Economic pressures

[Danny B]

I was up at my BOL for a few days. Things definitely haven't improved in my absence.
There are several core problems that can not be rectified. Socialism is the firewall that allows the non-producers to greatly increase their numbers.
At the same time, automation is wiping out job niches for all but, the highly educated.
Politicians continue to buy votes by creating social-support programs.
Nearly 50% of Americans are not in the workforce, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esJ95FRENDI
51% of Americans receive a check from the State.

Everyone is scrambling to maintain control, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tY8DKp9bRtY
Kunstler,
Everybody will have a harder time making a living. Everybody will endure shocking losses in wealth, status, and comfort. And, sadly, everybody will be too perplexed and bamboozled by the rush of events to understand why.
The short version of that story is we’ve overshot our resources, especially the basic energy resources that all other activities require."
Yep, the master resource is energy.

Automation takes all the jobs and, MMT is seen as the only answer to widespread unemployment. It is claimed that MMT will wipe out the work ethic for all the rest.
The theory of MMT falls flat when faced with reality (part I) – RIA
Into darkness: where the Fed is leading us – Chris Martenson, Peak Prosperity
David Stockman on what could happen if the Fed loses control – International Man
We face WIDESPREAD default and, the FED is trying to soften the blow.
How we arrived at the globalist calls for a ‘great reset’ – Steven Guinness
It's called automation & job loss.

America is facing 5 epic crises all at once – NY Times
A collapsing dollar and China’s monetary strategy – GoldMoney
Armstrong, "All state pension systems are going to fail. This is why there is a push to really get rid of Trump so they can usher in major tax increases to bail out the government pensions. The Democrats are advocating the same posture as in Europe. It is the World Economic Forum which under Picketty is advocating a 400% increase in taxes in Europe.

These people are fools. Virtually every revolution throughout history begins with tax increases"
The ECB,
"ANSWER: The most likely course will be to convert all outstanding debt to perpetual bonds. Then they would pay interest and they need not redeem them, so no more rolling. They will be faced with a choice. If they decide to continue to borrow, then they will most likely do so by real auctions, and the ECB will not support the bonds or prevent interest rates from rising. They could take the more likely course of action and just print money to cover expenses, otherwise, the budget will no longer match the treaty."
What would it take to dethrone the dollar? – The Street
Every other currency would have to roar back to dethrone the dollar. Every other currency is collapsing.

China is collapsing financially. At the same time, our ongoing pole flip is causing anomalous weather all around the planet. This includes extremely heavy rains in China. Reportedly, the 3 Gorges dam is at risk.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4Wz...ature=youtu.be
That would be a VERY impressive collapse.

[BroMikey]

Recovery "WITH A V"

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics...e-four-package

[Danny B]

Nope, Mikey. No recovery, V-shaped or otherwise. I read the Fox article. What you have to keep in mind is; the first stimulus checks didn't fix the economy. What is NOT stated here is; what happens after the second round of stimulus does not fix the problems? Confidence is gone and, people are just hanging on and trying to survive.
UNFORTUNATELY, the Marxists that are working to crash the economy are hard at work mandating that we will have a second wave of virus shutdowns. I go out on the streets and, everything is quiet. I have a friend who is a big egg distributor. Eggs are the cheapest protein. His business is way down. What does that mean when people slow way down on spending for basic foods?
Why do you think that GOV is proposing MMT? MMT would be ongoing"stimulus". A second round of stimulus would need to be followed by even more rounds.

Look at it this way. The FED has been "stimulating" the stock market for many years. Did that fix anything?
"As Panigirtzoglou explains, "the risk of policy mistake is related to the idea that there is a need for additional stimulus going forward and if policy makers fail to deliver it, they would effectively slip behind the curve rather than staying ahead of the curve, risking a negative market response."

