Author: David Stockman

The major—perhaps only—redeeming virtue of Donald’s ersatz campaign platform was his clear intent to seek a rapprochement with Russia, revamp America’s commitments to NATO and other cold war relics and to discard “Regime Change” as the core tenant of foreign policy in favor of an “America First” approach to domestic security and safety. Those eminently sensible notions struck the Deep State’s raison d’etre to the quick. The fact is, there would be no justification for the $800 billion defense, intelligence and foreign aid apparatus on which the very prosperity of the Imperial City depends in the absence of a large state-based enemy; or, better still, without an imperial foreign policy that is implicitly designed to either bully or remove recalcitrant governments anywhere on … Continue reading →

The post Unhinged: The War Party’s Desperate Assault appeared first on LewRockwell.

The watchword for 2018 is: UNHINGED! That refers to Wall Street, Washington, the Dems and the GOP, and all the far and near corners of the planet which are implicated in their collective follies. The latter begins with the fact that Imperial Washington has become so dysfunctional that the most powerful government on earth can’t seem to keep its doors open for more than a few weeks at a time. The next continuing resolution (CR) deadline is January 19 and the route thereto resembles nothing less than kick-the-can-alley. It’s strewn with $100 billion of unfunded disaster aid, defense and nondefense sequester caps fixing to be busted by another … Continue reading →

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During the 40 months after Alan Greenspan’s infamous “irrational exuberance” speech in December 1996, the NASDAQ 100 index rose from 830 to 4585 or by 450%. But the perma-bulls said not to worry: This time is different—-it’s a new age of technology miracles that will change the laws of finance forever. It wasn’t. The market cracked in April 2000 and did not stop plunging until the NASDAQ 100 index hit 815 in early October 2002. During those heart-stopping 30 months of free-fall, all the gains of the tech boom were wiped out in an 84% collapse of the index. Overall, the market value of household equities sank from $10.0 trillion to $4.8 trillion—-a wipeout from which millions of baby boom households have never … Continue reading →

The post The Greatest Bubble Ever appeared first on LewRockwell.

Since last November 8th the Russell 2000 has risen by 30% and the net Federal debt has expanded by an astounding $1.0 trillion dollars. In a rational world operating with honest financial markets those two results would not be found in even remotely the same zip code; and especially not in month #102 of a tired economic expansion and at the inception of an epochal pivot by the Fed to QT (quantitative tightening) on a scale never before imagined. And we do mean exactly those words. By next April the Fed will be shrinking its balance sheet at $360 billion annual rate and by $600 billion per year as of next October. Altogether, the Fed’s balance is … Continue reading →

The post The Coming Fiscal Derailment appeared first on LewRockwell.

There was a sinister plot to meddle in the 2016 election, after all. But it was not orchestrated from the Kremlin; it was an entirely homegrown affair conducted from the inner sanctums—the White House, DOJ, the Hoover Building and Langley—-of the Imperial City. Likewise, the perpetrators didn’t speak Russian or write in the Cyrillic script. In fact, they were lifetime beltway insiders occupying the highest positions of power in the US government. Here are the names and rank of the principal conspirators: John Brennan, CIA director; Susan Rice, National Security Advisor; Samantha Power, UN Ambassador; James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence; James Comey, FBI director; Andrew McCabe, Deputy … Continue reading →

The post The RussiaGate Witch-Hunt appeared first on LewRockwell.

Today’s single most dangerous Wall Street meme is that there is no risk of a stock market crash because there is no recession in sight. But that proposition is dead wrong because it’s a relic of your grandfather’s economy. That is, a reasonably functioning capitalist order in which the stock market priced-out company earnings and the underlying macroeconomic substrate from which they arose. Back then, Economy drove Finance: You therefore needed a main street contraction to trigger tumbling profits, which, in turn, caused Wall Street to mark-down the NPV (net present value) of future company earnings streams and the stock prices which embodied them. No longer. After three … Continue reading →

The post Bubble Finance appeared first on LewRockwell.

If you were a Martian visitor just disembarked from of one of Elon Musk’s rocket ships and were therefore uninfected by earth-based fake news, the culprits in Washington’s witch-hunt de jure would be damn obvious. They include John Brennan, Jim Comey, Sally Yates, Peter Strzok and a passel of deep state operatives—-all of whom baldly abused their offices. After Brennan had concocted the whole Russian election meddling meme to sully the Donald’s shocking election win, the latter three holdovers—-functioning as a political fifth column in the new Administration—-set a perjury trap designed to snare Mike Flynn as a first step in relitigating and reversing the voters’ verdict. The smoking gun on … Continue reading →

The post The Lying Secret Police appeared first on LewRockwell.

