Happy New Year!
It was one year ago today, 23 March 2020, that right in front of everyone with open eyes, the United States Federal Reserve Bank (whose former head is now the U.S. Treasury Secretary) proved to the world that money junkies are running the nation’s economy.
With the S&P index down some 34 percent that month and equities having lost three years of market gains, the Fed and Washington began their monetary methadone schemes, injecting trillions of dollars into the system to bail out the Wall Street Gang and the Bankster Mobs.
People call them banks. They’re casinos, and they’ll do whatever it takes to keep the gambling operations going.
As Wall Street On Parade wrote,
“The Federal Reserve is the regulator of the largest bank holding companies in the United States and, since December of 2007 has been shoveling trillions of dollars at the trading houses owned by these bank holding companies almost on a non-stop basis.”
They noted that the Fed’s balance sheet is now at $7.7 trillion and climbing. And, the Fed continues to buy Treasury bonds and the Bankster Mobs’ mortgage-backed securities at a rate of $120 billion a month. That will add almost $1.5 trillion to their balance sheet this year.
Digital money printed on nothing and backed by nothing. A total fraud in the face for all to see but basically blacklisted by the Presstitute media that get paid to put out what they are told by their government whoremasters and corporate pimps.
Yes, $7.7 trillion! It was just $959 billion days before the Panic of ’08 hit Wall Street.
It worked: drug addicts, money addicts… they’re junkies who will do anything to stay on their high – rob, steal, cheat, lie, and kill.
Forget that the COVID War that has devastated the tourism, hospitality, airline, cruise ships, restaurant, conventions, trade shows, concerts, fairs, theater, and all “nonessential” businesses. That’s the real world.
On the gambling scene, while Europe’s stocks are lagging a bit, many equity markets across the globe are up nearly the same amount as the U.S. markets since a year ago today.
And since the monetary methadone injections accelerated last year, the S&P 500 spiked over 80 percent from its low, the NASDAQ shot up some 90 percent, and the Dow surged nearly 75 percent. According to Howard Silverblatt, a senior index analyst at S&P Dow Jones Indices who was quoted by the AP, the last time the S&P rose this high was in 1936.
Fake World
Yes, 1936… right in the middle of the Great Depression.
It doesn’t mean a damn thing to the real economy that much of Europe is in re-locking down; South America and Africa are plunging deep into the “Greatest Depression”; and most of America is still living under draconian lockdown rules made up without a scintilla of science-based, factual evidence to support them, which are destroying businesses and keeping unemployment high.
That hundreds of millions of lives and livelihoods are been devastated on Main Street means nothing to the Wall Street Gang.
What’s also driving up the market, as with the Dot-com boom, are rookie traders. AP noted a Charles Schwab analysis showing that clients under the age of 40 accounted for 35 percent of trading last month, double the rate of two years earlier.
Even though PE ratios are near record highs, stock prices have soared much faster than corporate profits, and major sectors of the economy are in depression, a new and hot money-junkie game is now the special purpose acquisition market… “SPAC.”
Reminiscent of the Dot-com bust days when gamblers bet on new online businesses that made no sense, last year, SPACs raised some $84 billion, up over six times the amount from the year before, under the guise of buying privately-held companies and then listing them on the stock exchange casino to drive up their value and cash in big.
TREND FORECAST: The End is Near? As Gregory Mannarino details in his new article, “THE FED EXPOSED: HIDE INFLATION,” it is a phony Fed fraud that is disguising the real inflation dangers ahead.
As we have been forecasting, the money-pumping schemes cannot, and will not, play on forever. The U.S. debt level is now reaching $28 trillion, and the latest word from Washington is to pump in another fake $3 trillion in the name of building the infrastructure and climate-change initiatives.
What will keep the markets rising and the economy growing for a while are the record-low interest rates, which the Feds say they won’t rise until 2024… that is if inflation does not spike. We are, however, forecasting there will be Dragflation, which means the economy will decline and interest rates will rise.
Thus, when Fed rates rise above 1.5 percent, we forecast that not only will there be a sharp pullback in the equity and credit markets, the housing boom that was jacked up by the record-low interest rates will also tank.
The Markets
Today, the Dow was down some 300 points and the NASDAQ fell 1.12 percent on the news that COVID cases are rising around the world and nations are, as we have reported in this Trends Journal, re-locking down.
Equities also went negative across Asia and Europe, except for the DAX, which barely eked out a gain over fears of rising COVID cases, a slowdown in mass vaccinations, and more government lockdowns.
GOLD/SILVER: Both gold and silver are still trading in the ranges they have been in the past three weeks. Today, they moved a bit lower as the dollar gained a bit of strength. But, again, we maintain our forecast for rising inflation, currencies sinking lower, and more cheap money pumping into the failing economic systems to artificially inflate them as they sink lower following new rounds of lockdowns and the stalling of re-openings in nations and states that have been shut down.
Also, copper prices, which jumped 67 percent over the past year, continued their decline, falling some 2.83 percent today. We note this since we refer to copper as “Dr. Copper” because it is reputed to have a Ph.D. in economics due to its ability to predict global-economy strength and weakness since it is used in most sectors of industry. Thus, the recent falls are signals of slowing economic growth.
OIL: Brent Crude got bashed today, diving nearly 6 percent to close at $60.72 per barrel… down some $10 from its recent $70 per barrel high. West Texas Intermediate plummeted 6.21 percent, closing at 57.51 per barrel. As with copper, these are significant sell-offs, since they are indicators of economic weakness on the horizon… despite the massive money-pumping schemes.
Again, the fear of declining economies is based on the rising number of virus cases and the slower-than-expected vaccine injections of the masses that the mainstream media, politicians, and the general public assume will be the only solution to restoring pre-COVID War economic growth.
BITCOIN: Bitcoin, at nearly $55,000 is trading in the same range as it has for the past three weeks. As with gold and silver, it will maintain these and higher levels as economies slow down and more monetary and fiscal stimulus is injected into them to artificially prop them up as investors seek safe-haven assets.
We maintain our 5 January forecast: “The downward breakout point will be hit should the price fall below $25,000 per coin.”