In other words, having injected over $3 trillion in liquidity in the past three months, JPM argues that this is nowhere near enough, and incidentally, the House of Morgan is not alone: after all this is precisely the same argument that Goldman made in mid-May when the bank "spotted a huge problem for the Fed", namely that the Fed will need to monetize much more debt - about $1.6 trillion more - than it currently envisions in order to avoid a disorderly surge in Treasury yields. "

This is , of course, BS. They can't inject $1 trillion a month and, expect that to fix everything. The proposed $1.6 trillion would need to be followed by X $ trillion more.
"One of the main topics of discussion with clients in recent weeks has been about the downside risks to the equity and risky market outlook into the second half of the year. Of the three main risks mentioned by clients, a second virus wave, a Democratic sweep in the US presidential election; and a policy mistake, it is the third one that worries us the most."
"In not so many words, JPMorgan agrees, and implicitly argues that soon the Fed will have to find a way to appease the market once again or risk a major market hit in the coming months."
Does anybody think that the need for market stimulus will just come to an end with $1.6 trillion more? BOTH the upper AND lower loops need ongoing liquidity injections.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/jp...problem-stocks

The FED pumps up the stock market. The pension funds absolutely depend on the stock market rising to make their books look good.
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/w...over-the-edge/

Martin Armstrong: What Destroyed Rome Was Its Unfunded Government Pensions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyjLcYw5SPg
FED GOV is pumping in liquidity into every nook and cranny with major attention paid to keep GOV pensions solvent. Does anybody thing that $1.6 trillion will fix everything that is broken? If it took $1trillion a month to stabilize things, what will it take as things continue to sink? Second wave, anybody?

Forget the V, W or L recovery: focus on N-P-B – Charles Hugh Smith
7/02 US jobs increase by 4.8 million in June, vs 2.9 million estimate – CNBC
7/01 U.S. employers announced more job cuts in June – Reuters
Yep, the liars and the cheerleaders.
7/01 U.S. manufacturing activity hits 14-month high – Reuters
Reuters is among the worst BSers

The FED;
"The staff presented results from model simulations that suggested that forward guidance and large-scale asset purchases can help support the labor market recovery and the return of inflation to the Committee's symmetric 2 percent inflation goal. The simulations suggested that the Committee would have to maintain highly accommodative financial conditions for many years to quicken meaningfully the recovery from the current severe downturn. "
The FED is trying to support the WHOLE economy by pumping up the stock market. It just doesn't work that way.
The 2% inflation goal is what screwed us to begin with.

The Bretton Woods agreement locked us into the gold standard. This allows the economy to grow by 2% a year. The same that the gold supply grows,
Banker LOVE & NEED an expansive currency. We started the war in Viet-Nam. This required so much money printing that the Bretton Woods agreement was eventually destroyed,,,,, all those thousands of people killed just to get rid of the gold standard.

Look at the graphs on this site. Everything turned to feces for the working man when we went off the gold standard.
https://www.voimagold.com/insight/wh...-wrong-in-1971
It was war that broke the gold standard. It is wars that brought us to the current situation of maxxed out federal debt. The wars greatly benefited a certain group / country. They are attacking Trump with no mercy because he won't continue the wars.,

[BroMikey]

Nope, Mikey. No recovery, V-shaped or otherwise. .......... the Marxists that are working to crash the economy
In other words, having injected over $3 trillion in liquidity in the past three months

The FED pumps up the stock market.

They are attacking Trump with no mercy because he won't continue the wars.,

The old companies fade away and the new ones come run by young PEPE

[Danny B]

You may be right

[Danny B]

LEVERAGE
There are some concepts that break down to simple terms. They may not be obvious but, they are simple.
A banker is allowed to leverage your $1 dollar up many times.
"Joseph Stiglitz, writing in Vanity Fair, described five key “mistakes” that had helped cause the financial crisis. Sure enough, the 2004 rule change got prominent play. And for the first time, Stiglitz explicitly mentioned the extent to which the leverage ratios had increased—“from 12:1 to 30:1, or higher,”
A banker can leverage up every dollar but, YOU can not leverage up your labor. A banker can always front-run you and buy up everything that you need. Through the magic of fractional reserve, he can bid up everything that you want to buy.

