Just where the hell does one start with the economy of the West and the markets at this moment in history?
In outer space?
Nah, too obvious.
With the Bubblevision circus?
Way too obvious.
Let us begin the review or our surreal reality with Bitcoin.
The story this Tuesday night, February 27, 2024, from the cryptocurrency website CoinTelegraph hypes the hysteria more than Jim Cramer pounding down 4 Beyond Meat weenies live on air:
Here I am reading the article, obviously respecting the cryptobros celebration of the breakout to new highs this year and I see the “collect this article as NFT” button.
Now I’m not faulting anyone for making money, hell I encourage it.
Then I clicked on the link:
For the record, I’m not a “journalist.”
Nor am I a “crypto” expert.
However, I can see and smell 100% unadulterated bullshit and a bubble based on history when I see it.
So Bitcoin breaks 57,000, not even up to its all time high and they are selling a non-fungible token for the the headline of the story for $154 each????
Yeah, it’s a bubble.
For those engaged in the “safety” trade of gold however, don’t worry, it’s value is still trailing inflation by miles, the “dollar” valuation reflects the central bank suppression from the Eccles Building, and sane investors are now viewed as old fuddy-duddies who have no clue how the “modern” MMT based economy works.
Mr. Buffett, pass the Dairy Queen Reese’s Cup blizzard over, I’m right there with you sir.
In 1999 a somewhat younger old man presented a warning not in his annual statement or letter as the head of Berkshire-Hathaway, but as someone sane who made billions investing in the stock market.
This key portion of Warren Buffet’s 1999 Sun Valley, Idaho speech, as reprinted in Fortune Magazine on November 22, 1999 is crucial to understanding my jaded view also.
Let us fast forward from that era some twenty-five years later.
During the Covid pandemic, American investors were convinced the crisis would cause everyone to have to get annual or semi-annual boosters for the rest of their lives. The truly uneducated who are unable or unwilling to read the scientific reviews or history of the last great American pandemics of the 1950’s and 1920 bought right into it.
Today?
Pfizer and other startup pharma companies are now somewhat struggling as they are unable to shill the garbage vaccines without government mandates. The big pharma influence is now causing other companies to withdraw from the market as the “virus which will end mankind” has morphed into another flu. Maybe that flu could be renamed the fatty flu or something.
Thus why the “lose weight now by being lazy, eating like crap and just taking our shots” crew is pumping the various medications without any foresight as to the future consequences of these medications on the user’s condition in twenty years.
Then everyone was sold the bill of goods by Wall Street and the government that plant based protein was the future. By golly, if Americans didn’t adopt eating chemically saturated soy protein then climate change and fatness would be the end of civilization as we know it.
Good luck with selling that and bugs to the American people.
Next up, the American investors were told fervently first during the Obama years but even more so after Covid (I don’t have a clue why, it’s just how it is) that the virus made us realize that climate change would cause more pandemics and if we did not use solar power, civilization would die as the killer trees would create too much carbon dioxide for humanity. Or something.
Better rub some aloe on that.
Next up was the government mandated electric vehicle craze. If we didn’t buy lithium ion powered vehicles with rare earth metals mined by children in some third world poor nation like Congo, the entire future of civilization would be at risk.
African children mining lithium and cobalt for batteries.
— Riley Moore (@RileyMooreWV) August 30, 2022
Tell me again how this is better than coal mining? pic.twitter.com/iIpZjOVcEv
Thus began another bubble. Remember this company boys and girls?
I guess I just missed buying in at $900 or civilization has ended as I refused to give up my gas guzzling SUV and I failed to notice that fact.
Are my readers starting to detect a trend? Just like autos in the 1920s, radio in the 1930s, .com stocks in the 1990’s to early 2000’s, and yeah, adding “blockchain” to a tea company’s name in 2008?
Thus why the 2024 letter to investors from Warren Buffett might hit below the belt for the Bubblevision’s resident pumpers with this excerpt:
For whatever reasons, markets now exhibit far more casino-like behavior than they did when I was young. The casino now resides in many homes and daily tempts the occupants. One fact of financial life should never be forgotten. Wall Street – to use the term in its figurative sense – would like its customers to make money, but what truly causes its denizens’ juices to flow is feverish activity. At such times, whatever foolishness can be marketed will be vigorously marketed – not by everyone but always by someone.
Occasionally, the scene turns ugly. The politicians then become enraged; the most flagrant perpetrators of misdeeds slip away, rich and unpunished; and your friend next door becomes bewildered, poorer and sometimes vengeful. Money, he learns, has trumped morality.
(Emphasis mine-JohnGaltFLA)
Welcome to America’s new reality folks.
There is some good news however, those who forgot or did not participate in the 2005-2008 real estate bubble are getting another chance, either via the STR (short term rental) or commercial real estate markets.
Good thing we still have that “people always pay their mortgages” mentality, right?
Politicians, pontificates, preachers, celebrities, and whomever gets fifteen minutes of fame will want to sell one a false hope of get rich quick and fame without any thought as to what is best for the families of their audience or the nation as a whole.
This never ends well.
Ask those souls who were fully bought invested in residential real estate in Cape Coral, Florida in 2007 and lost everything.
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