[MrEdd]

Yawn.

Countdown to war.

Wonder if I should search out my old posts on the impending European genocidal war and see if I can’t ping the idiots who insisted quantitative easing would head this off to have a little chat.

Would they concede they were grasping at straws only a mute donkey would believe, or would they double down?

[muawiyah]

There are two big differences between the US and the EU. First off we in the US have made a tremendous investment in heavy metals ~ which the EU has not.

Then, there's North Dakota ~ latest government estimate of the value of the recoverable hydrocarbons there is pretty close to 1000 trillion dollars. Our national debt, at 17 trillion, is a small fraction of that.

[AlexW]

“the stock market has become completely and totally divorced from economic reality.”
____________________________________________________

As I have posted in the past, the US markets are little more then a pump and dump game for the rich and institutions.

[Freedom of Speech Wins]

I am already greatly depressed in the United States.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

I suspect that it will come “as a thief in the night”, because governments are trying their level best to create false confidence in dubious ways.

For example, somebody figured out that confidence in stock markets and the relative value of stocks can be maintained by simply manipulating the indexes. If someone has a few billion dollars and are able to buy or sell invisibly, without worrying about losing their money, they can play the stock indexes like a violin.

So don’t imagine that the next depression will be reflected in the stock markets.

But this creates the obvious problem, how will a depression outside of the stock markets happen?

Some of it is happening right now in the retail markets, with deflation and inflation happening simultaneously, but with different products. For example, in grocery stores some products are being sold for bizarre sale prices, a quarter or less their regular retail value. But other products just keep getting more and more expensive.

What could change things is if there is a run on a type of product, a run that brings in speculators. Retail stores typically plan with producers to buy just enough product at a fixed price for their needs. But if a speculator enters the situation, they outbid the retailers, resulting in both shortage and quickly inflating prices.

However, the market for that product has to be inflexible, or people will just stop buying it.

Yet the question remains, at what point does the public accept that we are in a depression, no matter what the government says or does?

[Windflier]

The One Hour Meltdown