Authored by David Stockman via Contra Corner blog,
You could almost understand the irrational exuberance of 1999-2000. That's because everything was seemingly coming up roses, meaning that cap rates arguably had rational room to rise.
But eventually the mania lost all touch with reality; it succumbed to an upwelling of madness that at length made even Alan Greenspan look like a complete fool, as we document below.
With a dumping dollar and collapsing yield curve since November's FOMC, all eyes are on the Minutes for any signals of The Fed hawkishly ignoring inflation concerns but instead a few Fed officials opposed near-term hikes (on the basis of weak inflation). Furthermore, several Fed officials warned of the potential for bubbles, "in light of elevated asset valuations and low financial market volatility, several participants expressed concerns about a potential buildup of financial imbalances."
Authored by David Stockman via The Daily Reckoning,
The Wall Street Journal published a superb example of hopium recently in a sunny-side-up story entitled “U. S. Manufacturing Rides Rising Tide, Buoyed by Global Growth, Optimism.”
Indeed, this lazy cheerleading excuse for journalism captured the sum and substance of why the punters keep buying the dips despite troubles gathering all around.
Following the new all-time high in US equities, the MSCI Asia Pacific Index broke through its November 2007 peak to make an all-time high in Wednesday’s trading session. This was something we noted could happen yesterday in “SocGen: Asian Equities Are So Awesome, A China Minsky Moment Is ‘Manageable”. The dollar weakened slightly after outgoing Fed Chairman, Janet Yellen, cautioned against interest rates rising too quickly in one of her last Q&As at NYU on Tuesday evening.
“Russia Did It” and Other Crimes
Posted with permission and written by Rory Hall, The Daily Coin
We haven’t had a system of capitalism since the Federal Reserve and Woodrow Wilson hijacked the US Treasury and US economy in 1913. Our financial, monetary and economic system has morphed into fascism, corporatism or something more akin to communism/socialism. The way our economy operates today, in 2017 - it is certainly not capitalism.