UnconTROLLed
perfection
oftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith: The Global Repricing of Assets Can't Be Stopped
This is why the repricing of speculative-bubble assets can't be stopped: debt-driven speculation is not a sustainable substitute for investing in increasing productivity, and debt-fueled consumption masquerading as "investment" is not a sustainable substitute for limiting consumption to what we earn and save.
All bubbles pop, period. Once Corporate America's credit lines are pulled and its revenues and profits plummet, the financial manipulation of stock buybacks will end. That spells the end of the 12-year bull market in stocks.
As the tide of speculative mania ebbs and confidence wanes, the world's housing bubbles will all pop, and the $1.4 million bungalows will drift back down to their Bubble #1 highs around $400,000, and perhaps even drop from there.
As for collectibles and other play-things of the super-wealthy: the bids will soon vanish and yachts will be set adrift to avoid paying the dock fees.
This is why it's imperative to go big now, and make plans to sustain the most vulnerable households and small employers not for two weeks but for six months--or however long proves necessary.
That governments around the world will be forced to distribute "helicopter money" to keep their people fed and housed and their economies from imploding is already a given. Closing all non-essential businesses and gatherings will crimp the livelihood of millions of households and small businesses that lack the financial resources to survive weeks without any revenues.
The only question is whether governments which can borrow or print fresh currency will get ahead of the implosion or fall behind, creating a binary choice: go big now or go home.
Half-measures in helicopter money work about as well as half-measures in quarantine, i.e. they fail to achieve the intended objectives. Dribbling out modest low-interest loans is a half-measure, as is cutting payroll taxes. Neither measure will help employees or small businesses whose income has fallen below the minimum needed to pay essential bills: rent, food, utilities, etc.
Meanwhile, the ruling elites will be under increasing pressure to bail out greedy financial elites and gamblers--the same scoundrels and parasites they bailed out in 2008-09. But this is not just another speculative bubble-pop, this is a matter of life and death and solvency for the masses of at-risk households and small businesses. It is a different zeitgeist and a different crisis, and bailing out greedy parasites (banks, indebted corporations, speculators, financiers, etc.) will not go over big while households and small businesses are going bankrupt.
....
that go buy a Lambo
