Via MauldinEconomics.com,
You often hear me harping on the dangers of too much debt, and I keep my eyes peeled for significant work that backs up my concerns.
In my recent Outside the Box, good friend Dr. Lacy Hunt of Hoisington Investment Management gave us more ammunition to take on those who just don’t seem to get that the endless piling up of debt is not a sustainable way to run an economy.
The following shocking drone footage of the aftermath of Japan's earthquake cluster this weekend (from Thursday through Monday, more than 500 quakes shook the region) shows the scale of the damage wrought. As one comment noted, "it looks like a Godzilla movie," but sadly this is very real as Satoshi Matsumoto, associate professor at the seismology institute of Kyushu University, warned the ground underneath the island cracked unusually easily, which could allow one quake to cause others in a cascade, spreading them through a wider-than-usual area.
It appears the "excuse" for today's panic-buying spree in crude - a refineries strike in Kuwait affecting supply - has just been demolished:
Now what excuse will there be? Especially as Venezuela confirms production will not slow.
Over the weekend, Deutsche Bank's cheerful house bull, equity strategist David Bianco (not to be confused with DB's brand new bear, chief economist Joe Lavorgna), released a note explaining why one should ignore everything that does not fit a bullish narrative, and explained that he expects the S&P to hit 2,500 by 2018 (with one warning: "We think the S&P 500 can reach 2500 before suffering a 20%+ bear market decline. However, the next bear market could erase all further gains from this cycle. This is a significant risk when EPS growth is slow and yet the PE is above average.")