Man Plans and G-d Laughs!
So in retrospect, in 2015, not a single person got the answer right to ‘where do you se yourself 5 years from now?’
Where you gonna be in 2020?
Stuck at home for almost the entire year!
But you are a fortune teller and are so smart you should’ve rolled your dice in the ever exploding bubble of a stock market.
Oh, that’s right, you did! 😉
(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
I went to the mall today.
This is a few weeks into reopening phase 2!
I expected people would have pent up demand and be swarming the stores even while keeping their social distance.
They weren’t at the mall!
The stores were nearly void of people.
The shelves were virtually empty of goods.
Whatever merchandise there was seemed to marked “sale, sale, sale” even on the already deeply-discounted clearance items.
It was completely frightening–like the economy is dead or on severe life support!
Most stores had 3 or more associates standing around or sitting twiddling their thumbs.
This while the stock market keeps ticking up and the NASDAQ is reaching new highs almost daily.
Coronavirus is surging again across much of the U.S. and there is almost 140,000 dead in the U.S. after just 5 months even though much of the population was in self-quarantine.
The economy looks to me in sh*t shape, despite the U.S. pumping $3 trillion dollars more of debt to artificially prop up the economy and the fed lending out money at super low rates.
It makes NO sense for the market to be hitting all time highs as if everything is all roses when the economy is still a true mess!
The New Yorker magazine wrote back in May of a post coronavirus “decade of depression” with an L shaped recovery, yet we keep seeing a V-shaped one and no one seems to be able to offer any plausible explanation for it.
Two-months ago, even before the recent stock run-up to higher levels, Business Insider reported that “the Stock Market is trading at its highest valuation in 18-years.“
Last month, Forbes reported that “the stock market appears to be reaching unsustainable highs.“
Yesterday again, Bloomberg reported that the “economic recovery is faltering.”
Almost daily, I read that companies are laying off their workers (in Travel, Transportation, Entertainment, Retail, Energy, etc.) or declaring bankruptcy (e.g. Hertz, JC Penny, Neiman Marcus, Chesapeake Energy, and more).
This while we are still, in the best case scenario, maybe half a year away from the possibility of a tested, approved vaccine. And then it will then need to be mass produced and mass distributed to hundreds of millions of people in this country and billions globally.
In the meantime, we certainly could be up for a second wave of Coronavirus on top of the flu in the fall/winter. And then the Coronavirus may mutate and become more virulent requiring annual vaccines like the flu shot–more hit or miss.
All this while U.S.-China trade war is imperiling our economy further, and arch-enemies Iran and North Korea remain national security threats.
To me this all points to that we are nowhere near out of the woods and perhaps that there is a wildfire raging and no one seems to be paying any attention!
The stock market euphoria is a common trap and is the definition of “irrational exuberance” but comes after investors have been robotically indoctrinated to buy the dips!
IMHO, buyer beware, beware, beware. 😉
(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
Look folks, Pinocchio’s nose is getting longer by the minute.
The market continues on a tear, even while the economy is heading in the other direction.
I know people have been conditioned to buy on the dips, but I’m not sure that applies while we’re in the middle (or maybe still just in the beginning) of a pandemic that has claimed 286,000 lives in just over 2 months (and that’s with a global shutdown)!
Somehow, there is a notion that when things start to reopen that all the problems will just magically go away, including the $3 trillion we just added to our national debt, all the bankruptcies being declared, and all the job losses that are becoming permanent.
If you believe this, perhaps you’d like to buy the Brooklyn Bridge.
The greater fool theory is alive and well. 😉
(Credit Graphic: Andy Blumenthal)
I believe this photo best summarizes where we are with the Coronavirus stock market.
As they say:
Don’t count your chicken before they hatch.
This market has gotten way ahead of itself and the pending economic realities of the Coronavirus and the consequences of the trillions of response fund debt.
Remember:
– The virus does not yet have a vaccine, and it is mutating and may become even more virulent!
– The deaths continue to soar in the U.S. with now over 75,000 dead in just two months.
