by Bill Sardi
Recently by Bill Sardi: Big Pharma Accused of Creating Less Effective Aspirin Tablets To Justify Expensive Blood Thinners
Well, this is the headline naive investors are reading at Bloomberg News.
According to sources cited by Bloomberg News, the $200 billion in missed stock gains occurred over the past 4 years as nearly $1 trillion has been re-directed toward safer investments – corporate bonds and US Treasury notes since 2009.
Individual investors in stocks only represent 15% of the trades, but they are the pawns in the Wall Street casino, and many of them know this. Comments over this Bloomberg News piece were largely negative (more on this in a moment.) So Bloomberg is not pulling wool over too many investors' eyes.
The Bloomberg News report says “Ben S. Bernanke’s zero percent interest-rate policy and the lowest inflation in almost 50 years have helped spur a 29% rally in debt securities since Obama’s first term began," citing Bank of America Merrill Lynch US Corporate & Government Index as a source.
The problem is, the inflation numbers are phony. Inflation is quoted at 2-3% when in fact it is 9-10% according to the way the US government used to measure inflation in 1980 and 1990 says John Williams of ShadowStats.com.
So a 29% rally over 4 years weighed against 9-10% inflation year-over-year suggests a book gain but an actual loss in purchasing power. Even Pimco, the world’s largest private bond fund, as well as CALPERS, the California pension fund, say investments must reach a 7%-10% target gain to produce a positive yield. But the Wall Street houses can conjure up any numbers they please to induce investors to pour money down the rat hole that the US stock market has become.
Certainly Bloomberg News knows about fast electronic trades, after-hour trades, and trades made by market makers to manipulate the market. And stock investors always pull out and do some profit-taking before a stock reaches its peak. So there are always profits that investors “missed out on.”
"Our biggest liability in the stock market has been the total destruction to confidence," James Paulsen, the chief investment strategist at Minneapolis-based Wells Capital Management.
But, but, Mr. Paulsen, you certainly know the market is propped. One commentator said: “the dollar and the equity markets are so ‘bubbled out,’ it’s a wonder they haven’t collapsed already.”
Maybe Wall Street is trying to pump and dump before the crash. “Another tactic by the scummy shills at Bloomberg to suck in the rest of the sheeples again. The professionals have to unload as this 4-year bull is aging. The sheep have to be fattened before the slaughter,” said an online posting.
“People will never trust Wall Street again,” said another commenter. Another said: “It’s better to have cash in your possessions with no interest than losing it all through the Wall St. thieves…. Goldman Sachs has a super computer in their basement to monitor and manipulate all trades…. to hell with Wall Street.”
After all, $11 trillion in U.S. equity value was wiped out in the 2008 financial collapse. How would reporters at Bloomberg News think anything else?
And those gains, as imaginary as they are, “are among institutional investors only,” said another blogger.
Said another: "So what if I missed out on my share of $200b. That is like saying I missed out on $500m in the Power Ball."
Another added: “The market yearns for muppets, sacrificial lambs. There’s never been a better time to buy, my real estate agent told me in 2007.”
Another blogger said: "Who can have confidence in public markets when people like Corzine can just take a billion and get away with it."
So one savvy investor called Bloomberg’s numbers into question and quoted the S&P stock index for the following years:
MAR 2000 S&P 1527 JUL 2002 S&P 797 OCT 2007 S&P 1565 MAR 2009 S&P 696 DEC 2012 S&P 1440
“Buy and hold…… hahaha,” he said. “Most people are just sick of the roller coaster ride.”
Of course, one commenter said the market IS rigged, but in favor of the investor. Well, kinda.
For the novice reader, recall now that the U.S. economy, the U.S. dollar and the entire stock market are walking a tight rope with Japan and China, who combined hold a tad less than $2 trillion of U.S. Treasury notes. These are IOUs to Japan and China plus interest. There is no foreseeable way the U.S. is going to pay back on these IOUs unless it sells off a large asset like Alaska.
So Senator Tom Coburn, in his book entitled Debt Bomb, predicts a day in 2014 (or sooner) when Japan decides to sell off some of its U.S. Treasury bills at a discount, followed by Singapore and other countries, which results in the value of the U.S. dollar crashing. The stock market would crash on that day in Senator Coburn's scenario, and I assume he has inside information from scenarios drafted by the CIA.
Japanese pension funds have already decided to direct some of their money into gold, meaning Japan is directing less money into U.S. Treasury notes. So a large move on the grand chessboard has already been made. The Japanese are getting queasy over the value of paper (IOUs) they are holding.
Keep your eye on the right ball. Not the S&P 500 but world events and the threat of a potential sell off of our IOUs at a discount by Japan or China. That is a financial doomsday that is out of our control. The U.S. can coerce, threaten trade tariffs, but that would all be after the fact. The U.S. economy is teetering towards a collapse that would drag the whole world into an irretrievable morass.
There are no fundamental changes that address the causes of this collapse – fiat money (unrelenting printing of money), debt-based money, fractional banking, lack of a gold standard, miniscule reserves, and phony financial, employment and inflation reports. All that has been done is to paper-over the collapse of modern financial institutions and the sovereign nations that validate them.
The financial elites are just buying time. They know this. That is why drones are beginning to fly over America, why the possession of guns is being demonized, why government is eavesdropping on all e-mails in what it now calls "pre-crime" prevention, and why local police forces are being militarized.
I don't blame Federal Reserve Bank chairman Ben Bernanke for putting a smug face on the crisis and for propping the stock market, which is a bellwether for the economy. That is his job. But we don't have to believe him. And shame on the news media for its complicity in creating a false financial reality and not calling the Federal Reserve on its destructive policies. With near-zero interest rates on savings accounts, savers will see trillions lost as inflation eats away their nest eggs.
The stock market is a sideshow. You are likely late in preparing for the largest financial collapse in the history of the world. Cash in hand, acquisition of U.S. gold and silver coins, knowledge of how to grow food, bake bread, self-treat illness, is what you need to be directing your mind on today.
