Why Wait for the Shoe to Hit the Floor? The Case for Selling Now

Waiting to sell is akin to ignoring the smoke and flames in the crowded theater and hesitating until somebody yells "fire!" to rush for the now-jammed exit.

The stock market is supposed to be a discounting mechanism that anticipates and prices in developments six months out. This discounting mechanism has been broken for so long that many participants seem to have forgotten how to do anything but buy the dips, the Pavlovian response to any decline in stocks that has been rewarded with a food pellet for the past five years.

If the shoe has been dropped, why wait until it hits the floor to sell? But incredibly, that is the overwhelming bias, even after the relatively modest decline of the past week.

Even though the Federal Reserve has made it abundantly clear that it is ending its quantitative easing (QE) bond and mortgage buying program (the Fed has already slashed it from $85 billion a month to $25 billion/month), punters are anticipating a decline in October: in other words, they expect market participants to wait until the shoe hits the floor--i.e. the Fed announces the end of QE--before they dump equities.

Where is the discounting mechanism in this? Since the Fed has announced the end of QE bond purchases, and backed that up by reducing QE by 70%, what sense does it make to wait until the announcement to sell?

Waiting to sell is akin to ignoring the smoke and flames in the crowded theater and hesitating until somebody yells "fire!" to rush for the now-jammed exit. If you want to get trampled to death, this is the optimal strategy. If not, it makes no sense.

The other big news is the unexpected rise in labor costs. The basic narrative here is: the Fed has a free hand in keeping interest rates low and spewing free money for financiers because inflation is (officially) tame, and the lousy job market has strangled wage inflation.

The rise in total labor costs (labor overhead and wages/salaries) throws a wrench into that narrative. As total labor costs (healthcare, pensions, taxes, etc. as well as wages) rise, companies will have to raise prices. (They've already reduced the quality and quantity of goods per package to the point that consumers can't help but notice.)

And voila, inflation's fearful form emerges from the murky swamp of officially sanctioned "low inflation forever." This means the Fed will have to allow interest rates to rise, lest a host of other unintended consequences wreak havoc on what's left of the legitimate economy.

What sense does it make to wait for the inevitable announcement that the Fed funds rate is ticking up? Why sit in your chair buying the dip while the smoke and flames spread, waiting until someone yells "fire" before heading for the exit?

Just as a refresher about how much air there is between the classic technical support of the 200-week moving average and the current discounting mechanism is broken heights:

The theater is filling with smoke; do you really want to wait until the crowd rushes for the blocked exits to sell? Why not actually use the discounting mechanism and sell now?

Sadly, there won't be much oxygen left for the buy the dip true believers who remain in their seats, mechanically hitting the "buy" button.

---

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Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy(Kindle, $9.95)(print, $20)
Are you like me? Ever since my first summer job decades ago, I've been chasing financial security. Not win-the-lottery, Bill Gates riches (although it would be nice!), but simply a feeling of financial control. I want my financial worries to if not disappear at least be manageable and comprehensible.

And like most of you, the way I've moved toward my goal has always hinged not just on having a job but a career.

You don't have to be a financial blogger to know that "having a job" and "having a career" do not mean the same thing today as they did when I first started swinging a hammer for a paycheck.

Even the basic concept "getting a job" has changed so radically that jobs--getting and keeping them, and the perceived lack of them--is the number one financial topic among friends, family and for that matter, complete strangers.

So I sat down and wrote this book: Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy.

It details everything I've verified about employment and the economy, and lays out an action plan to get you employed.
I am proud of this book. It is the culmination of both my practical work experiences and my financial analysis, and it is a useful, practical, and clarifying read.

Test drive the first section and see for yourself.     Kindle, $9.95     print, $20

"I want to thank you for creating your book Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy. It is rare to find a person with a mind like yours, who can take a holistic systems view of things without being captured by specific perspectives or agendas. Your contribution to humanity is much appreciated."
Laura Y.

Gordon Long and I discuss The New Nature of Work: Jobs, Occupations & Careers (25 minutes, YouTube) 

---

NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

Thank you, David P. ($50), for your delightfully generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your steadfast support and readership.

Thank you, Mark H. ($10), for your most generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Read more...

Substituting Debt for Income Is Not Success--It's Failure on an Epic Scale

The Fed's substitution of debt for income has only doomed the nation to a deeper, more painful realignment of real income and expenses.