– The deaths involve much pain and suffering both for the victim and his/her grieving loved ones.
– The unemployment is at all time highs since the Great Depression.
– Companies are starting to move from temporary layoffs to permanent firings and contraction, and many eventually to bankruptcy.
– Profitability and gross domestic product are way down and may be even worse in the next quarter.
– Price Earning ratios are around their 10-year highs even looking out toward a possible 2021 recovery.
– Restarting the economy does not mean a return to what was as the extreme trauma from the pandemic, shutdown, and social distancing rebalance us to a “new normal.”
– A second and third wave of Coronavirus may be as bad or even worse than the first.
– The two biggest global economies of the U.S. and China are facing a deteriorating and toxic relationship.
– The lingering $3,000,000,000,000 that we just added to our National Debt is going to increasingly strangle our future economic outlook.
– The election is in November and brings increasing instability and likely volatility.
In summary, the term used by former Fed Chairman, Alan Greenspan of “irrational exuberance” seems like a gross understatement when it comes to our current stock market.
Get ready to see the froth come painfully off this drunken market–these eggs are about ready to crack. 😉
(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
This was such a funny photo I found of me from 2017.
Holding a book called The End of The F*cking World.
Little did we know back then Coronavirus was coming our way.
One thing that is amazing to me is the incredible lack of responsibility when it comes to our fiscal (tax rates and spending) and monetary policy (interest rates and money supply).
For example, we’ve spent almost $3,000,000,000,000 (i.e. trillion) on Coronavirus Relief/Recovery.
And there is another package in the works to borrow and spend more money.
This on top of our already tens of trillions of dollars of national debt we already accumulated.
The crazy thing is that this is going on globally with Europe and Japan and others borrowing and spending without any sanity as well.
Now here is the BIG QUESTION for you all:
If everyone is borrowing and spending, who are they borrowing from???
Yep, this is called funny money!
Because it’s not possible for everyone to be borrowing and carrying a bottom line net debt at the same time.
The money has to come from somewhere doesn’t it?
The Federal Reserve is “injecting” trillions into the economy and their balance sheet of “loans” to us is going up towards $11 trillion dollars now.
These injections are short term medicine that may kill the patient down the road by overdose!
Have you ever heard of a Chair of the Federal Reserve that “urges policy makers to spend more“?
Simple economics tells us that this will yield at some point an unbelievable inflation.
We are injecting or “printing” more and more money (or electronic bytes of it), and that causes the money to devalue because there is so much of it (supply side economics) with nothing but hot air backing it up (we haven’t been on the gold standard since 1971).
There is a DAY OF RECKONING coming when:
– People’s savings and wallets will devalue and money will be worth close to squat after RUNWAY INFLATION.
– Also, what do you think will happen to the stock market and jobs too when people have only loads of valueless funny money and can’t buy anymore like they used too–can anyone say MARKET CRASH and UNEMPLOYMENT!
Folks, you heard it here first, the end of the f*cking world is coming–it’s called CONSEQUENCES, plain and simple. 😉
(Credit Photo: Dannielle Blumenthal)
I understand the absolute need to reopen the country from this Coronavirus.
We can’t shelter in place forever and watch our economy go into the toilet and our national debt bankrupt us!
Therefore, once we have the mechanisms to control the deadly spread, we must open up offices and stores again gradually to get people working and our economy going again.
At the same time, I am pissed by those corporate executives that actually have the chutzpah and are pushing for us to open up crowded theaters, stadiums, and other such entertainment or other venues that are NOT critical and pose a greater risk for contagion to masses of people.
Instead of these CEOs understanding the need to hold off on this pending a vaccination or adequate disease control measures, these greedy corporate chieftain seem to care little to nothing about the health of their customers, and only about lining their fat pocketbooks with more ticket sales.
I think it’s criminal type behavior to push our government to open prematurely and irresponsibly those venues that are of greatest risk to potentially millions of people to get sick or dead in order for them to profit from it! 😉
Note: It’s reported that COVID-19 compared to the flu in 22 fewer days infected 11x as many people and killed 60 times as many.