Smith;
"Let's ask a very simple question. The S&P 500 stock index went up five-fold from its 2009 low at 667 to a recent high around 3,400. Did your income rise five-fold since 2009? Probably not.

Houses that sold for $150,000 in 2000 are now valued at $900,000, a six-fold increase since 2000. Did your income rise six-fold since 2000? Probably not.

State university tuition has risen about 2.5 times from 2004 to 2019. Did your income rise 2.5-fold since 2004? Probably not.

Even burritos from the local taco truck have tripled in price in the past 15 years. Did your income triple? Probably not.

The average household income in 2000 was about $42,000. To match the six-fold increase in urban housing valuations, that household would have to earn $252,000 this year. How many households saw their income soar from $42,000 to $252,000? Not many.

The average household income in 2009 was about $50,000. To match the five-fold increase in stock market valuations, that household would have to earn $250,000 this year. How many households saw their income soar from $50,000 to $250,000? Not many.

In effect, the nation has become dependent on its central bankers and their limited agenda (expand the wealth and power of the financial sector). The elected government and the real-world production of goods and services both have taken a back seat to conjured "wealth."

The ascendance of finance and the decay of labor's value is the result of the ascendance of monetary stimulus as the core driver of "wealth" and thus "growth." It was once expected that consumption would be funded by wages earned by labor, and investment would be funded by savings set aside from earnings. That era is long past. What's been normalized is a systemic reliance on debt to fund consumption and on the euphoric "animal spirits" of the wealth effect generated by soaring assets such as homes and stocks.

History offers a number of parallels to the ascendance of borrowed capital over labor and central bank money-printing over the creation of productive value. History suggests eras that have normalized economic and financial extremes--extremes of inequality, policy, and decay--haven't ended well for anyone.

Just as the rewards of central-bank bubbles have not been evenly distributed, the pain created by the collapse of the bubbles won't be evenly distributed, either.

ONCE AGAIN, EVERYTHING GOT ERASED.
http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com...n-history.html

[Danny B]

I had to post that, not knowing if it would all disappear if I continued.
More on the subject of leverage & labor.
"Even more 'unprecedented' is the fact that the two measures of the labor market are expected to diverge dramatically with a 1.35 million increase in new jobless claimants occurring at the same time as the BLS is expected to report an increase of 3.058 million jobs in the US economy."
Comments;
The stock market cannot be allowed to crash. Because everybody's retirement and wealth disappears with it. So the Federal Reserve will continue to print money from nothing and buy stock. It's called the Jappification of America.
This graph shows perfectly what happened when the bankers got rid of the last vestige of the gold standard.
https://global-uploads.webflow.com/5...40-1_arrow.jpg
They got their flexible currency and, we got poverty through price inflation.
https://www.voimagold.com/insight/wh...-wrong-in-1971

In an expose in the July issue of The Atlantic, he describes how CLOs, a close cousin to CDOs have collapsed in value and are stuffed on bank balance sheets.

$100B in CLOs are "unaccounted for" according to the Financial Stability Board.

Worse, the biggest banks are stuffed with over a trillion in off-balance sheet debt hidden in variable interest entities (VIEs).

JPMorgan alone has $651 billion stuck in off-balance sheet credit card debt.
https://seekingalpha.com/article/435...e?v=1593540287

This Pandemic Is A Politician's Dream Come True






...they have a free pass to create limitless quantities of money to pay for whatever pet project they want. Universal basic income? Print money. Free healthcare? Print money. New roads? Print money.

Stunning Surge In New CMBS Delinquencies Heralds Commercial Real Estate Disaster
Everyone is working from home. We don't need no stinkin office space.

[Danny B]

Bastiat; "The State. What is the state? I like Douglass North’s definition of a state as an organization with a comparative advantage in violence extending over a geographic area with boundaries determined by its power to tax. Bastiat goes a step further and lays bare the essence of the state as it would later be analyzed by scholars working in the public choice tradition like Mancur Olson and James M. Buchanan: “The state is the great fiction by which everyone endeavors to live at the expense of everyone else.”