The economic "recovery" has been based on a simple premise: debt can be substituted for income with no ill effects. As real household incomes have declined, the legitimate foundation of additional spending--more income--has eroded for the bottom 90%.

Even the ephemeral foundation of additional debt-based spending--the Fed's beloved wealth effect--has eroded for all but the thin layer at the very top of the wealth pyramid.

To replace this diminished income, the Status Quo has substituted debt as the source of additional spending: household debt, corporate debt and government debt.

But debt is not income. Rather, debt requires income to be diverted to pay interest and principal. So substituting debt for income ends up further depleting declining income.

This scheme of keeping a bloated, inefficient Status Quo afloat with debt is not a success--it's a failure on an epic scale.

Let's start by reviewing household income, which has declined in real (adjusted for inflation) terms. The drop in real income is across the board; those in the top rungs have experienced a smaller relative decline than their lower-income brethren, but they still has less purchasing power than they did six years ago.



Here's another look at the same basic data:



Here's real median household income:



Some apologists claim median income doesn't reflect how well most households are doing in the New Normal. As researchers Piketty and Saez found, the gains in income have all accrued to the top 10%. So while this might be good news for Porsche dealerships in wealthy enclaves, it doesn't follow that the economy is healthy because a relative handful of households are doing very well for themselves.


If we add up all debt--household, finance, corporate and government--we see debt has soared and growth has stagnated: this is a classic case of diminishing returns as more debt is required to add each additional increment of GDP.

At some point, additional debt is taken on to simply make interest payments; at that juncture, there is no consumption/buying taking place with the new debt: it's simply keeping the borrower out of default.



The Fed has pulled out all the stops to reflate the housing and stock market bubbles, as a means of boosting the wealth effect, i.e. the belief that people who see their homes and 401K accounts rising will feel wealthier and therefore more likely to borrow and spend money on stuff they don't need.

Housing has entered an echo-bubble:


But alas, these unprecedented Fed-inflated bubbles haven't pushed household wealth up to previous levels. The power of the wealth effect is greatly diminished when wealth has yet to recover to previous levels.


source: Wealth Levels, Wealth Inequality And The Great Recession (PDF)

Even the top 10% have seen their real wealth decline sharply from the peak in 2007. So much for the wealth effect, which can only work on those with short memories.

The scheme of substituting debt for income to prop up a corrupt, bloated and ineffective Status Quo is a financial game with a predictable end: even with low interest rates, each additional unit of debt requires more future income be diverted to pay interest and principal. As income erodes due to Fed-induced inflation and other structural deformations, spending more of the diminishing income pie on servicing debt becomes increasingly destructive--especially to the core dynamic of our consumerist economy: taking on more debt to consume more stuff.

No wonder so many households are behind on their debt payments: Delinquent Debt in America (Urban Institute): An alarming 77 million Americans — 35 percent of adults with credit files — have debt in collections reported in their credit files, with an average debt amount of nearly $5,178.

Substituting debt for income can fill the widening gap between income and expenses for a few months. Beyond a few months, however, the household, company or nation that wants to avoid insolvency and default must align expenses with real income (as defined by purchasing power of the income).

Six years is not a few months. The Federal Reserve has gamed and manipulated the financial system to enable every person and entity in the U.S. to take on more debt at lower rates of interest. The past six years have been a grandiose gambit that additional debt-based spending would magically transform a financialized, debt-dependent, bloated and ineffective economy into a productive economy based on prudent risk management and investment of capital.

Sorry, members of the Fed--magical thinking doesn't work in the real world. Your substitution of debt for income has only doomed the nation to a deeper, more painful realignment of real income and expenses, and a more devastating recognition of phantom assets and collateral.

How much did subprime loans fuel the GDP boom? (MarketWatch)

---

Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy(Kindle, $9.95)(print, $20)
Are you like me? Ever since my first summer job decades ago, I've been chasing financial security. Not win-the-lottery, Bill Gates riches (although it would be nice!), but simply a feeling of financial control. I want my financial worries to if not disappear at least be manageable and comprehensible.

And like most of you, the way I've moved toward my goal has always hinged not just on having a job but a career.

You don't have to be a financial blogger to know that "having a job" and "having a career" do not mean the same thing today as they did when I first started swinging a hammer for a paycheck.