(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
First of all let me point out these photos of the day.
The first one are blue lines on the floor at Whole Foods telling people to keep their social distance from other customers.
One person crossed the blue line and another customer promptly yelled at them that they were going to get them sick!
The second photo is limiting Nutter Butters (“Nut Butters”) to 4 per customer during this coronavirus–sh*t people are downing Nutter Butters like there truly is no tomorrow. LOL
Finally, looking over the $2 trillion Coronavirus Rescue Plan, I see a lot of bailouts–about half through grants and half through loans.
On the positive and largely necessary side are increases to unemployment insurance payments and aid to needy households (up to $150,000 for married couples is needy?) and to hospitals and transit.
In terms of the business loans, there are “forgivable” ones to small business, so not sure how that is a “loan.”
Overall though, it seems like we are throwing a lot of other money around that we as a country don’t have and will end up paying in terms of a higher national debt and higher interest payments for generations to come.
This is another lost opportunity!
If we were already going to spend big money like this, why not pass the infrastructure spending bill to rebuild our aging roads, bridges, electric grid, aviation, public transit, and expand internet coverage. This would actually put people back to work and build America again, rather than give corporate handouts that are shortsighted and with squat to show for it for the country’s ultimate benefit.
Everyone likes to get freebies, but eventually the country will come back to pay the piper, and there will be bread lines and not Nutter Butter. 😉
(Credit Photos: Minna Blumenthal)
It’s amazing how we can magically find $2 trillion for a Coronavirus “Rescue Plan.”
This after we already wasted over $6.4 trillion (and thousands of our dead and wounded) through 2017 in unexplainable and endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with no known or lasting benefits to this country (while archenemy, Iran continues their pursuit of nukes unabated).
And for decades, we haven’t been able to find money for:
– Decent healthcare for all Americans.
– Ensuring our national security, including adequate planning and disaster preparedness for things like Coronavirus, cybersecurity, WMDs, EMPs, and for critical infrastructure protection.
– Repairing our aging roads, bridges, and infrastructure.
– Fixing our broken public education system.
– Helping our countless of homeless and needy lying the streets of our nation.
– Restoring our space program to get a man on the moon again or put another shuttle into space.
When politics are in play, there is plenty of money to go around.
But when the nation needs proper care and feeding, there are no adults in the room. 😉
(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
I saw these two photos separately.
But I instantly realized that they belong together.
Like peanut butter and jelly.
Who is a bigger pee brain than AOC?
* She impulsively lost 25,000 jobs and $5 billion investment in NYC from Amazon (as well as about $27.5 billion in tax revenue over 25 years).
* Her ridiculous Green New Deal wanted to rid us of farting cows and airplanes and didn’t get a single yes vote in the Senate (even from her own party).
* AOC stated that the three branches of government are the “the presidency, the senate, and the house” (Uh, wrong!).
* Ocasio-Cortez boasts insanely that government deficit-spending doesn’t really matter (hmm, I wonder is that how she handles her personal finances too?).
* She allies herself with fellow anti-American and anti-Semites like:
– Ilhan “(Schmilhan) Somebody Did Something [on 9/11]” Omar
– Rashida “(Israel-Hater) They Forgot What Country They Represent” Tlaib
– Linda “Muslim Brotherhood” Sarsour
How did anyone actually vote for (or support) people like these to run this amazing country? 😉
(Source Photo: AOC is from Facebook and Impeachment is from me)
I liked this notion from Margaret Thatcher:
The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.
And from the Wall Street Journal:
The problem with resisting socialism is that until the money runs out free-spending progressive politics are remarkably seductive.
In other words, we love to spend what appears as “free” government money–more and more entitlements, bigger and bigger government…basically, we can’t resist the candy in the candy store.
But the problem is that the money eventually runs out and by then we have gone too far and are left eating our own flesh.
Why can’t we spend our precious money and scarce resources prudently and also save wisely for a rainy day–why do we have to act like pigs in the poke?
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
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