Tuesday, August 21, 2012

iPhoney Rally and Recovery - Price: $666

Four years ago, Wall Street due to its infinite greed and malfeasance, crashed world markets and almost destroyed the global economy.  In the event, government stepped in and used taxpayer resources to save the day.  The entire bailout put hundreds of billions of taxpayer (middle class) dollars at risk.

Fast Forward Four Years, and What Has Changed?

For Wall Street:
- Four year stock market rally
- Business as Usual 

For Main Street:
- Economy fully outsourced with no sign of real job creation whatsoever
- Middle Class net worth back at 1989 levels

Never Save a Snake From Drowning - It Will Bite
In other words, since the crash in 2008, the Middle Class has been stuck with an additional $7 trillion of TOTAL debt, courtesy of "extend and pretend", all the while being outsourced at the behest of the financial services industry that the Middle Class itself bailed out.  


Twisted Irony: Wall Street's HFT (High Frequency Trading) Monster is Off the Leash...
Due to HFT levitation of the stock market, Wall Street's benchmark is moving out of reach.  Now the fate of Wall Street's end-of-year bonanza rests not just on one stock, but on one product - iPhone 5.  Fortunately, iPhone 5 is "1" better than iPhone 4, so the Idiocracy will have to get one.  

Today Apple hit 666: Wall Street's Lucky Number




And, Right On Time: The "Gifted Minority" aka. those who created this latent clusterfuck, now expressing "disdain" at the burgeoning indolents piling up on their door step
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/art-cashin-new-normals-new-populism-165-million-state-dependents

This is the Angel Heart school of Management - run around "right sizing" people to oblivion and then disavow any impact on the broader economy.  And just wait until these toolbags realize that they are next in line at the soup kitchen.  Oh Shit !!! I thought we were screwing over everyone else - not me !!!  History will not be impressed by a generation of overpaid salesmen who outsource their nation's economy and unwittingly their own jobs with it.  And I have no doubt in the fullness of time, they will get the story straight on who is the grasshopper and who is the ant.

Tool Time Award: Barry Ritholtz
Barry today was joining the ground and pound on Niall Ferguson for writing this week's cover article on Newsweek telling Obama to "Hit the Road".  Ritholtz claims that Ferguson inaccurately interpreted government payroll numbers by not adjusting for census workers - good point Barry - Yahtzee!  Meanwhile, in coming out swinging, Ritholtz makes a major amateur mistake (or deliberate oversight?) of his own, that other Obama apologists have made these past years when comparing this recovery to past ones i.e. he claims that relative private job growth has been better than the past two recessions, but he doesn't adjust for debt (deficit) accumulation.   The real story is that if past policymakers had been willing to run a MASSIVE 10% of GDP deficit over the past 60 years, there would not have been ANY prior recessions for Barry to compare to in the first place...

Then There Were None 
Lastly, debating "relative recoveries" using self-selected parameters is merely a callous parlour game for fat and happy academics who still have a job.  The fact is that this "recovery" has been an abysmal failure which should come as no surprise given that the overwhelming beneficiary of government deficit spending has been Corporate profits.  How the hell can there be an economic recovery when the entire deficit is falling straight to the bottom line and bypassing the Middle Class?  The only thing the average person sees is the fucking tab at the end of the day.  As fully expected, the Globalized Ponzi Scheme is unraveling and hence benefiting fewer and fewer people, until eventually there will be no one left to take the other side of the debate.

P.S. This One Goes To Eleven
Per above, for those who say that the deficit does not fully equate to 10% of GDP - first, adjust GDP for the amount of the deficit and it's darn close i.e. An honest man doesn't assume that borrowed money is real GDP (although economists do), because once you assume debt is income, then it's only a matter of time before someone comes along and says we can borrow to infinity - oh wait, Larry Summers already did.