Even the basic concept "getting a job" has changed so radically that jobs--getting and keeping them, and the perceived lack of them--is the number one financial topic among friends, family and for that matter, complete strangers.

So I sat down and wrote this book: Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy.

It details everything I've verified about employment and the economy, and lays out an action plan to get you employed.

I am proud of this book. It is the culmination of both my practical work experiences and my financial analysis, and it is a useful, practical, and clarifying read.

Test drive the first section and see for yourself.     Kindle, $9.95     print, $20

"I want to thank you for creating your book Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy. It is rare to find a person with a mind like yours, who can take a holistic systems view of things without being captured by specific perspectives or agendas. Your contribution to humanity is much appreciated."
Laura Y.

Gordon Long and I discuss The New Nature of Work: Jobs, Occupations & Careers (25 minutes, YouTube) 

---

NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

Thank you, Big Sky Knitting Designs ($5/month), for your marvelously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, Francis M. ($50), for your wondrously generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Read more...

The Fed's Failure Complicates Its Endgame

To demonstrate it hasn't failed, the Fed must taper/withdraw its monetary heroin.

That the Federal Reserve's policies have failed is now so painfully evident that even the political class is awakening to this truth. Rather than re-ignite broad-based, self-sustaining economic growth, the Fed's loose-money policies (zero-interest rate policy a.k.a. ZIRP, and quantitative easing a.k.a. QE or free money for financiers), have perversely distorted the economy and widened wealth and income inequality.

After six long years of unprecedented monetary expansion and intervention--more than enough time to have succeeded in its stated purpose of restarting the real economy-- political and financial blowback is forcing the Fed to withdraw its monetary heroin.

Unfortunately for the nation, the Fed's monetary heroin has addicted the economy to ZIRP, loose credit and free money for financiers. As a result, withdrawal will be painful, financially and politically.

The abject failure of these policies to aid Main Street while heaping wealth on Wall Street greatly complicates the Fed's endgame. Given the economy's dependence on the Fed's monetary heroin, declaring victory and beating a hasty retreat is not really an option: once the Fed stops delivery of monetary heroin, the economy will go into withdrawal, and the Fed's failure will be too obvious for even its most ardent backers to deny.

But if the Fed continues pushing its monetary heroin after six long years, its failure to energize the real economy will be equally obvious--as will the unintended consequences (blowback) of monetary heroin: malinvestment, systemic risk and a pernicious faith that the Fed will do whatever is necessary to keep the stock market lofting ever higher.

There are two basic schools of thought on the Fed's real agenda.

The mainstream view is the Fed is pursuing its stated goals of stabilizing inflation and employment. The other view is the Fed's real agenda is enriching its homies, the banking cartel, at the expense of the nation.

Since Wall Street has thrived while households and Main Street have seen earned income decline, the mainstream view is left with the unenviable task of explaining exactly how free money for financiers has helped J.Q. Citizen.

Household income has declined significantly in real terms: Five Decades of Middle Class Wages (Doug Short).

The first line of defense is the wealth effect, the notion that a rising stock market will make people feel wealthier and therefore more likely to borrow and spend money on stuff they don't need. This is of course the foundation of the U.S. economy: debt-based consumption, and it just so happens to generate gargantuan profits for lenders such as banks.

Unfortunately for the Fed apologists, only the top slice of wealthy households own enough equities to feel wealthier as stocks rise. Wealth in the U.S. is an inverted pyramid: the so-called "middle class" owns a small slice near the apex while the super-rich own the entire base:


The reality is the majority of households own a trivial amount of financial assets; the number of households with debt in collection far exceeds the number benefiting from the Fed's wealth effect, which not coincidentally has greatly enlarged the wealth of financiers and the few who own most of the financial assets.



This glaring disconnect between the Fed's publicly stated agenda and the results of its policies has created a political problem for the Fed. In the mainstream media's gauzy perception, the Fed is a god-like assembly that is above the grime of politics.

In truth, the Fed is as intrinsically political as any other branch of the Central State. The thundering gap between the Fed's stated goals and the results of its policies have, after six long years, reached the toadies and lackeys of the political class, who are now reluctantly stirring to the public demand to examine the Fed's closely played cards.

In other words, the failure of the Fed's policies has generated unwelcome political blowback. A few brave politicos have interrupted their campaign fund-raising long enough to grasp that the Fed has not just failed in some random fashion: the Fed is the problem, not the solution.