You must keep in mind that the State has the guns and the lawbooks. When it sees fit, it can twist the laws to it's advantage. The State is a parasite and, must steal it's resources.
You worked 105 days this year to support a blob state that grows by 6% a year, regardless of work load. Those who live by the generosity of the State are forever fearful of losing support. They earned that support fair & square through correct votes & bribes. 51% of Americans receive a check from the State.
This "comparative advantage in violence" is what keeps many States in power. There would be problems if you arm the sheep. Many States keep control by the explicit threat of violence against it's constituents (sheep)
The threat of violence works wonders for keeping people fearful; https://www.*****ute.com/video/PawKGprr41sb/

We have reached a point where the whole economy is disintegrating because everyone was robbed. The real, and, potential damage from defaults is moving up the chain of finance.
The loan delinquency rate follows the unemployment rate. Look at this graph and, it will all be very clear.
https://goldswitzerland.com/wp-conte...uency-rate.jpg
"The world’s central banks are now in the process of outshining both Weimar and Zimbabwe. Together with governments they have globally printed and borrowed $18 trillion since CV started. And since the Great Financial crisis started in 2006 they have more than doubled global debt from $125 trillion to over $275 trillion but that is just the beginning. "
Equity values have doubled but, earnings are flat. The CBs have to pump ever harder.
https://goldswitzerland.com/wp-conte...nd-profits.jpg

The blob State is running short on money to support the ever increasing blob. They see a State owned crypto currency as the answer.
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/w...ntrol-society/
"We just released this report which includes, as part of the Great Reset, the push to eliminate paper money to move toward a digital currency world where they can track everything we do and allow for drastic increases in taxation. They have been suddenly justifying this by claiming that viruses can live on surfaces."

[Danny B]

Armstrong and pensions.
REPLY: I have been running the models perhaps hoping for a different outcome but it’s always the same. September to November 2020 is going to see rising tension. It is clear that this virus is being used for political purposes and NEITHER side will accept the result in November. I added a section in the Great Reset which people can pull down as an update where the United Nations is now calling for a one-world government and that all politicians should come together and join under their banner. This is a major political coup that is unfolding on a global scale, but they are focusing on getting rid of Trump so they can include the United States along with Europe.

PLEASE keep in mind that while the dollar may end up as a safe haven for Europe, DO NOT expect that to last beyond 2 years at best. There is nothing which is permanent as we head into 2032. Even the 2020 election may end up in the Supreme Court.

This whole thing is a major effort to take over the world economy for all the socialistic programs that are collapsing. Europe has endured 6 years of negative interest rates with no stimulation. They can no longer raise money to fund programs. The days of perpetually borrowing have come to an end. This coup is all about seizing the system for what they see is a global revolution when people realize that everything they counted on from the government will not be there.

Social Security's annual Trustees Report came out recently, and it showed Social Security ran a gigantic $9 trillion deficit between last year and this year. The system's long-term unfunded liability is now $43 trillion, up from $34 trillion last year."

"“The ECB is trapped. It cannot raise rates to raise money and it has destroyed its bond market. The only way out is to default on all debt and they will do that by declaring it to be now a perpetual debt"
Armstrong expects GOV to seize all pensions.
But fear not. We are heading into a Monetary Crisis of untold proportions. If the governments do not listen, they will create the biggest civil unrest in all of history. This is the collapse of socialism, for they have promised everything, funded nothing

[Danny B]

https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/...mble-precipice
Hmmm, everything else erased. Any how, here is a brilliant article from Smith.

[Danny B]

Funny that the count of "views" of this thread hasn't changed in a long time. I will continue to write to bring clarity to my head,,, if not anyone else.
The risk of default is moving up the line. "They" have been forced to print to try to save the banks. BUT, the chosenites want to bring it all down so, we can assume that crashing the banks is on the menu. I'll start with China. They moved 300 million plus self-sufficient peasants to the city and, put them to work. They have run out of legitimate things for the to do so, they print money to finance illegitimate projects. Even in America, giga-tons of pixels are generated to finance projects to keep people working when legitimate jobs have disappeared to be done by computer-driven machines.

