Summer
vacation is here, and the whole global family has arrived at
Central-Bank Wonderland, the upside-down, inside-out world that
banksters and their puppet politicians call “recovery.” Everyone is
talking about it as wizened traders puzzle over how stocks and bonds soared, hand-in-hand, in face of the following list of economic thrills:
- Britain voted to exit the EU, and a handful of other nations are talking openly along similar lines. One major crack in the European Union just happened, and others are forming. (Brexit is the name of this new Earthquake ride near the gates of Wonderland.)
- Italy’s oldest bank (also the world’s oldest bank, Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena) faces bankruptcy unless it gets bailed out. The bank that has survived the greatest tests of time (founded in 1472 before Columbus sailed the ocean blue) is going down unless it finds a savior! Italy’s prime minister is screaming for tax-payer bailouts. At the same time, one of Germany’s oldest banks and one of the largest — Deutsche Bank — has just about become a penny stock and faces the likelihood of imminent collapse if not bailed out, too. (Welcome to Wonderland’s zombie freak show of the world’s oldest walking-dead banks dying again.)
- Gold and silver have been soaring as though people are fleeing to safety (in Wonderland’s Bouncy House of Coins).
- People are also fleeing to safety in bonds, bringing the US 10-year bond down to a 1.318% yield, its lowest yield in history. (Hit me on the head with a hammer like a pop-up gopher, and watch me smile.)
- In many nations around the world, government bonds have been selling hotter than bombs in Syria even with negative interest rates, meaning you lose money every day you hold them. (The bonking game of bigger gophers for the near-sighted so that Wonderland remains handicap accessible.)
- In Switzerland, people are cuing up in the ticket line to give the government their money to hold for a fifty year ride now that the Swiss 50-year bond has turned negative. (Wonderland’s biggest gopher for the totally blind. You don’t just hit this one; it takes you the ride of your life for the rest of your life. We call it “Gopher Broke.”)
- US jobs crashed in May, causing stocks to drop, but rebounded in June, causing stocks to rise, so that May is now seen as an unexplained anomaly. (Welcome to Ripley’s House of Unexplained Economic Mysteries.)
- The Great Britain Pound crashed to a thirty-year low against the dollar. (Enjoy your ride on the currency bumper cars!)
- Japan’s decade of quantitative wheezing has accomplished so little that they’re going to cough up more of the same all over again because it was so much fun the first five times. (House of Bodily Humors and Horrors.)
- Central banks in Europe say they need to and will crank their own quantitative easing back up, so effective have all previous rounds been. (And, so, the merry-go-round spins and the calliope plays its happy music in Euro Dizzyland.)
- Falling oil prices, which contributed significantly to January’s spectacular stock market plunge, are going back down the pipeline while oversupply is building rapidly at the bottom again with the buildup reaching its highest point in ten weeks. (Wonderland’s log ride through oil with more than one crude splash.)
- Venezuela and Brazil are collapsing into economic chaos. (It’s more fun than that bungy-jumping vehicle for two at the carnival.)
- Etc. (I know, darn! Just as he was on a roll. Well, hang on…)
[From
there, the article goes on to describe the biggest dichotomy financial
markets have seen in the history of the world — not just me calling it
that, but quite a number of people now talking about “what gives?” as
several all-time records are broken and financial markets do things
they’ve never done before.]
As always, a link back to the original article and a byline will be fine.
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