhood downloads to 2.1 million. However, other brokers saw even larger increases after Gamestop imploded:

"Week over week, Fidelity app downloads increased 900%, E*trade was up 720%, Ameritrade 575%, Schwab 339%"

All of that new money rushed into markets and pushed the Nasdaq to a new all time high in mid-February, and then it imploded giving back three months of gains in three weeks. 

Then began a rally back in what is so far a three wave correction, fueled by stimmy 3.0. In other words, it's Groundhog day. Bulls are ready for new all time highs, except we see there are major breadth divergences developing on the right shoulder:

In addition to the divergences you see above, we have now learned via Ameritrade's proprietary investor movement index, what gamblers were up to during the month of March:

"The Investor Movement Index, or the IMX, is a proprietary, behavior-based index created by TD Ameritrade designed to indicate the sentiment of individual investors’ portfolios. It measures what investors are actually doing, and how they are actually positioned in the markets."

March summary:

"For the fourth month in a row, exposure to equity markets increased in TD Ameritrade client accounts. During the March period the IMX increased 8.74%, or 0.66, from 7.55 to 8.21."

As the summary describes, gamblers put most of their money into Tech stocks in order to BTFD.

Now, we see below that the IMX is at the highest level in three years. Far from capitulating in early March, gamblers doubled down on the Dotcom 2.0 Tech wreck.

What could go wrong?

Now, compared to mid-February, the stakes are much higher. Nevertheless, bulls are recycling the same lies and bullshit that didn't work the last time. This time, there is no stimmy 4.0 to bail them out. This time, Nasdaq new lows will explode. This time NYSE new lows will also explode, as cyclicals will not save the broader market as they did in February. 

This time, gamblers will come to realize they bought the dip for the last time. In Elliott Wave parlance what is coming is known as a third wave down. It means panic mode. 

And it most likely means a re-test of last year's lows, just to make sure everyone wants to own over-valued stonks, in a global meltdown. 

Sadly, the myth of central bank invcincibility dies at the hand of the margin clerk. 

Slaves To Deception

In the future this era will be the benchmark for mass deception and willful delusion. When the people finally realize that today's economic "experts" specialize in creating poverty, the spell will be broken. In the meantime, central banks will continue to do what they do best - create wealth inflation for the ultra-wealthy...

It's that time of year when we are updated on how many synthetic billionaires were minted by central banks in the past year. We are informed that the best way to solve exploding global mass poverty is to inflate the wealth of the ultra wealthy. 

You have to be a chimpanzee to believe it. 

"A record 493 people joined Forbes’ World’s Billionaires list this year—meaning the world on average gained a new billionaire every 17 hours"

"Jackpot"

One thing all of Wall Street's financial "innovations" have in common is that the insider owners of financial assets benefit at the expense of the general public. Whether we are talking about stock buyback cashouts, over-priced IPOs, or fraudulent SPACs - this era's stock market version of subprime mortgages. Wall Street couldn't survive if they couldn't sell packaged crap into public markets.

And for that to work, they need mass deception. When corporations eliminated company pensions they adopted the do-it-yourself retirement plan. Whereas previously professional money managers managed pension money, now everyone regardless of their financial education manages their own retirement. It's a con man's paradise. And at the center of it is the insider cash out scheme known as the stock market. 

Over the past decades the stock market has eclipsed the shriveled economy in terms of the public's perception of national prosperity. Since 2008, that trend has gone into overdrive as the moribund economy was stuck in low gear and the only perceived "upside" came from financial markets. The fact that stocks were benefiting at the expense of the economy never came into question. Instant gratification became more important than sustainable long-term wealth. 

We can blame central banks, billionaires, and all of the other "elites" for this mass deception. But make no mistake, the aging public is fully bought into this delusion now. The elderly take their income primarily from capital markets and for this super bubble to end now and expose the underlying economic fraud would be quite devastating. This is PEAK Baby Boomer retirement, hence it must also be peak delusion.

So it is that under the rules of Japanification, today's failed economists and failed policy-makers can kick the can down the road over and over again without any perceived consequence. 

