Well, that should have been a wake-up call. The 30-year mortgage rate soared by 24 basis points recently to 6.18%. So the latter now stands at well more than double the 2.65% rate which prevailed just 18 months ago in January 2021, and at the highest level since the tail end of the Great Financial Crisis in 2009.
Continue reading “David Stockman on Why the Great Reckoning Has Begun”
If you didn’t think the $70 trillion global bond market was a train-wreck waiting to happen, surely last week’s yield surge was a wake up call. From the 2.15% close one week earlier, the 10-year yield soared to a peak of 2.50% just after mid-day last Friday; and that 36 basis point gain was, in turn, the culmination of a stunning 200 basis point rise from the cyclical low point (0.51%) recorded during July 2020.
Needless to say, an economy staggering under the weight of $87 trillion in debt, representing a record 365% of GDP, can’t take much interest rate increase in any case. But when the Fed is drastically behind the curve and will be forced to hit the brakes hard (and unexpectedly) in coming months, you are talking about a recipe for financial carnage. Continue reading “David Stockman on the Coming Bond Bear Market… And What Comes Next”
My, how the frog does boil!
Recently, the national debt (aka public debt) crossed the $30 trillion milestone, yet neither Wall Street nor Washington took note. But it did catch our attention and we want to recall why a young budget director was thumping on the Gipper’s chest in the Oval Office photo below.
Namely, we were informing him of the distinctively unwelcome news that the $846 billion public debt we had inherited in December 1980 — which had been accumulated over 190 years by 39 presidents — was already surging within days of the Reagan inauguration. Accordingly, within a matter of just weeks there would be no choice but to ask Congress to raise the debt ceiling above the dreaded $1 trillion mark.
International Man: Thanks to the shutdowns, economic activity on main street is at a standstill. Government, corporate, and personal debt is skyrocketing. Yet, the stock market is in a mania. Has the stock market become out of touch with reality, and if so, what are the consequences of that?
David Stockman: Both ends of the Acela Corridor have lost their marbles. This year, Uncle Sam borrowed $4 trillion in six months, the Fed printed $3 trillion in three months, and Wall Street drove the S&P 500 to 52X reported LTM earnings in the context of a deeper economic plunge than occurred in the worst quarter of the 1930s.
Therefore, Washington has become disconnected from any semblance of fidelity to sound money and fiscal rectitude, while Wall Street has turned into an outright casino, valuing stocks based on endless Fed liquidity injections and the delusion that momentum chasing is an investment strategy.
Continue reading “David Stockman on How the Stock Market Got to be Out of Touch with Reality”
International Man: People have been warning of impending fiscal and monetary doom for a long time.
What is different now that will finally usher in the day of reckoning?
David Stockman: It is self-evident that the solution to a state-imposed supply-side shutdown of the economy is not more counterfeit money, erroneous price signals, inducements to rampant speculation and moral hazards, and further zombification of the main street economy.
Once upon a time, even Washington politicians feared large, chronic public debt, and not merely because they were especially intelligent or virtuous. We learned that in real time during 1981, when the deficit hawks among the GOP Senate college of cardinals nearly shut down the Gipper’s supply-side tax cuts out of fear of mushrooming deficits.
Continue reading “David Stockman on the Fed’s Death Blow to Private Savings”
International Man: Recently, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said the central bank’s money printing is designed to help average Americans, and not Wall Street.
What’s your take on this?
David Stockman: Yes, and if dogs could whistle, the world would be a chorus!
The truth is, in an economy encumbered with nearly $78 trillion of debt already—including $16.2 trillion on households, $16.8 trillion on business, $23 trillion on governments—the last thing we need is even lower interest rates and even bigger incentives to take on debt and leverage.
In fact, in a debt-saturated system, the Fed’s massive bond purchases never transmit anything outside the canyons of Wall Street. This money-printing madness only drives bond prices higher and cap rates lower—meaning relentless and systematic inflation of financial assets’ prices.
