Authored by Daniel Ruiz via Blinders Off blog,
To better understand why the automotive industry is in the middle of a perfect storm, first go back and consider the also perfect set of events that led to a robust recovery and a record setting 2016 sales year.
Our Last Recession
America’s wealthiest individuals are thriving thanks to an imbalance in wealth accumulation that favors the already asset-rich. But even though the number of millionaires and billionaires living in the US has been climbing, and is on track to increase by nearly 700,000 a year between now and 2021 – so long as the market avoids another crash – an influx of new potential buyers has done little to alleviate a supply glut that has been weighing on used jet prices for years.
Entrepreneurs have a new trick to raise money quickly, and it all takes place online, free from the constraints of banks and regulators. As Axios reports, since the beginning of 2017, 65 startups have raised $522 million using initial coin offerings — trading a digital coin (essentially an investment in their company) for a digital currency, like Bitcoin or Ether.
While most asset managers have been growing increasingly skeptical and gloomy in recent weeks (despite a few ideological contrarian holdouts), joining the rising chorus of bank analysts including those of Citi, JPM, BofA and Goldman all urging clients to "go to cash", none have dared to commit the cardinal sin of actually predicting when the next crash will take place.
After years of fire and brimstone sermons, also known as the Bank of International Settlements' annual reports delivered with doom and gloomy aplomb by Jaime Caruana (the 2014 report, in which the BIS was shocked at how broken the market has become, was a particular favorite) who year after year warned about the adverse side-effects of central bank intervention, today the BIS released its most upbeat reports in years, in which it praised the recent rebound in global growth and predicted that GDP may soon revert to long-term average levels after the sharp improvement in sentiment over the pa