Forget GOAT, Look at GBOAT: The Greatest Bubble Of All Time

So enjoy the GBOAT (greatest bubble of all time) but watch the clock.

Sports fans debate who qualifies as GOAT--the greatest of all time: in hoops, Kobe, Jordan, Kareem, Magic; in boxing, Ali, and so forth.

What we have today is GBOAT--the greatest bubble of all time That it's GOAT is beyond doubt, as the charts below reveal.

Bubbles have a few unique characteristics which cannot be captured by financial metrics. The most important such characteristic is that mainstream financial managers don't see it as a bubble. For those who do admit valuations may be a bit stretched (heh), these professionals shrug and say that since the music's still playing, they have to keep dancing, i.e. yes there may be a bubble but it won't pop anytime soon.

The other characteristic of a bubble is that it continues expanding far beyond historic valuation redlines, as if nothing in the real world (earnings, multiples, etc.) actually matters. Anyone proclaiming such extremes are unsustainable is laughed off the stage as extremes become more extreme, and those who bet against the tsunami of euphoric confidence that this isn't a bubble can be found huddled in a cardboard box beneath the freeway overpass, begging for a handful of Cheetos.

Another characteristic worth noting is the acceleration of duration, amplitude and volatility as bubbles reach their zenith. So while bulls are cheering the greatest post-election rally in 73 years (or was it 743 years? 2,743 years? Whatever...), they should be quaking in their designer boots for what increasingly manic rallies are signaling: it's about to pop, baby.

Jesse Felder of TheFelderReport.com succinctly summarized the case for GBOAT in This Is The Textbook Definition Of "Late Cycle" In The Stock Market (Zero Hedge).

The charts below bolster the (painfully obvious) case for this being the greatest bubble of all time.

Wilshire total stock market capitalization to nominal GDP: record disconnect from GDP.



Regression to trend: all-time high. (via advisorperspectives.com)



Private sector financial assets as a percentage of GDP: all-time high.



Every leg higher takes less time and reaches greater extremes:



So enjoy the greatest bubble of all time but watch the clock. Those Cinderella gains vanish at midnight.


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Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
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Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic ($5 (Kindle), $10 (print), ( audiobook): Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake $1.29 (Kindle), $8.95 (print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

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Here's Our Historical Analogy Menu: Rome, the USSR or Revolutionary France

The core dynamic is ultimately the loss of social cohesion within the ruling elites and in the social order at large.

There's a definite end of days feeling to the euphoria that the world didn't end on November 3. And what better way to celebrate the victory of what passes for normalcy with a manic stock market rally?

It's as if everyone knows there is no returning to the good old days of a well-oiled Imperial machine chewing through any and all obstacles, and this realization is so frightening that the need to pretend everything is fine, just fine, overwhelms the last remaining ties to reality.

And since there's a brief intermission between gladiator battles while the Coliseum attendants remove the fallen heroes from the last entertainment, let's play the historical analogy game: which collapse will America track most closely? Rome circa 475 AD, the USSR circa 1989, or Revolutionary France circa 1789?

I'm tempted to include China's Song Dynasty circa 1276 AD, but the analog of the Mongol invasion isn't a likely fit. The Khmer Empire circa 1350-1430 AD and the Mayan Civilization in the 9th century might be excellent analogies but not enough is known about these complex declines to make an analogy more than guesswork.

Rome, the USSR and Revolutionary France are all compelling analogies due to the hubristic cluelessness of their fractured elites as the pretensions of stability collapsed around them. Even though Nero didn't actually fiddle while Rome burned and Marie Antoinette didn't gush "Let them eat brioche" when notified that the peasants had no bread (or more accurately, could no longer afford it), these myths are handy encapsulations of the disconnect from reality that infested the elites in the last years before the deluge of non-linear chaos overwhelmed the regimes.

While historians gather evidence of tipping points such as pandemics, ecological damage, invasions, droughts, inflation, etc., the core dynamic is ultimately the loss of social cohesion within the ruling elites and in the social order at large.

As a generality, the permanence of the status quo is taken for granted by elites, who then feel free to squabble amongst themselves over the spoils of wealth and power. Distracted by their own infighting, the elites are blind to the erosion of the foundations of their power.

As coherence in the elites unravels, the ties uniting the elites with the masses unravel as well.

One camp within the elites recognizes the danger and seeks reforms, but the reforms are too little, too late, and in any event, the elites who cling most ardently to the past stability fight the reform movement to a standstill.