Continue reading “David Stockman on What Could Happen If the Fed Loses Control”
International Man: Recently, massive riots have broken out in many cities across the US.
Despite the unrest—and the economic damage from the shutdowns—the stock market continues to rally.
It seems that markets don’t reflect earnings, economic prosperity, or growth. What is going on here?
David Stockman: It’s quite simple. The Fed has unleashed the greatest torrent of liquidity ever, and it’s finding its way into a relentless, massive bid for risk assets.
Continue reading “David Stockman on Fiscal Disaster, Social Unrest, and the Presidential Election”
Guest Post by David Stockman
A hundred years ago in response to the horror of WWI, the great Randolph Bourne famously pronounced the truth that “War is the Health of the State.” Said Bourne,
War is the health of the State. It automatically sets in motion throughout society those irresistible forces for uniformity, for passionate co-operation with the Government in coercing into obedience the minority groups and individuals which lack the larger herd sense. The machinery of government sets and enforces the drastic penalties, the minorities are either intimidated into silence or brought slowly around by a subtle process of persuasion which may seem to them to really converting them……
Other values such artistic creation, knowledge, reason, beauty, the enhancement of life, are instantly and almost unanimously sacrificed and the significant classes who have constituted themselves the amateur agents of the State are engaged not only in sacrificing these values for themselves but in coercing all other persons into sacrificing them.
In a nation at war, every citizen identifies himself with the whole, and feels immensely strengthened in that identification. The purpose and desire of the collective community live in each person who throws himself whole-heartedly into the cause of war. The impeding distinction between society and the individual is almost blotted out.
A century later it appears that Randolph Bourne needs an update: Apparently, Sickness is the Health of the State, as well.
Guest Post by David Stockman
If you don’t think the fix is in, please take note of the big news of the morning. Namely, that the allegedly ultra-busy Dr. Fauci had time last evening to ping Sheryl Gay Stolberg, correspondent for the “failing New York Times”, in order to dump a VLCC size tanker-load of cold water on the urgent need to end Lockdown Nation, now.
In a nanosecond, of course, Stolberg was on Twitter and on-line with Fauci’s stern admonition to the restless natives of Flyover America to shut-up and stay put. That way the entire MSM had plenty of time to crank-up a feverish barrage of messaging during Fauci’s actual Senate appearance as to how Red State governors are jumping the gun and putting life and limp in danger throughout the country:
“The major message that I wish to convey to the Senate HLP committee tomorrow is the danger of trying to open the country prematurely,” Fauci wrote in the email, which Stolberg posted on Twitter.
“If we skip over the checkpoints in the guidelines to: ‘Open America Again,’ then we risk the danger of multiple outbreaks throughout the country. This will not only result in needless suffering and death, but would actually set us back on our quest to return to normal,” wrote Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
For god’s sake, WAKE UP, Donald!
Continue reading “WAKE-UP, Donald! Your Malpracticing Doctors Are the Real Killers”
International Man: Decades of money printing have created enormous distortions in the market. It seems that the coronavirus popped the Everything Bubble. Where do you see the stock market going?
David Stockman: I’d say it’s going in a new direction, and it’s not up year after year, month after month, day after day.
It’s not going to be a world where buying the dip is a no-brainer thing to do.
I think the stock market was insanely valued when the S&P 500 peaked at 3,380 on February 19th.
It has got a long way yet to correct.
Who knows what earnings are going to be?
No one knows how long these lockdowns will last.
In Part One of this article I exposed the numerous false narratives being peddled to the masses, as this Fourth Turning is entering the intense phase headed towards an unknown climax.
I’ve been expecting the next shoe to fall in this Fourth Turning for years, but the financial elite have pulled the debt levers to keep the Ponzi scheme alive far longer than a reasonable person would expect. We are only six weeks into 2020 and it seems like a year’s worth of major events have already occurred. The year started with the assassination of Qasem Soleimani in Iraq.
