Tag Archives: Debt and the Fallacies of Paper Money

Taking Off Like a Rocket There are actually two problems with corporate debt. One is that there is too much of it… the other is that a lot of it appears to be going sour. As a brief report at Marketwatch last week (widely ignored as far as we are aware) informs us: “Businesses racked up debt in the January-to-March period at the fastest pace in three quarters, according to data released Thursday. Business debt grew at...

  Confidence Gets a Boost Payrolls figures are rising. Stocks rose to new records. As we laid out recently, a better jobs picture should lead the Fed to raise rates. This should cause canny investors to dump stocks. Canny investors at work (an old, but good one…) Cartoon via Pension Pulse - Click to enlarge But the stock market paid no attention. It follows logic of its own. Headlines told us that last...

The Trump Trade After 35 years of waiting… so many false signals… so often deceived… so often disappointed… bond bears gathered on rooftops as though awaiting the Second Coming. Many times, investors have said to themselves, “This is it! This is the end of the Great Bull Market in Bonds!” And then, at the appointed hour, expecting the rapture… they took the leap of faith only to come crashing down on the rocks below....

Gross Regulatory Overburden Corporate life in America these days is fraught with tedium.  First the MBAs imposed their silly six sigma processes and reduced workers to mere widgets. Then the regulators went through and squashed out any fun that remained. Gone are the days when shrewd eccentrics could get rich using techno-babble to hawk the Turbo Encabulator.  Alas, there are rules and regulations stymieing all...

Stumped by the Bust In the slump of a cycle, businesses that were thriving begin to experience difficulties or go under. They do so not because of firm-specific entrepreneurial errors but rather in tandem with whole sectors of the economy. People who were wealthy yesterday have become poor today. Factories that were busy yesterday are shut down today, and workers are out of jobs. Businessmen themselves are confused...

Illusory Riches, Obvious Impoverishment I address this essay to two groups. One group is those among the liberty movement, who believe that there’s nothing wrong with inequality. These are often Objectivists, who unknowingly defend a regime that artificially suppresses working people. The other group is those among the Left who still call themselves liberals. They say they don’t like inequality, but nevertheless...

Mini-Panic Over Inflation After Trump’s Election Victory We have witnessed truly astonishing short term market conniptions following the Donald Trump’s election victory. In this post we want to focus on one aspect that seems to be exercising people quite a bit at present, namely the recent surge in  inflation expectations reflected in the markets. Will we have to get those WIN buttons out again? A 1970s “whip...

$8 Trillion Transfer RHINEBECK, New York – It is a beautiful autumnal day here in upstate New York. The trees are red, brown, and yellow. Squirrels hop across the lawn, collecting their nuts. Unseasonably warm the last few days, rain showers are moving in from across the Hudson, driven by a chilly wind. But today, we talk about money. After all, that’s our beat here at the Diary. Money. Money. Money. We’ve seen how...

US Citizens Giving the Finger to Globalist Statist Elites – Big Time Back in late August we posted something about Mr. Trump’s chances probably being a lot better than was generally assumed (see: US Presidential Election – How Reliable are the Polls?). You know what the say about a headline that ends in a question mark; most often, the answer to the question is “No”. And so it was in this case – the polls were not...

The Long Term Outlook for the Asset Bubble Due to strong internals, John Hussman has given the stock market rally since the February low the benefit of the doubt for a while. Lately he has returned to issuing warnings about the market’s potential to deliver a big negative surprise once it runs out of greater fools. In his weekly market missive published on Monday (entitled “Sizing Up the Bubble” – we highly...