As social cohesion unravels, systems that once seemed immutable (i.e. linear) suddenly display non-linear dynamics in which modest changes that would have made little difference in the past now unleash regime-shattering disorder.

So take your pick, America: what's the closest analogy? A sclerotic Politburo of elders living in the past, an elite fiddling while the nation disintegrates, or an elite so out of touch with reality that it claims inflation is zero while the populace can no longer afford bread?

They all lead to the same destination:




My new book is available! A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet 20% and 15% discounts (Kindle $7, print $17)

Read excerpts of the book for free (PDF).

The Story Behind the Book and the Introduction.


Recent Podcasts:

AxisofEasy Salon #28: Today's show is brought to you by the letter K(leptrocracy) (1 hr)

My COVID-19 Pandemic Posts


My recent books:

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook coming soon) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic ($5 (Kindle), $10 (print), ( audiobook): Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake $1.29 (Kindle), $8.95 (print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 (Kindle), $15 (print) Read the first section for free (PDF).


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What We Don't Elect Matters Most: Central Banking and the Permanent Government

We're Number One in wealth, income and power inequality, yea for the Fed and the Empire!

If we avert our eyes from the electoral battle on the blood-soaked sand of the Coliseum and look behind the screen, we find the powers that matter are not elected: our owned by a few big banks Federal Reserve, run by a handful of technocrats, and the immense National Security State, a.k.a. the Permanent Government. These entities operate the Empire which hosts the electoral games for the entertainment and distraction of the public.

The governance machinery controlled by elected representatives is tightly constrained in what it can and cannot do. It can't do anything to stop the debasement of the nation's currency, which is totally controlled by the Politburo of the Fed, nor can it do much to limit the Imperial Project, other than feel-good PR bits here and there.

The president wields vast powers but even the president is powerless to stop the debasement of the nation's currency and the enrichment of bankers, financiers, corporations, etc., who fund the campaigns of the gladiators, oops I mean politicians.

If we set aside the term Deep State and simply call it the unelected machinery of governance (Permanent Government), we get a clear picture of its scope and power. Presidents, senators and representatives come and go, but the machinery of Empire grinds on, decade after decade.

A great many people and places in America don't matter to the Fed or the Permanent Government, and so they've been abandoned to their fates. The darlings of the Fed and Empire are clustered in Silicon Valley and other urban hubs where the technological and financial machinery of global hegemony are fabricated and maintained.

Those far from these centers of banking, finance and Big Tech have little to no stake as owners of meaningful capital. All they have to sell is their labor, and that's been losing purchasing power for decades as financialization and globalization have stripmined rural America and enriched the bankers, financiers and speculators who serve the Fed and unelected Permanent Government.

The Fed and the Permanent Government have been very, very good to the few at the expense of the many. Look at the chart below at America's complete dominance when measured by the soaring wealth of its top 1% power elite: We're Number One in wealth, income and power inequality, yea for the Fed and the Empire! And we don't have to elect them--they elect themselves.




My new book is available! A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet 20% and 15% discounts (Kindle $7, print $17)

Read excerpts of the book for free (PDF).

The Story Behind the Book and the Introduction.


Recent Podcasts:

AxisofEasy Salon #28: Today's show is brought to you by the letter K(leptrocracy) (1 hr)

My COVID-19 Pandemic Posts


My recent books:

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook coming soon) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic ($5 (Kindle), $10 (print), ( audiobook): Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake $1.29 (Kindle), $8.95 (print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

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Our Imperial Presidency

Regardless of who holds the office, America's Imperial Project and its Imperial Presidency are due for a grand reckoning.

While elections and party politics generate the emotions and headlines, the truly consequential change in American governance has been the ascendancy of the Imperial Presidency over the past 75 years, since the end of World War II.

As commander-in-chief of the armed forces, the Constitution grants the President extraordinary but temporary powers in wartime. With the power to declare war granted solely to Congress, this dangerous (in the Founders' view) expansion of Executive power was tolerated because it was temporary and necessary in the fast-moving emergency of war.

Congress has declared war a total of five times, while U.S. armed forces have been deployed in conflicts 300 times. So in 295 conflicts out of 300, the president had sole discretion. Various stamps of Congressional approval of these wartime powers have been given over the decades, but these are more for show than actual limits on presidential powers.

The extraordinary powers granted to President Roosevelt in World War II did not expire at the end of the war. Rather, the powers of the presidency expanded along with the National Security agencies which rose to unprecedented power in the Cold War era of 1945 - 1991. The entire alphabet soup of the National Security State--CIA, NSA, DIA, etc.--serve the president, not Congress, which has been relegated the role of toothless oversight.

Historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.'s 1973 book, The Imperial Presidency , introduced the term Imperial Presidency into the American lexicon.

While historians have documented the rise of Executive power at the expense of the legislative branch and pundits have wrung their hands over this concentration of vast, often secret power in the presidency, nobody within the status quo has addressed the core reason behind the rise of the Imperial Presidency: America's Empire requires a CEO/Emperor as a simple operational reality.

You can't run a global military / commercial / diplomatic empire with a slow-moving legislative body; you need a dynamic CEO (chief executive officer) with essentially unlimited powers to do whatever it takes to run the empire.

Empires need an emperor, and this is the history of post-WW2 America. As the victor, the U.S. emerged with a global reach and power that can only be described as imperial. While the USSR soon gained military parity with nuclear weapons and vast tank armies aimed at Western Europe, the commercial empire was solely American.

While some cheered America's global empire and others shouldered it as a necessary Cold war burden, the status quo relished the immense expansion of centralized bureaucratic and executive powers.

An Imperial President requires the Imperial machinery of global hegemony, and so the National Security State replaced the elected government as the real power. For a peek behind the curtain of the Imperial Presidency's powers, please read The Enemies Briefcase: Secret powers and the presidency. (via Cheryl A.)

The last time the U.S. Congress pushed back against the Imperial Presidency and Security Agencies was 45 years ago, in 1975. In response to the domestic over-reach of the ImperialPresidency (Watergate) and the security agencies (COINTELPRO, etc.), the Church Committee undertook the first comprehensive review of the presidency's expansive secret powers and the secret powers wielded by the National Security State.

The domestic abuses of power by the FBI and CIA included the blatantly illegal COINTELPRO programs aimed at destroying the anti-war / civil rights movements in the 1960s and early 1970s.

We know from the Church Committee reports that the FBI and CIA broke numerous federal laws and violated every constitutional limit on their powers as a matter of daily policy. The abuses of power were not the work of rogue agents or even rogue agencies; the abuses were SOP (standard operating procedures) for the Imperial machinery of the presidency and the security agencies that served the essentially unlimited power of the Imperial presidency.

For more on COINTELPRO, please read War at Home: Covert action against U.S. activists and what we can do about it and/or Cointelpro: The FBI's Secret War on Political Freedom.

Empires arise, evolve and collapse just like nations. Edward Luttwak's insightful book The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire: From the First Century CE to the Third outlines the three stages of Empire.

Luttwak describes the first stage of expansion thusly:

"With brutal simplicity, it might be said that with the first system the Romans of the republic conquered much to serve the interests of the few, those living in the city--and in fact still fewer, those best placed to control policy."

The second stage spread the benefits of Empire much more broadly:

"During the first century A.D., Roman ideas evolved toward a much broader and altogether more benevolent conception of empire... men born in lands far from Rome could call themselves Roman and have their claim fully allowed, and the frontiers were efficiently defended to defend the growing prosperity of all, and not merely the privileged."

The third stage is one of rising inequality:

"In the wake of the great crisis of the third century, the provision of security became an increasingly heavy charge on society, a charge unevenly distributed, which could enrich the wealthy and ruin the poor. The machinery of empire now became increasingly self-serving, with its tax collectors, administrators and soldiers of much greater use to one another than to society at large."

That line describes the American state and central bank (the Federal Reserve) perfectly. As the Imperial Presidency's powers have expanded to the top of the S-Curve, so too has self-serving greed supported by everyday abuses of power reached new heights.

Who's benefited mightily from Imperial over-reach? As the chart below indicates, the top 1% of America's power elite has benefited to a degree that's unmatched around the world. The military-industrial sector has prospered (see chart below) as have the agencies of the National Security State. As for the bottom 99%: suck it up, debt-serfs and tax donkeys: yours is not to make a reply or reason why, yours is to do and die.

Regardless of who holds the office, America's Imperial Project and its Imperial Presidency are due for a grand reckoning. Empires require an emperor, and perhaps America will finally tire of its self-serving Empire and its Imperial Presidency.






My new book is available! A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet 20% and 15% discounts (Kindle $7, print $17)

Read excerpts of the book for free (PDF).

The Story Behind the Book and the Introduction.