As a refresher, here is the Fed's Balance Sheet, bloated with over $3 trillion of freshly created money that was mainlined into the financial system:


Debt has skyrocketed under the guiding hand of the Fed's policies; GDP, not so much:



There is no mystery why the Fed's policies have failed. Fed policies have diverted interest income that once flowed to households to the banks, they've enabled the Federal government to borrow and squander trillions of dollars in deficit spending with no political trade-offs or consequences, and they've greatly incentivized malinvestments and risky bets.

Federal debt is borrowed from future generations. If it is squandered on consumption, it is effectively stealing from future generations, as their income will be devoted to paying interest on the trillions of dollars we have borrowed and blown propping up a bloated and ineffective Status Quo.



Perhaps most perniciously, the Fed has nurtured a belief that has now taken on a quasi-religious certainty that the Fed will never let the stock market go down. The Fed has bolstered this faith by launching a new free money for financiers program every time the stock market faltered.

As a direct result, nobody believes the Fed will actually reduce its monetary heroin or allow interest rates to normalize, i.e. rise: traders, money managers and the financial punditry are convinced that the Fed will soothe any tantrum thrown by Wall Street with another dose of monetary heroin.

This greatly complicates the Fed's endgame, because nobody will believe the Fed is serious about ending its monetary heroin until it allows the stock market to plummet off a cliff without rushing to save it with more free money for financiers.

The Fed is hoping to manage expectations and perceptions with such perfection that nobody notices the monetary heroin is no longer flowing. But this is an absurd fantasy: having addicted the stock market and the economy to monetary heroin over the past six years, how can the addict go through cold turkey withdrawal without being completely disrupted?

And in a delicious irony, should the Fed come to the rescue with another round of monetary heroin (free money for financiers), that will only demonstrate the complete and utter failure of the Fed's policies to generate sustainable growth in the real economy.

If the Fed has to rescue Wall Street yet again after six years and trillions of dollars of free money for financiers, that will prove beyond a shadow of doubt that the Fed has failed.

To demonstrate it hasn't failed, the Fed must taper/withdraw its monetary heroin.If the stock market tanks as a result, and the Fed rushes to the rescue with more free money for financiers, that will also prove the Fed has failed: if the economy and financial system is as robust as the Fed claims, why does it need to be rescued yet again after six long years of unprecedented injections of monetary heroin?

It's a double-bind with no escape. No matter what the Fed chooses to do, the failure of its policies to help households and Main Street while enriching wall Street and the banks will be revealed to all.

---

Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy(Kindle, $9.95)(print, $20)
Are you like me? Ever since my first summer job decades ago, I've been chasing financial security. Not win-the-lottery, Bill Gates riches (although it would be nice!), but simply a feeling of financial control. I want my financial worries to if not disappear at least be manageable and comprehensible.

And like most of you, the way I've moved toward my goal has always hinged not just on having a job but a career.

You don't have to be a financial blogger to know that "having a job" and "having a career" do not mean the same thing today as they did when I first started swinging a hammer for a paycheck.

Even the basic concept "getting a job" has changed so radically that jobs--getting and keeping them, and the perceived lack of them--is the number one financial topic among friends, family and for that matter, complete strangers.

So I sat down and wrote this book: Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy.

It details everything I've verified about employment and the economy, and lays out an action plan to get you employed.

I am proud of this book. It is the culmination of both my practical work experiences and my financial analysis, and it is a useful, practical, and clarifying read.

Test drive the first section and see for yourself.     Kindle, $9.95     print, $20

"I want to thank you for creating your book Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy. It is rare to find a person with a mind like yours, who can take a holistic systems view of things without being captured by specific perspectives or agendas. Your contribution to humanity is much appreciated."
Laura Y.

Gordon Long and I discuss The New Nature of Work: Jobs, Occupations & Careers (25 minutes, YouTube) 

---

NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

Thank you, Mary L. ($5/month), for your marvelously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, Miha B. ($20), for your much-appreciated generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Read more...

Our Marginal Economy

Before you buy another ticket for the Bull market bandwagon of "don't fight the Fed," perhaps you should take a look at the quality of the debt the Fed has enabled and the diminishing returns on all that debt.