The Chinese banking system; Bloomberg,
"Authorities are seeking to shore up their $41 trillion banking system, which could suffer an 8 trillion yuan increase in bad debt this year, according to S&P Global. Small Chinese banks tracked by UBS Group AG need an estimated $349 billion of fresh capital."
Keep in mind that the 3 Gorges dam is FAILING right now. Western media will not talk about it because it would be an enormous shock to ALL financial markets.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0F_otepRFU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paWbUs93hmM
"$41 trillion banking system" What could go wrong?

OK, enough of China. What about American banks?
Last crash was caused by failures of CDOs. Apparently, the next failure will be caused by failure of CLOs,,,, a close cousin.
"Despite their obvious resemblance to the villain of the last crash, CLOs have been praised by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin for moving the risk of leveraged loans outside the banking system."
This idiotic mindset claims that everyone but the banks will fail and, the banks will survive. It just doesn't work that way. Defaults move inexorable up the line.
"Last July, one month after Powell declared in a press conference that “the risk isn’t in the banks,” two economists from the Federal Reserve reported that U.S. depository institutions and their holding companies owned more than $110 billion worth of CLOs issued out of the Cayman Islands alone."
"The Financial Stability Board, which monitors the global financial system, warned in December that 14 percent of CLOs—more than $100 billion worth—are unaccounted for."

Very good article, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine...llapse/612247/

"When Zimbabwe suspended trading on its stock exchange last week, James Hove was left with no access to the funds he needs to conduct his business.

Like many wealthy Zimbabweans, Hove invests in the local stock market. Not for the value he sees in the companies whose stocks trade on it, but as a hedge against surging consumer prices: while annual inflation is running at 786%,"
Access to money would be a big problem when the banks finally close here.

7/06 Study shows shielding EMF improves autoimmune disease – GMI
So, what does that imply for 5G?

7/07 ‘Falling off a cliff’: Lebanon’s poor borrow to buy bread – Reuters
Smith completely misses the point. All that money pumped into the upper loop is continuing to provide employment to the lower loop. So what of the upper loop continues to grow richer. As long as some of the money seeps down into jobs.
http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com...rket-will.html
7/07 FED’s $10 trillion defends assets of the rich – Michael Hudson
They have to spend some of it.
7/07 In the covid-19 economy, you can have a kid or a job, but not both – NY Times
7/07 ‘Beyond worst nightmares’: Argentina’s child poverty rate soars – Reuters
7/07 Japan’s household spending slumps by record amount – Reuters Their population is shrinking.
7/07 World’s largest pension fund loses $165 billion in worst quarter – Yahoo! Yep, Japan sinking beneath the waves.

7/07 Public pension reckoning delayed with stimulus pumping up stocks – Yahoo!
MUCH of this pumping is aimed at keeping pension funds solvent.
7/06 China stokes a stock-market mania, risking repeat of 2015 bubble – Yahoo!
This is "plan A" AND plan B and, plan C, and plan D
7/07 The Big Short #2 – World feasts on excessive risk again – Technical Traders
Plan a,b,c,d,e, and F

[Danny B]

153 'Left-Leaning' Economists Say US Should Continue To Hand Out Free Money Indefinitely
US Budget Revenue Covered Just 173 Days of Its 2020 Spending
There is much debate about just printing money to pay bills.
"Globally, the IMF forecasts that general government budget deficits (ie where tax revenues fall short of government spending) will reach 10% of GDP in 2020, up from 3.7% in 2019.
As a result, public sector debt levels are expected to exceed anything reached in the last 150 years – including after WW1 and WW2"
Top economists like Rogoff and Reinhart argued that there was empirical evidence over centuries that showed when public debt ratios were above 90% of GDP, the probability of a financial crash was very high."
The article goes on to talk all about public debt levels and, the inevitable crash. This falls flat if the new money is created debt-free. The article talks about this but, never differentiates between debt loaded money AND debt-free money.