The price that is paid however is in the fact that each recovery becomes weaker and weaker. Which means the divergence between asset prices and the economy grows larger and larger. Today's Madoff-acolyte central bankers can only "save" the bubble by making it bigger.

On the credit side it gets even riskier. As global debt explodes, absent deleveraging, the economic speed limit must go lower and lower. What only a decade ago was considered a crisis level floor for interest rates is now considered a crisis-level ceiling for interest rates. Therefore, it's very useful that today's financial con artists have trained the chimpanzee public to believe that the slightest increase in "prices" aka. wages, portends instant hyperinflation. We are slaves to the bond market now, and the entire financial class questions none of it. 

If all of this sounds desperately stupid, it's because it is.

Make no mistake every single economist and policy-maker who does not question this level of deception now, will have ZERO credibility in the near future. Especially when the sheeple realize today's "experts" specialize in getting us into poverty, not out of it. 

And then we will learn that there are no developed economies anymore, there are only developing economies now.  

Misleading Indicators

For Millennials, this will be their first time getting muppetized by Wall Street. For everyone else, this will be their last. The full force of post-2008 criminality is now at work...

In the spirit of Police Squad, oblivious central banks have never cared who got exploded by their liquidity driven pump and dump schemes. And for Wall Street, monetizing useful idiots is their main line of business. They will continue selling gamblers down the river, until the last muppet is found. Or until the casino breaks, which is one and the same. This new quarter's year-over-year look back period to a pandemic-imploded economy is a con man's paradise.

There are two types of muppets buying into this biblical scale fraud right now. There are those who believe that the longest bull market in U.S. history (11 years) was corrected by the shortest bear market in history (16 days). And then there are those who believe that the longest bull market in history is just getting started. Which one is the greater fool is obvious. Both.

The Dow broadening top has been fully realized. According to the most recent NAIIM active manager survey, the smart money is out and according to the AAII retail survey, the dumb money is ALL IN.

"It is a common saying that smart money is out of market in such formation and market is out of control."

Zerohedge just forwarded another piece of Wall Street propaganda claiming that we will now see the greatest economic boom of our lifetimes. It's all part of the narrative that this is the stock market buying opportunity of a lifetime. Of course nothing could be further from the truth. Does anyone really believe that the old ways will instantly bounce back after the worst pandemic in 100 years? Relative to last year, it may SEEM like a major improvement, but everyone isn't going to now take two trips to Disneyland to make up for the one they missed last year. The head of IATA (International Air Transport Association) recently predicted that global air travel in 2021 will be at 38% of 2019 levels under their most optimistic scenario. And overall, the service sector remains blighted due to mass small business closures. A recent Fed survey indicates that 30% of U.S. small business may not survive 2021. Long lines at Olive Garden won't produce an economic boom in an economy that is firing on 4 out of 8 cylinders. 

 

Consumer sentiment should serve as a warning that there has been substantial damage to this economy:

Over in retail land, there was yet another year of record store closures in 2020:

And yet, below we see the massive disconnect via the retail sector which has been ground zero for record short covering. 

How can this happen? Easy, forward earnings estimates have never been murkier and year over year comparisons look fantastic. Everything from economic growth to Wall Street profit predictions are now benefiting from massive % increases on an annualized basis. All of which is allowing a mountain of fraud to take place. 

As another example, we are told that cars are to 2021 what toilet paper was to 2020. Everyone needs to stock up in case there is a shortage of F-150s. 

"To better illustrate the strong demand dealers are experiencing, Erich Merkle, Ford U.S. sales analyst, pointed out that the company's retail sales are up 23.1% over a year ago. "

Sales went from zero to 23.1% of zero. It was the biggest increase in history on a percentage basis. Sadly, not everyone gets the joke. The autos index went nowhere for 13 years and then exploded this year due to the pandemic: 

On a macro level consider the U.S. growth rate this year will be as high or possibly higher than China's for the first time in DECADES. Which sounds great - U.S. growth is expected to clock in at 6% year over year. However, relative to 2019, U.S. growth is up 4%, which is less than 2% compounded per annum, whereas the deficit will be up 20% of GDP. All of a sudden Goldman's asshole predictions don't sound so hot. 