The mainstream media is delighted to highlight positive economic data, but nobody ever asks about the quality of the borrowers who are behind the rosy numbers. Behind the rosy numbers, sales and profits are increasingly dependent on marginal buyers and borrowers: those buying on credit who would not qualify to borrow money in a system ruled by prudent risk-management.

These marginal borrower/buyers are last on, first off: they qualify for loans at the end of a credit expansion, when lenders throw caution to the winds to reap the profits from issuing new mortgages, auto loans, student loans, credit cards, etc. to marginal borrowers.

These marginal borrowers are the first to default, because they have insufficient income and collateral to support their loans.

This rising dependence on marginal borrowers/buyers leads to an economy of diminishing returns: ever-rising rates of debt expansion are required to generate ever-declining rates of expansion of sales, profits, GDP, etc.

The waterfall decline of the quality of debt-based sales is masked by the rosy headline numbers. Auto sales are soaring; nice, but does anyone ask how many of those vehicles were sold to marginal buyers, the kind of borrowers who are one paycheck away from insolvency and default?

How many issuers of junk bonds are one recession away from insolvency and default?

Let's look at a few examples of diminishing returns/dependence on rising debt for marginal returns. Once again, we must keep in mind the quality of the debt and the borrowers is not revealed in rosy headline numbers.

Anecdotally, I see plenty of people who defaulted/declared bankruptcy in previous downturns who are once again in hock to the hilt, and they know the drill: borrow and spend as much as you can, because all you have to do is stop paying.

Yes, your credit score will be lousy for a few years, but lenders and retailers are so desperate for sales that you won't have to wait long to start getting a flood of credit card offers in your mailbox. After all, anyone with a pulse can buy a car now.

Here's total credit and GDP: this screams "diminishing returns":


The Fed's "free-money for financiers" balance sheet and the S&P 500: once again, this screams "diminishing returns:"



Money velocity: diminishing returns:



Small biz: fading at the margins:



Federal student loans: this fairly screams, "go ahead and default, there is literally no risk management here":



The return on a college degree? Diminishing faster than you can say "default":



Labor participation and real median income: diminishing returns on all the outlandish money pumping and Federal deficit spending:



Fulltime employment: going nowhere after 5+ years of unprecedented expansion of central bank "free money for financiers" and Federal debt:



Real household income: declining for all but the top 5%:



Household income has declined significantly in real terms: Five Decades of Middle Class Wages (Doug Short).

Federal Reserve "free money for financiers" has greatly expanded wealth inequality:



So before you buy another ticket for the Bull market bandwagon of "don't fight the Fed," perhaps you should take a look at the quality of the debt the Fed has enabled and the diminishing returns on all that debt.

---

Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy(Kindle, $9.95)(print, $20)
Are you like me? Ever since my first summer job decades ago, I've been chasing financial security. Not win-the-lottery, Bill Gates riches (although it would be nice!), but simply a feeling of financial control. I want my financial worries to if not disappear at least be manageable and comprehensible.

And like most of you, the way I've moved toward my goal has always hinged not just on having a job but a career.

You don't have to be a financial blogger to know that "having a job" and "having a career" do not mean the same thing today as they did when I first started swinging a hammer for a paycheck.

Even the basic concept "getting a job" has changed so radically that jobs--getting and keeping them, and the perceived lack of them--is the number one financial topic among friends, family and for that matter, complete strangers.

So I sat down and wrote this book: Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy.

It details everything I've verified about employment and the economy, and lays out an action plan to get you employed.

I am proud of this book. It is the culmination of both my practical work experiences and my financial analysis, and it is a useful, practical, and clarifying read.

Test drive the first section and see for yourself.     Kindle, $9.95     print, $20

"I want to thank you for creating your book Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy. It is rare to find a person with a mind like yours, who can take a holistic systems view of things without being captured by specific perspectives or agendas. Your contribution to humanity is much appreciated."
Laura Y.

Gordon Long and I discuss The New Nature of Work: Jobs, Occupations & Careers (25 minutes, YouTube) 

---

NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

Thank you, Transformation Institute ($10), for your most generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, Karen H. ($25), for your much-appreciated generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Read more...

The Case for a Bull or Bear Market in Two Charts

Which appears more likely--a straight-line extension of the past two years' rise in stocks, or another "impossible" decline to complete the megaphone pattern?

There are dozens of charts and data points supporting the case for a continuation of the Bull market in stocks or a reversal into a Bear market. For the sake of brevity I've distilled the two arguments into two charts, one for the Bull case and one for the Bear case.

