What insanity!
The chart on the right says it all – this is what $10Tn of stimulus in the past 7 years has bought our Central Banksters – a stock market that says things have never been better to a population who's impression of their own financial health has rarely been worse.
Hopefully the drop in productivity is merely a correction off the fantastic run we've had for the past 5 years, with a 50% increase since 2011 now paired back to a 33% increase but still very good. Unfortunately, wages have not kept up at all and that's been hurting Consumer Sentiment and making it very hard for the economy to gain any real traction – no matter how much money the Central Banksters thow at their friends.
Of course, if you are a business owner, you are loving this and there is, of course, no better way to make sure your workers keep their grubby little hands off your proifts than to vote Republican as the GOP has been more than 5 TIMES better at keeping a lid on wages than the Democrats and, if you take out the well-deserved 900% increase in CEO and management wages over the same period – you'll find that the Republican party has TAKEN money from the workers and distributed to those of us who created those jobs, on our own, without any help from anyone, ever…
This has, unfortunately, left us with a lot of whiny poor people but plans are being drawn up at GOP headquarters to deal with that as we speak. Those of us in the Top 10% only collect 48.2% of the income each year and that means there is room for us to get 51.8% more of the money in this country so don't be complacent – get out there and SQUEEZE the bottom 90% until more money comes out!
Of course, the best way to get the bottom 90% to give up more of their wages is to force them to give them up. We can do that by raising the price of necessitices like oil, gasoline, water, natural gas, food, etc. and also by paying them less money in their savings accounts while doubling the mortgage spread and other rate spreads that we charge them vs. what the banks charge us:
The funniest thing about that chart is that we are using OUR Federal Reserve (which is really just a banking cartel) to subsidize loans to the Top 1% while we INCREASE the profits on the money we lend out (by not passing through the full decrease in our costs) and, should there ultimately be losses on these artificially low rates – our Federal Reserve gets to dump them onto the Treasury and stick the bottom 99% with the bill – it's BRILLIANT!
Speaking of gouging the consumers on necessities, boy did we pick the wrong week to short oil! On Tuesday we liked shorting oil Futures (/CL) at $46 and yesterday they popped over $49 for a $3,000 per contract loss but we still like oil short, now $48 again (/CLU6 expires Monday so /CLV6 should be used for longer-term trades) for the long-term and our USO Aug $11 puts were also a bust from 0.32 to 0.092 as of yesterday's close and we've decided to buy more time with the USO Sept $11.50 puts, which finished the day at 0.52.
Of course, last year's action should have given us a clue as they ran oil up almost $10 (25%) into the holiday weekend before the big winter crash back to $30 – so we jumped the gun but we're not out of bullets!
Oil is up 20% for the month of August and we know it's fake, with the main "fundamental" driving the rally having nothing to do with demand but with rumors of OPEC finally getting around to curtailing supply but US rigs have already been coming back on-line, even at $42/barrel – at $47.50, expect a robust rig count later today that will hopefully give us another 0.50 drop ($500 per contract).
It looks like we'll have a mild pullback to start our day but it's so slow that nothing in the market can be taken seriously with just 51M SPY shares being traded yesterday, the 3rd lowest volume of the year, beaten only by Monday and the Monday before that.
Paul Singer Says "Everyone Is In The Dark"; Warns Of "Sudden, Intense Market Breakdown"
Just remember, it's a lot harder to sell your shares when the market is heading lower so don't wait too long to confirm that it's time to get to CASH!! Also remember, it's much harder to screw your workers when Democrats are in charge so make sure you vote Trump 2016 so we can stick it to them for another 4 years before these recent wage gains get a chance to gain traction!
Have a great weekend,
– Phil