The lemmings are now in full stampede toward the cliffs. You can literally hear the cold waters churning, foaming and crashing on the boulders far below. From Bitcoin to Amazon, the financials, the Russell 2000 and most everything else in between, the casinos are digesting no information except the price action and are relentlessly rising on nothing more than pure momentum. The mania has gone full retard. Certainly earnings have nothing to do with it. As of this morning, the Russell 2000, for instance, was trading at 112X reported LTM earnings. Likewise, Q3 reporting is all over except for the shouting and reported LTM earnings for … Continue reading →

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During more than four decades in Washington and on Wall Street it is quite possible that we never picked up any useful skills. But along the way we did unavoidably acquire what amounts to a survival tool in those fair precincts—-namely, a nose for the con job. And what a doozy we have going now as a desperate mob of Capitol Hill Republicans attempts to enact something—anything— that can be vaguely labeled tax reform/tax cut. And for a reason that lies only slightly below the surface. In a word, they are scared to death that the political train wreck in the Oval Office will put them out of business … Continue reading →

The post Debt, Taxes, Growth appeared first on LewRockwell.

The GOP has become so politically desperate that they might as well enact a two-word statute and be done with it. It would simply read: Tax Bill! Actually, that’s not far from where they are in the great scheme of things. The Senate Finance Committee’s bill is a dog’s breakfast of K-Street/Wall Street pleasing tax cuts, narrowly focused revenue raisers that will be subject to withering attack on the Senate floor, nonsensical vote-driven compromises and outrageous fiscal gimmicks – the most blatant of which is the sun-setting of every single individual tax provision after 2025. This latter trick is designed … Continue reading →

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The Wall Street Journal published a superb example of hopium recently in a sunny-side-up story entitled “U. S. Manufacturing Rides Rising Tide, Buoyed by Global Growth, Optimism.” Indeed, this lazy cheerleading excuse for journalism captured the sum and substance of why the punters keep buying the dips despite troubles gathering all around. That is, as the tax bill falters, the crusade to remove the Donald from office gathers strength, the Fed moves into balance sheet normalization and instability breaks out all over the world from the Persian Gulf to the Korean peninsula. You would think the title says it all, but the … Continue reading →

The post The Illusion of Growth appeared first on LewRockwell.

The black swan in plain sight does emit the Donald’s orangish glow, but at the end of the day its true color is actually red. That is, monumental towers of rapidly rising debt loom everywhere on the planet. For the moment, the artificial cash flow from this unsustainable borrowing spree is keeping a simulacrum of growth and prosperity alive. Yet this whole outbreak of debt madness—-represented by $225 trillion outstanding on a global basis—-is careening toward a financial and economic dead end that will soon crush today’s fiscally profligate politicians and heedless financial punters, alike, in a devastating reset of bond yields. For our first case in point, the always excellent Wolf Richter published a great … Continue reading →

The post Black Swan in Plain Sight appeared first on LewRockwell.

It can’t get any worse than this. Jerome Powell is a Wall Street-coddling Keynesian and Washington lifer who passes for a Janet Yellen replica – that is, save for his tie and trousers and his as yet underdeveloped capacity to whine pedantically. During his years on the Fed since May 2012, Powell has voted approximately 44 times to drastically falsify interest rates and to recklessly and fraudulently monetize trillions of the public debt. That is, Powell has been all-in for a destructive central banking regime that is literally asphyxiating capitalist prosperity in America. We will get to the latter in … Continue reading →

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If you didn’t believe the Deep State is beyond democratic control before, you now have no choice – not after the last minute mugging the Donald received on his way to releasing these ancient JFK assassination files. And believe us, they are indeed ancient. Your editor was sitting in high school civics class learning about the difference between America’s open society and democratic government and the secretive Kremlin dictatorship of the Soviet Union when news of the Dallas tragedy came over the school’s PA. Needless to say, the theory that the assassination was the work of a lone gunman in … Continue reading →

The post The Conspiracy Against the Truth appeared first on LewRockwell.

There is about to be a changing of the guard in the Eccles Building. That comes straight from the tweeter-in-chief, who actually verbalized his thoughts on the matter during interviews yesterday: I tell you what, she was in my office three days ago. She was very impressive. I like her a lot. I mean, it’s somebody that I am thinking about……(but) I have to say you’d like to make your own mark…. We’ll take the bolded phrase as gold watch time for Janet Yellen upon expiration of her term in February. And with a full measure of Trumpian gusto, we’d … Continue reading →

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