The Bull case is easy: the economy has reached self-sustaining expansion, a.k.a. escape velocity; hotel occupancy rates are high, home valuations are rising, stocks are fairly valued based on forward earnings, debt has been paid down/written off, and the Fed has tapered its quantitative easing (QE) bond and mortgage buying with no ill effect.

Looking ahead, there is no fundamental or technical reason for stocks to drop significantly; stocks always go up in years ending in 5, and there is nothing magical about 2016 in terms of a decline, either. The market could advance for years.

Bottom line: the advance since early 2012 is founded on solid fundamentals and there's no reason the advance can't continue along with strengthening fundamentals such as corporate profits, rising tax revenues, etc.

The Bear case is based on sentiment, but this reliance on extremes of bullish sentiment is misplaced; the fact that everyone is talking about a bubble in stocks and expecting a correction just goes to show there is no bubble and a correction will simply offer another opportunity to buy the dip, a strategy that has been richly rewarded.

The Fed (and other central banks) have our back: any decline in risk assets will be washed away with another tsunami of near-zero-interest money, liquidity and credit.



The Bear Case is also simple: the supposedly solid fundamentals of earnings, stock buybacks, etc. are all based on an unprecedented expansion of debt, central bank monetary easing, leverage and systemic risk.

Finance trumps economic data, and financial risk has reached a tipping point:shadow banking is unraveling in China, the Fed already owns most of the new home mortgages that have been issued and has to taper lest it own the entire mortgage/Treasury markets, junk bonds have been bid to the moon, etc.

Debt, leverage and risk have reached bubble heights, and simple cause and effect means the stock market has also reached bubble heights.

Faith in the central banks' ability and willingness to push stock markets higher has reached extremes. Volatility and complacency have both reached levels that historically correspond to major highs.

Take away massive buybacks funded by cheap credit and the market's dependence on financial one-offs will be revealed: the Bull market was never about earnings; it was always about cheap credit, central banks pushing investors into risk assets like stocks and corporate buybacks. Bulls claiming hotel bookings, auto sales and profits are "proof" of a self-sustaining economy are looking at the effects, not the causes.



To understand the cycle of credit addiction, please read Are We Addicted to Failure?

Bulls and Bears alike tend to marry their convictions. As we all know, the human mind is uncomfortable with uncertainty, and so once a person chooses the Bull case, recency bias and confirmation bias kick in and the Bull selects recent data that confirms his conviction.

The same tropism toward certainty takes hold of Bears, and those of us without the conviction of marriage watch from the sidelines.

I have long been skeptical of the Bull case based on the unprecedented scale of central bank/state intervention, support and manipulation. If everything's so great, then why does the Fed need to buy trillions of dollars in assets and manipulate markets with reverse repos, etc. and direct purchases via proxies? If a market only rises as a result of such outlandish one-off intervention, how can anyone claim it has any fundamental foundation?

Which appears more likely--a straight-line extension of the past two years' rise in stocks, or another "impossible" decline to complete the megaphone pattern? If stocks continue climbing once the Fed ends its bond-buying in and stock buybacks drop to less frenzied levels, that will be evidence the Bulls are right about the economy's escape velocity.

If the market tanks as soon as the monetary heroin is withdrawn, that will support the Bear's case that financial legerdemain trumps economic data.

Two things favor the Bear case in my view: if volume is the weapon of the Bull (i.e. rising volume drives Bull markets), then the fact that volume has been declining for years is not supportive of the Bulls.

Secondly, I don't see how the economy can reach escape velocity with household income declining in real terms: Five Decades of Middle Class Wages (Doug Short). 

---

Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy(Kindle, $9.95)(print, $20)

Are you like me? Ever since my first summer job decades ago, I've been chasing financial security. Not win-the-lottery, Bill Gates riches (although it would be nice!), but simply a feeling of financial control. I want my financial worries to if not disappear at least be manageable and comprehensible.

And like most of you, the way I've moved toward my goal has always hinged not just on having a job but a career.

You don't have to be a financial blogger to know that "having a job" and "having a career" do not mean the same thing today as they did when I first started swinging a hammer for a paycheck.

Even the basic concept "getting a job" has changed so radically that jobs--getting and keeping them, and the perceived lack of them--is the number one financial topic among friends, family and for that matter, complete strangers.

