Peter Eavis in his RM column today referred to what he called, "the obvious fact that neither Wall Street nor corporations have learned anything from the bubble's popping and are back to pumping overpriced stocks. " I had to agree. Little has changed except the stock prices. Lying, weasel CEO's go on bubble TV to tout stock they are secretly selling or hedging. Maria B. breathlessly reports made up numbers every morning like they are important. Corrupt investment banks run the Wall Street version of three card monte by offering underwriting, deals, investment management and brokerage out of the same cesspool of conflicts of interest that should have landed most of them in jail. Instead they are in Washington trying to get trading rigged even more in their favor. Has anybody learned anything?
If you mean the general public, no. If you mean Wall Street, yes. They've learned when they need to be more subtle about their tactics, and when they can flaunt it with impunity.
For me the obvious fact is rather "the public hasn't still learned that there is absolutly no reason why Wall Street or Corporations won't continue to pump their money as they are doing so since the origin"
Has human nature changed? fear and greed. everything flows from those. tulip mania, the '29 crash, the dot-bomb insanity, all the minor manias in between - just versions of the same story. and generally - government and banking corruption, politicians lying and backstabbing, propaganda to fool the stupid masses into doing the bidding of the powerful, panem et circenses to keep them occupied -- if you want to know what's going to happen 1000 years from now, read ancient history.
After the '73-'74 bear anyone owning stocks was considered crazy. Mutual funds were viewed as being on the same moral plane as child molestors. It took 8 years for the market to take off again, and that happened mainly because the Fed was so scared of a Mexican meltdown that they lowered rates. After the '87 panic, the stock market was considered unsafe for the general public. Everyone knew that Greenspan throwing money into the abyss was the only thing that saved us from a total meltdown. The markets rallied post-war in '91, but really it was not until '95 and the onset of the bubble market did the bull rule again. Now we are less than a year from what everyone just assumes was the low of the second worst bear of all time. What is the great debate? Are we in a new bull or will we have maybe one more minor correction? Other than perma-bear Fleckenstein and maybe Toddo, who disputes this? People are lining up to buy INTC, CSCO, QLGC and the new horsemen, EBAY(you know I love it), AMZN , YHOO and USAI. I have to say I am afraid to short it in a big way. The Fed has pumped so much money into the economy that it has to pop out somewhere. They will not raise rates until the bond market vigilantes force them to. Assuming of course that any of the once feared vigilantes are still alive. The obvious play is real estate, leveraged to the gills with a Libor-linked ARM. If you want one, Merrill Lynch Commercial Credit is da bomb. What happens? Who knows? One things for sure, no one's learned a damn thing.
AAA, totally agree. What Greenie is doing is what he has been doing ever since he was appointed. It is the only thing he knows how to do. Gotta a problem? Throw money at it. I think he is reflating the economy in a BIG way. I mean B I G. We won't know until after 2003 what this sonafabich did. The result could be one mother of a rally here with sheer liquidity floating all boats. Never mind EBAY and the previous POS from the bull market. Look at the turkeys that are flying right now! There are tonnes of sub $5 stocks rocketing like crazy. Not the sign of a healthy bull market. But rather a contrived one, forced down everyone's throat.
No but people only react when their own interest have been crushed. They approve politician corruption as necesscity evil and don't see that it impacts their very life through the consequence on Politics and above all economy: more unemployment, more tax etc. And people are very pleased to discuss the crash market but when it concerns the crash of the economy itself there are huge incredulity on this very forum whereas it is same story at least since th 17th century that repeats multiple time with 50 to 100 years interval that is to say sometimes more than one generation and since people feel that history has no value except when they need to compulsively find justification of their own interest it is not surprising. So I laugh about some people pretending to be not so foolish as other dumbs about stock market whereas they will exactly act as these dumbs for a connexed field: the economy itself.
Harry makes a good point. One that's worth "translating". Harry obviously sees a BIG crash in the economy, a depression, if you like. Historically, that has been the pattern; and nope, most people didn't see them coming then, and, given that, as Harry says, people generally disregard the history, except when it serves their own selfinterests, and thus fail to learn from it, and end up repeating it in some way. So, Harry laughs when he hears some pretending to be "wiser than thou" about the stock market, yet impervious to economic conditions.
Many people have a bleak outlook of the US economy. Whether that eventually will turn out to be a route, who knows (i.e. no-one knows). Alfonso, the way you have been taking up Harry's cudgel lately I wouldn't be at all surprised if you have taken up the opportunity which he offered on his website where he was looking for people to get rich promoting his method or system. It is good to have a guru I guess freealways
Actually free, I haven't even read his website. You, having done so, probably know a lot more about Harry than I! As for the economy, yes, there have been prophets of doom since way back in the day -- I was just reading one at my library the other day, written in the early 80s. I forget the title, something about how to survive the coming depression Still, when you compare then and now, I think it's probably fair to say that there's quite a bit more to be concerned about, not less; it's not so much that the doom analysts of yesteryear were so wrong, I think it's more a case that the economy has been bandaged and dressed up beyond what anyone could have reasonably expected when the analyses were being made. So you'd figure that something's gonna give soon or later? I'm not knowledgeable enough to make that call (yet), but I'm learning.