Recent Podcasts:

AxisofEasy Salon #28: Today's show is brought to you by the letter K(leptrocracy) (1 hr)

My COVID-19 Pandemic Posts


My recent books:

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook coming soon) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic ($5 (Kindle), $10 (print), ( audiobook): Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake $1.29 (Kindle), $8.95 (print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 (Kindle), $15 (print) Read the first section for free (PDF).


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Want Hope and Real Growth? Let the Dead Forest of Corruption and Fed Manipulation Burn Down

Wake up, America, and see the Fed for what it really is: a totalitarian tool of kleptocracy.

You know what happens when fire suppression policies limit forest fires: deadwood piles up and all the trees killed by bark beetles are awaiting a spark to ignite. Sure enough, a random lightning strike provides the ignition, and the entire forest is consumed in an out-of-control conflagration made inevitable by the policy of suppressing fires as "bad" for lumber companies and tourism, i.e. the politically influential.

This is a remarkably apt analogy for the central banks' policy of suppressing business cycle recessions that burn down dead zombie corporations and all the deadwood suppressing new growth.

The Yellowstone Analogy and The Crisis of Neoliberal Capitalism (May 18, 2009)

No Recession Ever Again? The Yellowstone Analogy (November 8, 2019)

If you're an insider using Federal Reserve "free money for financiers" to milk your zombie corporation, you love the Fed's suppression of actual capitalism. Fed free money enable you to continue to borrow cheaply and buy back your zombie company's shares, enriching insiders even though the company doesn't even earn enough to service its ballooning debts.

If you're not yet aware of the ballooning number of zombie companies, please read: Welcome To The Zombie Global Economy.

Recall that free-market capitalism's business cycle of over-investment and excessive risk-taking must be followed by a reduction in debt, the liquidation of bad loans and excess inventory, limiting exposure to risk, etc.--in other words, a fast-burning forest fire which incinerates all the deadwood, clearing space for the next generation of growth.

Some seeds will only open if exposed to heat. If the Fed makes sure there's never any risk of fire touching too big to fail/jail companies, cartels, monopolies and the soaring number of zombie corporations, then the seeds of real growth can't possibly open.

Welcome to the hopeless result of Fed manipulation: stagnation, soaring inequality and rampant corruption. Fed manipulation and widespread corruption are not separate dynamics: Fed manipulation--distributing trillions of dollars to those at the apex of the wealth-power pyramid--has fueled corruption by giving the most sociopathic, greediest few the means to buy political protection of their monopoly/cartel (Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Ag, Big Defense, and so on) by influencing narratives (buying up the media), regulators and elected officials.

There is no way America would be as corrupt as it now is if the Fed hadn't provided trillions of dollars to those most anxious to corrupt every institution that might limit their greed and power. If money wasn't free, the predators, parasites, zombies and monopolists couldn't borrow such enormous sums to jack up their share price and buy political influence to protect their winnings.

The Fed's policy of permanent, expanding manipulation has picked the winners in our economy--the predators, parasites, zombies and monopolists who use Fed free money to strangle competition, eliminate transparency and corrupt anything that might represent the public interest or the common good, because these are anathema to the predators, parasites, zombies and monopolists.

The Fed has also picked the losers--the bottom 99%, and especially the bottom 90%, as these charts make abundantly clear. Have you looked at what you earned in interest on your nestegg? $2? This is the perversity of the Fed's incentives: to even hope to keep up with real-world inflation, everyone must sink their savings into dead trees that are just awaiting a spark to burn to the ground.

Some readers tell me that they feel depressed after reading my blog posts. Well cheer up, all we need to do is to let the Fed's manipulated, corrupt dead forest burn down. Once all the corruption and deadwood that the Fed has protected from market forces (i.e. competition and transparency) and any effort to promote the public interest and the common good burns down, then hope and new enterprises will finally have the open ground and sunlight to germinate and thrive.

Wake up, America, and see the Fed for what it really is: a totalitarian tool of kleptocracy.










My new book is available! A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet 20% and 15% discounts (Kindle $7, print $17)

Read excerpts of the book for free (PDF).

The Story Behind the Book and the Introduction.


Recent Podcasts:

AxisofEasy Salon #28: Today's show is brought to you by the letter K(leptrocracy) (1 hr)

My COVID-19 Pandemic Posts


My recent books:

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook coming soon) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic ($5 (Kindle), $10 (print), ( audiobook): Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake $1.29 (Kindle), $8.95 (print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 (Kindle), $15 (print) Read the first section for free (PDF).


If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

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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, Frank E. ($50), for your monstrously generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your steadfast support and readership.

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

Read more...