Globally, it gets even worse. Economists are calling it a "two track" recovery. One in the U.S., based on well-cultivated smoke and mirrors, and the other outside the U.S. based on unmistakable collapse:

This is the third and weakest fake global recovery since 2008:

Worse yet of course, the U.S. deficit is now driving up borrowing costs across the globe. Not a good situation when global debt in 2020 skyrocketed due to the pandemic:

"The U.S. bond tantrum is sending a chill through indebted countries which have for years paid less to borrow more."

Nash says the “canary in the coal mine” is the developing world, already feeling the impact of rising costs to borrow in U.S. dollars."

In summary, we have been warned, and the warning has been ignored. 

And the speculators who ignored the warning are about to be imploded by misleading indicators and the assholes who propagate them. 

The Secular Bull Market Is Over

This current rally is a 100% stimulus-driven sugar rally. The first, but by no means the last. The boom and bust cycle has begun. The U.S. is about to learn the hard way what Japan and China have already learned. You can rent delusion, but you can't own it...

My assertion is that the ninety year secular rally from the early 1930 lows ended in 2020 with the COVID pandemic. Unfortunately, most people never got the memo. It makes perfect sense that this fifth wave blow-off top was by far the fakest and most fraudulent rally of our lifetimes. One could make the case that the secular bull lasted for one more year, however, this will be a lethal rally. A bull trap of multi-decade proportions, awaiting those who didn't know when the party was over. No one in the future will believe that a pandemic that blighted the economy could fuel a manic risk on stock rally.

Sheer lunacy is lethally contagious. Far more dangerous than COVID. 

Unfortunately, the sheeple have been conditioned to expect the future to be the exact same as the past. Now we are seeing the full divergence of fantasy over reality. 

 

In 2020, the U.S. became 100% Japanified. Meaning that the economy and markets are now fully dependent on dramatic and ongoing stimulus. This means that the U.S. is now locked in a perpetual boom and bust cycle similar to Japan and China. This rally from the March 2020 lows is merely the first sugar rally, but by no means the last. This year, the U.S. national debt will grow four times faster than borrowed "GDP". Yes, you read that right. Currently, most of Wall Street is betting that the secular bull market in bonds is over. Nothing could be further from the truth. Per the rules of Japanification, U.S. long-term bond yields will soon be heading to zero, although not necessarily in a straight line. First, the two most crowded trades of this era - long stocks, short bonds - must be reversed. The volatility will be epic.

 

Of course, most people don't see this coming. Why? Because this era represents the pinnacle of Wall Street fraud and the pinnacle of Main Street gullibility. It's sheer arrogance to believe that the U.S. will escape the same fate that met Japan and China while taking the exact same path of stimulus dependency. Arrogance, stupidity, gullibility. Call it what you want. Most people today don't see anything wrong with this current level of widely accepted deception, because this is by far the most corrupt and decadent society in U.S. history.

Back in late 2014, erstwhile hedge fund manager Hugh Hendry called this stimulus-driven delusion "imagined realities". Meaning it's all just sugar-addled gamblers front-running false narratives. In this era, mass deception has been fully normalized. When Congress held hearings on the Gamestop debacle, their only concern was that everyone had equal access to the pump and dump scheme. In this era, we have democratized access to fraud. 

Japan's stock market peaked way back in 1990 (not shown). They have been in a sideways boom and bust cycle ever since, and yet they still lack the fortitude to reform their economy. At this point in time given the global COVID depression, it's possible that it's too late. A possibility that the U.S. will soon contend with - a global poverty trap. Competitive currency debasement. 

China's stock market peaked back in 2008. Since then they've been in a boom and bust cycle similar to Japan. Each boom and bust weaker than the previous one. 

Of all of the rallies in U.S. history, this one is by far the fakest and most fraudulent. You pretty much have to be brain dead to believe in it. Hence it goes largely unquestioned. When this fraud ends, this society will realize that the "experts" are the con men, and the cassandras were right all along. 

At which point their incipient mental breakdown will be fully realized. For those considering a new profession in therapy, bear in mind there is no market for telling people to grow the fuck up. I've tried.