So I sat down and wrote this book: Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy.

It details everything I've verified about employment and the economy, and lays out an action plan to get you employed.
I am proud of this book. It is the culmination of both my practical work experiences and my financial analysis, and it is a useful, practical, and clarifying read.

Test drive the first section and see for yourself.     Kindle, $9.95     print, $20

"I want to thank you for creating your book Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy. It is rare to find a person with a mind like yours, who can take a holistic systems view of things without being captured by specific perspectives or agendas. Your contribution to humanity is much appreciated."
Laura Y.

Gordon Long and I discuss The New Nature of Work: Jobs, Occupations & Careers (25 minutes, YouTube)

---

NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

Thank you, Paul W. ($120), for your wondrously generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your steadfast support and readership.

Thank you, Simon C. ($50), for your astonishingly generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your steadfast support and readership.

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Our Peach Pie Workshop

Measured in happiness, I feel pretty wealthy when eating the harvest of our peach tree and our baking handiwork.

The positive returns from focusing on intractable problems diminish rapidly. Since most of us have little control or power over geopolitics, central bank policies, etc., the only payoff from studying these issues is to clarify our response.

In my view, the only meaningful response is to take control of as much of your life as you can and opt out of destructive systems as much as possible.

Which brings us to peaches, or whatever you're growing. Some claim a garden doesn't yield enough calories of consumable food to justify the labor and expense, but their calculations (so typical of the Status Quo way of calculating "value"--only look at money and ignore everything else) fails to account for the enduring value of the skills, experience and expanding control that are part of the yield of gardening/ animal husbandry.

In a world dominated by centralized authority, monied Elites, illusory wealth and financial trickery, what ultimately matters is how much can you do in the real world, what you own/control in the real world, the reciprocal ties you share with others and your personal integrity. The Status Quo only measures money (the ultimate Neoliberal reduction), and this is one of its fundamental flaws. If we take the measure of wealth in happiness, we end up with something like Bhutan's Gross Domestic Happiness Index:

It's Time to Retire Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a Measure of Prosperity (April 18, 2014)

(I recommend listening to this John Prine song while viewing the photos below: The Avett Brothers: Spanish Pipedream (3:04): "blow up your TV, eat a lot of peaches..." Thanks to correspondent Marc Z. for the song link)

OK, on to the peaches. Everything starts with the soil, rain, blossoms and pollinators:



With the help and advice of readers such as Bart D. (Australia), I aggressively thinned the young fruit this year and was rewarded with a healthy tree and large fruit:



A big bowl of peaches:



The peach filling for eight pies, halfway through the assembly:



A typical pie being filled; we use small pie pans to maximize the number of pies we can share/freeze for later:



Crimping the crust:



Can you see our cat Smokey's face in the crust's vent design?



The first four pies--all that will fit in our small oven:



Growing peaches and eating peach pie makes me happy. Measured in happiness, I feel pretty wealthy when eating the harvest of our peach tree and our baking handiwork.

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Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy(Kindle, $9.95)(print, $20)
Are you like me? Ever since my first summer job decades ago, I've been chasing financial security. Not win-the-lottery, Bill Gates riches (although it would be nice!), but simply a feeling of financial control. I want my financial worries to if not disappear at least be manageable and comprehensible.

And like most of you, the way I've moved toward my goal has always hinged not just on having a job but a career.

You don't have to be a financial blogger to know that "having a job" and "having a career" do not mean the same thing today as they did when I first started swinging a hammer for a paycheck.

Even the basic concept "getting a job" has changed so radically that jobs--getting and keeping them, and the perceived lack of them--is the number one financial topic among friends, family and for that matter, complete strangers.

So I sat down and wrote this book: Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy.

It details everything I've verified about employment and the economy, and lays out an action plan to get you employed.

I am proud of this book. It is the culmination of both my practical work experiences and my financial analysis, and it is a useful, practical, and clarifying read.

Test drive the first section and see for yourself.     Kindle, $9.95     print, $20

"I want to thank you for creating your book Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy. It is rare to find a person with a mind like yours, who can take a holistic systems view of things without being captured by specific perspectives or agendas. Your contribution to humanity is much appreciated."
Laura Y.

Gordon Long and I discuss The New Nature of Work: Jobs, Occupations & Careers (25 minutes, YouTube) 

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NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

Thank you, Royce M. ($100), for your outrageously generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your steadfast support and readership.

