Here's the deal -- open your eyes -- your life is a lie
Don't say a word. I'll tell you why you're living a lie
Your life is a lie, but you deny you ever lied
Wondering why. Barely alive
Count your friends on your hands.
Now look again -- they're not your friends
Hold your breath. Everyone left. No surprise. Living a lie....
Nobody wins. Try not to cry. You'll survive on your own
Lessons in life: your life is a lie
Now there's no time wondering why
Where in the world is that girl who knows it's alright to live a life waiting to die?
Not knowing that your life is a lie
Wondering why nobody writes
Hollow inside. Bitter delight. Fire and ice.
Your life is a lie
-- MGMT (2013)
Sunday, May 31, 2015
Thursday, May 14, 2015
Bubble Financialization
[C]entral bank bubble finance has fostered an existential crisis in
what remains of American capitalism.... [A]s the main street economy of
work and production has been going nowhere, the financial system has
erupted skyward.... How did this massive inflation of the financial
sphere happen? Since the time of Greenspan’s abject panic in the wake
of Black Monday
in October 1987, the Fed has chronically pegged the money market rate
below market-clearing levels. In doing so, they fueled an embedded
carry
trade that has mushroomed relentlessly....
In an honest free market, gamblers would have to pay more for their carry funding. They’d face much greater uncertainty as to its price and availability and dissipate far more of their winnings hedging their portfolios than is required under the current central bank-driven regime of bubble finance.... When debt is priced drastically below its economic cost and receives a deep tax subsidy to boot, a variation of the supply side theorem manifests itself. Namely, when the cost of servicing debt capital is made artificially low, you get a lot more of it -- from the public and private sectors alike....
[T]he debt was overwhelmingly used for financial engineering.... The relentless trading, churning and synthesizing of assets and derivatives within the giant bloated system of finance has almost nothing to do with raising or allocating capital for productive use. Instead, this giant $95 trillion pool is where honest savings from the household and business sectors go to be scalped, appropriated, and stolen by the hedge funds, dealers, financial engineers, and gamblers which populate the casino....
And the denizens of the Eccles Building keep their heavy foot on the monetary accelerator as they witlessly inflate a $95 trillion financial bubble.... This is a clear and present danger to American capitalism fostered by an unelected monetary politburo in thrall to its own lust for power and mesmerized by its own doctrinaire group think. The tragedy is that nothing can stop them except the thundering crash of the gargantuan bubble they have single-handedly enabled.
-- David Stockman (The Daily Reckoning) May 14, 2015
In an honest free market, gamblers would have to pay more for their carry funding. They’d face much greater uncertainty as to its price and availability and dissipate far more of their winnings hedging their portfolios than is required under the current central bank-driven regime of bubble finance.... When debt is priced drastically below its economic cost and receives a deep tax subsidy to boot, a variation of the supply side theorem manifests itself. Namely, when the cost of servicing debt capital is made artificially low, you get a lot more of it -- from the public and private sectors alike....
[T]he debt was overwhelmingly used for financial engineering.... The relentless trading, churning and synthesizing of assets and derivatives within the giant bloated system of finance has almost nothing to do with raising or allocating capital for productive use. Instead, this giant $95 trillion pool is where honest savings from the household and business sectors go to be scalped, appropriated, and stolen by the hedge funds, dealers, financial engineers, and gamblers which populate the casino....
And the denizens of the Eccles Building keep their heavy foot on the monetary accelerator as they witlessly inflate a $95 trillion financial bubble.... This is a clear and present danger to American capitalism fostered by an unelected monetary politburo in thrall to its own lust for power and mesmerized by its own doctrinaire group think. The tragedy is that nothing can stop them except the thundering crash of the gargantuan bubble they have single-handedly enabled.
-- David Stockman (The Daily Reckoning) May 14, 2015
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