"Even more notable has been the unanimity among macroeconomists that massive fiscal and monetary stimulus is the appropriate response to a “wartime” economic emergency."
This "emergency" is otherwise called AUTOMATION.
"The more extreme Keynesian position that is now popular is that even managing debt levels does not matter. Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) reckons that, as long as there is ‘slack’ in the capitalist economy ie. unemployment, governments can spend indefinitely and central banks can support them by ‘printing money’ without any risk of default or financial collapse.
However, it may not be as simple as that. Calculating whether debt service is sustainable involves several key numbers:
YOU DON'T HAVE DEBT SERVICE IF YOU CREATE DEBT-FREE-MONEY

"So government spending, Keynesian-style, can only be a substitute for failing private investment and consumption for a short while."
"The ‘evil’ of inflation is even admitted by MMT, if only when full employment is reached and the ‘slack’ in the economy disappears."
WE WILL NEVER REACH FULL EMPLOYMENT
http://cadtm.org/Deficits-debt-and-d...r-the-pandemic

The solution is seen as world socialism. It is creeping in everywhere.
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/a...eeps-clothing/
Armstrong, "They know SOCIALISM is collapsing for they have reached the limit of perpetual borrowing with no intention of ever paying anything off."
"The Democrats are absolutely desperate to get rid of Trump for they believe they must take control of the entire government and impose their draconian agenda to seize assets, raise taxes to absurd levels, and oppress the people to prevent an uprising. These goals will unleash violence — not a panacea of unlimited power."
We're all going to be chipped and tracked to extract the maximum amount of taxes.
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/u...racking-chips/

[Danny B]

Well, the focus is turning to China.
The 3 Gorges dam is starting to slide away.
AND

Evacuations In China As Hubei Dam Begins to Slide; Cities Issue Red Alert

Just to make matters worse, they have new cases of bubonic plague.
They have new strains of Corona
4% of their gold is fake bars. It is claimed that much more of the gold is fake, waiting to be discovered.
1/3 of their 40,000 dams are shoddy construction
It has been raining for over 30 days with more on the way,,, Why do I suspect HAARP????
The bank runs have ALREADY started.
Keep in mind that all capital is pretty much fungible. China created mountains of liquidity and, much of it flowed to Western markets.

7/08 White House wants stimulus by August with $1 trillion cap – Epoch Times
$1 trillion a month seems to be baked in the cake.
7/08 Brooks Brothers files for bankruptcy, seeks buyer, closes stores – CNBC
You don't need a suit to work from home.
7/08 Seattle city council passes tax on big businesses – KUOW
The CEO of a billion-dollar investment firm said his company is getting out of Seattle just in time.

California 'Utterly Failing' As 2 Million Residents Waiting For Unemployment Checks
US Budget Deficit Hits A Record $863 Billion In June, A 100X Increase
Retail Apocalypse Accelerates - 8,700 Stores Closing, Number Set To Rise

The American Economy In Four Words: Neofeudal Extortion, Decline, & Collapse






Our society has a legal structure of self-rule and ownership of capital, but in reality it is a Neofeudal Oligarchy...

"Stocks Always Go Up" ...Until They Don't
Powell is pumping as fast as he can

Now Even Major Defense Firms Are Pushing For COVID Stimulus Money






Lockheed, Raytheon, BAE Systems?... Because everyone else is lining up at the trough, apparently.
THAT is what happens when you stop the wars.
53% Of Restaurants Closed During COVID-Lockdown Have Shuttered Permanently, Yelp Data Shows

A Potential Crisis In Comex Gold






It is increasingly possible the gold contract is evolving into deep crisis, and that force majeure might have to be declared if, as seems increasingly inevitable, a wider banking crisis ensues...
That Chinese gold/tungsten won't help matters.
Blain: "Pragmatism Is Out The Window, The Days Of Madness Are Upon Us"
Buy more popcorn.
Real Estate Expert Warns 'Exodus' From Cities Will Last Two Years
The coming race wars will speed things up.