For the next week the world was awash in rhetoric about World War III and possible revolution in Iran. Accusations of Trump using the Wag the Dog method to deflect the negative press from the impeachment hearings were rampant among the half of the country that despises Trump. Soleimani was lauded as a hero by the left and a terrorist by the right. Now, the entire episode seems like ancient history, as more interesting squirrels have arisen for the propaganda media to chase.
The entire month of January was occupied by the ongoing coup/impeachment against Donald Trump. Schiff, Nadler and Pelosi doing their best impression of the three stooges, conducted a laughable prosecution in the House, revealing this was nothing more than a desperate attempt to avoid losing to Trump in a November landslide. The predictable trial in the Senate resulted in an acquittal and Trump’s popularity soaring to all-time highs, as independents realized the Democrats misused the power of impeachment for purely political purposes. Trump’s SOTU address infuriated Pelosi to such an extent it provoked her into acting like a petulant child, tearing up the speech. Future campaign ads wrote themselves.
International Man: Trump’s America First economic policy seemed to help him win the 2016 election. He promised to renegotiate America’s trade deals and bring jobs back to the United States.
As president, Trump has used tariffs and other protectionist measures to try to reduce the trade deficit.
What do you think of Trump’s trade policies and tariffs?
Continue reading “David Stockman on How Trump Could Really Make US Industry Competitive Again”
Guest Post by David Stockman via International Man
International Man: Last year, President Trump took the unusual step of bypassing his advisors to announce his intention to withdraw all US troops from Syria quickly. The decision rattled Washington and the mainstream media. It caused former Defense Secretary Mattis to resign. Almost a year later, the US has withdrawn only a token number of soldiers. It still has thousands of troops occupying the part of the country where oil fields are located. What is going on here?
David Stockman: Well, that’s the Deep State at work.
Donald Trump is all by his lonesome. He’s home alone in the Oval Office. Now, half of it, he can blame himself. If he hires someone, a known idiot like John Bolton, what does he expect is going to happen except that everything he wanted to do is going to be undermined.
Continue reading “David Stockman on How the Deep State Really Works”
International Man: The United States and Iran appear to be closer than ever to war. Where do you think this is headed, and what would the consequences of a war with Iran be?
David Stockman: If it ever really happened in a hot-war sense, it would be catastrophic, because everything in the Persian Gulf would be sunk.
There would be massive amounts—tens of thousands of tons—of metal clogging up the Strait of Hormuz from all these sunken ships, both ours and theirs.
The oil fields on the eastern Persian Gulf of Saudi Arabia would be in ruins, and so would most of Iran. Obviously, it would be catastrophic, because the price of oil would shoot to $200 or $250 a barrel—and the world economy would buckle. The governments would then go crazy printing money—stimulating and borrowing. That would be the ultimate Armageddon. But I don’t really think it’s going to happen.
Continue reading “David Stockman on War with Iran, Oil, and the 2020 Election”
International Man: In a broad sense, how would you describe the foreign policy of the US?
David Stockman: Well, in two words: Empire First. I contrast that with what Donald Trump thought he wanted to seek as a candidate, America First.
Now these are obviously simplifications and slogans, but there is an underlying substance that’s really important.
I think the basic idea behind “America First” is reaching way back to Robert Taft in the 1950s. He said that we cannot have a permanent warfare state in America, because our foreign policy doesn’t require it and our fiscal capacities can’t afford it.
Continue reading “David Stockman on How the US Went from America First to Empire First”
Doug Casey’s Note: David Stockman is a former congressman and director of the Office of Management and Budget under Ronald Reagan.
Now, anyone with connections to the government should elevate your suspicion level. But as you’ll see, David is a genuine opponent of government stupidity. Although his heroic fight against the Deep State during the Reagan Administration was doomed, he remains a strong advocate for free markets and a vastly smaller government.
We get together occasionally in the summer, when we’re both in Aspen. He’s great company and one of the few people in this little People’s Republic that I agree with on just about everything. Absolutely including where the US economy is heading.
I read his letter the Contra Corner every day and suggest you do likewise.
Continue reading “David Stockman on the Coming Financial Panic and the 2020 Election”