A New World Order & “The End Of Capital Markets As We Have Known Them”
- A New World Order & “The End Of Capital Markets As We Have Known Them”
by AdvisorPerspectives.com, https://www.zerohedge.com/
…. Dear friends and colleagues,
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Though the virus pandemic has been tumultuous, challenging and with little precedence, from a capital market perspective, this market collapse was quite predictable.
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Capital market excesses became pervasive in ways that were also unprecedented. Zombie companies, corporate operating strategies that elevated financial risk to extreme levels and consumers who also became highly leveraged were the accepted actions of the day. Prudence was an extremely rare virtue. Many times I expressed the opinion that I thought the various equity markets were at least 40-60% over valued. Recent events would tend to confirm my assessment.
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Back in 2009, in my Morningstar speech, and then after I returned from my 2010 sabbatical, I argued that, if we did not get our economic house in order, we would experience a crisis of equal or greater magnitude than the 2008-2009 period and that this would take place after 2017.
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With the passage of the 2017 omnibus bill and the 2017 tax cut, along with a continuation of unsound and insane monetary policies, this speculative excess period was able to be extended. We knew there would be a pin that would prick this unbelievably speculative bubble but we just didn’t know what it would be. Now we do.
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Our economic and financial market systems were not prepared with appropriate “rainy day reserves” to withstand an exogenous shock. Balance sheets were stretched in all economic sectors. The shock to the US economy by the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the beginning of WW2 was more traumatic and of greater magnitude than what we are experiencing now and it would also last longer. However, after 12 years of Depression, the financial system was cleansed of speculative excesses that allowed for a financial re-leveraging of the economy to fight the war. After the carnage was over, the economy was able to grow out of an extreme leverage position. In contrast to then, this is not the case today, given that the economy is already extremely leveraged prior to the onset of the crisis. My worst fears have materialized.
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Since 2013, I have been preparing for an economy of monumental excess, where debt and deficits do not appear to matter, along with Fed and other central bank monetary policies that totally distort the fundamental elements of the Capital Asset Pricing Model. With the events of the past three weeks, the perversion and conversion to a dystopian capital market and economic system is virtually complete.
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As for me, with the Fed’s announcement of unlimited QE and its “will buy or support almost anything,” along with the pending passage of a $2-2.5 trillion stimulus package, this is the end of the capital markets as we have known them.
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We have now entered unlimited QE and MMT where there is no escape.
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read more.
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