After Sending 1000s Of COVID Patients Into Nursing Homes, New York Blames Deaths On "Infected Staff"
Explain that to the judge.
The Madness Of Political Correctness






"As for the Redskins name, I would suggest they change the name to the 'Foreskins' to better represent their community, paying tribute to the dick heads in Washington DC."


California Faculty Demands "Free Tuition For All Black, Native, & Indigenous Students"






... list of demands for California State University that it says will provide "redress for systemic anti-Black racism in the CSU.”

Better include guaranteed passing grades for all of them too.

[Danny B]

Everywhere that you look, there is some high mucky-muck person talking about the GREAT RESET. It looks and smells like socialism. Apparently, it isn't that simple.

"Seriously, nothing of substantial importance is going to default. Unlimited Fed bailouts means unlimited. Forever. And ever.
We are in, or transitioning to, an entirely new systemic paradigm. Metrics of the past will not behave according to expectations.

NEW REPORT!
Understanding The Apparent MismatchBetween Current Economic Conditions and the Financial System
Summary

• Existing theories of economics and the financial system cannot match successfully with current conditions.
• Long term data on stock index breadth, corporate earnings, Treasury yields and S&P 500 dividend yield strongly suggest a fundamental break with the past is in progress.
• Past economic and financial system models, analytical tools and metrics will have to be entirely reconsidered and reconstructed.
• The Secular Systemic Shift now underway is so profound and so far-reaching and so all-encompassing that it is probably analogous to the shift occasioned by the Age of Enlightenment, the Scientific Revolution, the American Revolution and (later) the Industrial Revolution.

Recently, in the wake of the dramatic, catalyzing events associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, analysts have struggled to match the action in the Economy with that of the Financial System. Existing disparities of inequality and maldistribution have been dramatically exacerbated as the financial indices have soared. In no quarter is there found any real explanation for the utter failure of all existent theories to anticipate or explain our current experience. The general reaction is one of befuddled annoyance. Irrespective of viewpoint, left or right, economists and market analysts are trying to figure out why the emergent reality does not conform to their model of how things should be and the default tendency is to wag a finger of blame at the other side of the aisle.
THEORIES
Let’s examine the current existing views on the mismatch between the economic crisis and the action in the financial system.
The “Disconnect Theory” retreads the Austrian view that has been around since Nixon first disconnected the dollar from the gold standard. It basically states that action in the Financial System is so far our of whack with the metrics of what are generally perceived to be “The Fundamentals” that, eventually, this disparity will have to collapse in on itself.
The “Fed Theory” is an extension of the time-honored neo-Keynesian “Don’t Fight the Fed” party line. It abandons any pretense of analysis and advocates for a fully lobotomized world-view. “Don’t bother to make any sense of it at all…cuz Fed”.
The minority "Fundamentalist Theory" assures us that the action in the Financial System is reflecting something fundamental. Most often that "something" is defined well within the parameters of established economic performance metrics. We are assured that GDP, employment, corporate profits, P/E ratios and other time-honored measures will inevitably reflect the soaring valuations being priced into the Nasdaq 100 and S&P 500.
The "Secular Systemic Shift Theory", an outlier minority viewpoint, sees the current period as a transition to a fundamentally new underlying economics requiring a thorough update and revision of all economic theory and a new set of analytical tools. This is a variant on the Strauss/Howe "Fourth Turning" generational shift perspective. While most "Fourth Turning" advocates see the current situation as a transition within the same Capitalist system, the proponents of this view see the present shift as both Secular and Systemic.
At BullBear Trading, we have been tracking the arrival of a “Secular Shift”, a phenomenon roughly equivalent to the Strauss/Howe “Fourth Turning”, since 2012. In 2018 I started to identify 2020 as the year that the “Shift” would make itself known. The combination of financial and economic crisis, de facto Civil War and de facto major power war between the US and China is the symptomatic manifestation of an underlying fundamental, systemic paradigm shift in progress.
In a recent essay, “Information is the New Capital”, I began to introduce some elements of a correlated paradigmatic shift into our understanding of Economics and its application to the Financial System. I recommend that readers have a look at that before they dive into the present analysis...