Thank you, Michael G. ($80), for your astoundingly generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your steadfast support and readership.

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Are We Addicted to Failure?

Like all addicts, Central Planners are confident they can manage the monkey on their back. But this is a self-serving illusion.

Addiction is many things, but beneath its complexities it is a self-destructive expression of the desire to avoid or suppress pain. The pain might be physical or the stuff of the mind, memories or inner demons or tortured misgivings about one's choices, soul and life.

Though the self-destructive aspects of the addiction are painfully visible to observers, to the addict they represent a solution: perhaps not the ideal one or even a good one, but a solution nonetheless.

Fear plays a big part in many addictions--fear of life without the addictive salve.The fear in an addict's eyes when the fix is not forthcoming is haunting to all who witness it.

To the non-addicted observer, addictions are not successes; they are failures of one kind or another, and those who care about the addict seek some way to extract the addict from the grip of his/her addiction, and from the fear that often drives it.

I have recently been wondering if America is addicted to failure. The oft-repeated definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, generally attributed to Albert Einstein.

But given the right mix of blindness and fear, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results might not be insanity but a self-destructive addiction to failure.

In this light, please consider this chart of the broad-based U.S. stock market index, the S&P 500, which I have marked up as an addiction to failure:



The source of this addiction is a fear of life without credit/asset bubbles. Fearing life without the rush and high of asset bubbles, we see an addiction to financial bubbles as asolution in the same terrible way a heroin addict sees smack as a solution: not as a long-term solution or even a good one, but a solution nonetheless, because it makes the pain of facing life without Central Planning financial bubbles go away at least temporarily.

But bubbles inevitably leads to overdose and a subsequent self-destructive crash.Our central bankers/planners have injected enough monetary heroin into the nation to guarantee not just the rush and the high but the overdose that leads to a destructive crash.

Like all addicts, Central Planners are confident they can manage the monkey on their back. But this is a self-serving illusion; it's the monkey who controls the addict, not the other way round.

If we're not addicted to failure, why do we tolerate a central bank that creates one rush-high-overdose-crash after another? Perhaps it's time to confess that we're addicted to failure because we're too afraid to face life without this financial addiction.

Pretty sad, huh? Like all observers, those of us without monetary heroin in our veins wonder when the poor addict will finally wake up and choose a path that isn't self-destructive. But as many of us know from personal experience, it often takes a near-death experience to awaken the instinct for survival in the addict. Sadly, sometimes not even that is enough, and a once-great nation spirals down to ruin.
If you missed this week's series:

The Rot Within, Part III: Our Political Order Is Defined by Favoritism and Extortion

The Rot Within, Part II: Inflation Is Not "Growth"

The Rot Within, Part I: Our Ponzi Economy

---

Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy(Kindle, $9.95)(print, $20)
Are you like me? Ever since my first summer job decades ago, I've been chasing financial security. Not win-the-lottery, Bill Gates riches (although it would be nice!), but simply a feeling of financial control. I want my financial worries to if not disappear at least be manageable and comprehensible.

And like most of you, the way I've moved toward my goal has always hinged not just on having a job but a career.

You don't have to be a financial blogger to know that "having a job" and "having a career" do not mean the same thing today as they did when I first started swinging a hammer for a paycheck.

Even the basic concept "getting a job" has changed so radically that jobs--getting and keeping them, and the perceived lack of them--is the number one financial topic among friends, family and for that matter, complete strangers.

So I sat down and wrote this book: Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy.

It details everything I've verified about employment and the economy, and lays out an action plan to get you employed.

I am proud of this book. It is the culmination of both my practical work experiences and my financial analysis, and it is a useful, practical, and clarifying read.

Test drive the first section and see for yourself.     Kindle, $9.95     print, $20

"I want to thank you for creating your book Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy. It is rare to find a person with a mind like yours, who can take a holistic systems view of things without being captured by specific perspectives or agendas. Your contribution to humanity is much appreciated."
Laura Y.

Gordon Long and I discuss The New Nature of Work: Jobs, Occupations & Careers (25 minutes, YouTube) 

---

NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

Thank you, Peter T. ($10/month), for your outrageously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your steadfast support and readership.

Thank you, Stephen J. ($101), for your astoundingly generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your steadfast support and readership.

Read more...