Author: David Stockman

Yes, indeed. They bought the dip again, nudging the S&P 500 to another “record close”. This time the magic number was 2097 and its represented a tiny gain of 0.3% from the last record close, which was 2090 on December 29th. Needless to say, there were a lot of thrills and spills in between. As shown below, the broad market index has been staggering upward like a drunken sailor for the last three months. Just about 90 days ago on November 17, in fact, the S&P 500 hit a then record high of 2073 before plunging on five separate occasions by … Continue reading →

The mainstream narrative about “recovery” from the financial crisis is a giant con job. And nowhere does the mendacity run deeper than in the “banks are fixed” meme—an insidious cover story that has been concocted by the crony capitalist cabals that thrive at the intersection of Wall Street and Washington. So this morning comes yet another expose in the Wall Street Journal about the depredations of Bank America (BAC). Not surprisingly, at the center of this latest malefaction is still another set of schemes to grossly abuse the deposit insurance safety net and enlist the American taxpayer in the risky business of financing high-rolling London hedge … Continue reading →

The politicians of Europe are plunging into a form of ideological fratricide as they battle over Greece. And “fratricide” is precisely the right descriptor because in this battle there are no white hats or black hits—-just statists. Accordingly, all the combatants—the German, Greek and other national politicians and the apparatchiks of Brussels and Frankfurt—- are fundamentally on the wrong path, albeit for different reasons. Yet by collectively indulging in the sum of all statist errors they may ultimately do a service. Namely, discredit and destroy the whole bailout state and central bank driven financialization model that threatens political democracy and capitalist prosperity in Europe——and the rest of the … Continue reading →

Bloomberg News finally did something useful this morning by publishing some startling graphs from McKinsey’s latest update on the worldwide debt tsunami. If you don’t mind a tad of rounding, the planetary debt total now stands at $200 trillion compared to world GDP of just $70 trillion. Source: McKinseyThe implied 2.9X global leverage ratio is daunting in itself. But now would be an excellent time to recall the lessons of Greece because the true implications are far more ominous.Today’s raging crisis in Greece was hidden from view for many years in the run-up to its first EU bailout in 2010 because the denominator of its reported … Continue reading →

Committee for the Republic Washington DC January 20, 2015 My humble thesis tonight is that the entire 20th Century was a giant mistake. And that you can put the blame for this monumental error squarely on Thomas Woodrow Wilson——-a megalomaniacal madman who was the very worst President in American history……..well, except for the last two. His unforgiveable error was to put the United States into the Great War for utterly no good reason of national interest. The European war posed not an iota of threat to the safety and security of the citizens of Lincoln NE, or Worcester MA or Sacramento … Continue reading →

This morning’s market is more erratic than Claire Danes off her lithium. Gold is soaring, the euro’s plunging, US treasury yields are in free fall, junk bonds are faltering, copper is bouncing, oil has rolled over, the Russell 2000 momos are getting mauled, the swissie has shot the moon, the Dow is knee-jerking down, correlations are failing……and the robo traders are flat-out lost. All praise the god of price discovery! For six years financial markets have been drugged into zombiedom by maniacal central bankers who have violated every known rule of sound money and financial market honesty. In expanding their collective balance sheets from … Continue reading →

Have you been at the zoo when the monkeys start rattling their cages and screeching in unison? That about sums up the last 24 hours since the euro zone’s December CPI printed at negative 0.2% versus prior year. Within minutes of the release, brokerage house “economists” were out in force caterwauling that $1 trillion of ECB bond purchases were now in the bag, meaning that gamblers who had ridden the Italian 10-year bond, among other peripheral junk, all the way down from 7.5% to 1.72% would have another bountiful payday. Then, just to make sure, the rather vague reference in the Fed’s 2pm meeting notes … Continue reading →