GO HERE to read the full report:
https://bit.ly/2ZJwaVe

This is a comment lifted from Zero Hedge.
The article is here.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/sp...next-two-years

[Danny B]

I found another excellent comment at Zero Hedge;

"The current situation in which personal income is soaring as businesses are closed, bankrupt, or just plain losing lots of money should be a wake up call as to the true nature of the situation. A nature and a situation that both the left and the right have never been honest about.
The purpose of an economy is the support of the population. Tying the support of the population to the vagaries of the business cycle has always been to embrace a risk to the general population which should have been avoided. One builds an economy to carry a population through the biological and the physical needs created by the environment. It is not totally different from an automobile which carries its passengers from point A to point B.

The point to notice about the two is that the seats in the automobile are isolated from the engine compartment. This is not so with an economy. An economy has most of its seats in the engine compartment and only a few are isolated in comfort away from the noisome center of productive activity. This is a design fault which has never been honestly addressed.
The right excuses it as an unavoidable necessity while the left has contented itself with throwing in a few cushions now and then. A fundamental redesign has never been seriously contemplated even by the Marxists.

Production and distribution to the human population are inextricably bound together and have long been considered unavoidable. The fear so engendered has so long been expressed: "Let him work if he would eat!"
However, production depends on capital as well as labor and consumption depends on both production and, sometimes, imports. In ages in which output depended primarily on labor the above cry had more obvious legitimacy. Production and consumption were so closely tied together both in time and space. Today it is ridiculous to think in such terms with vast production systems stretching across continents.

Capital is the dominant source of production by far in this age. Now, by this I do not mean labor-capital factor shares, but the obvious fact that capital is the dominant player by far in the physical production of wealth. Much of the wage payment can be attributed to the capital labor works with. A man with a shovel does better than a man shifting dirt by hand. A man with a bulldozer does even better. A bulldozer smart enough to shift dirt on its own would remove the use of labor and its value contribution in the local activity completely.
For this reason we should not fear so much the use of income supports to labor as a serious threat to the economy because of any reticence of labor to return, but as an opportunity to eliminate an important source of social friction. It is capital that can provide the production needed for any idleness in the work force that may be envisioned. Capital can also reach far beyond such consideration.

This is a good thing for more seats can be introduced exterior to the engine compartment of the economy. If wage rates were to rise due to government support then substitution of capital for labor is the proper response.
The support payments are needed now to correct for a very foolish economic action in March; locking down the economy over a foolish medical opinion. But it does offer an opportunity to begin switching the economy away from labor and towards capital while providing incomes which will now, of necessity, and in the future, due to the capital shift, support the population.

Both the right and left are an extreme danger in this enterprise. The right would deny the idea of general support altogether. The left would embrace it without a commitment to capital formation. It is the fight now boiling between the two which is threatening disaster whoever wins.
But income support if not generally offered will reasonably cause further crisis and if means to pay for it are not found there will still be crisis. Putting the demands on the back of real capital is the only reasonable way out. The economic future, if there is to be one, belongs to capital.

The alternative would only be imports which would end in the imperial stripping of the rest of the world to support the United States with the continuing threat of general war even if successful. If unsuccessful we likely would have both war and domestic unrest.
So put the burden on capital. Begin by raising rates to force the employment of higher return capital and further remove all restrictions on new technology. Continue the support payments indefinitely until they are considered a matter of right. But also chant everywhere: Capital! Capital! Capital! Then put real effort behind the chant."

The comment is at an article about ongoing support. Trump wants to limit it to $1 trillion. Pelosi wants at least double that.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/st...ession-history

Rickards writes a good overview.
https://dailyreckoning.com/monetary-...icy-wont-help/

Interesting vid about the road that we are on.
https://videos.utahgunexchange.com/w...nnOwK3tSn.html