I think the machinations of the central banks to forestall the “show starting” is why folks like us are perplexed. There’s lots of backroom wheelin’-dealin’ going on that isn’t being reported.
Indeed, but I keep wondering who all these people are who keep holding and buying US stocks. Not me. Nobody I know of at the financial institution where I work. None of the hedge fund managers I know (except some who are selectively buying “special situation” stocks, but no broad market buying), money ought to be flowing out of equity-only and equity heavy mutual funds like cars heading out of a region about to be hit by a hurricane, forcing those mutual fund managers to sell.
Who, exactly, has both an interest in delaying the inevitable, AND the means to delay it. Sure, I’d just as soon see the “crash” delayed until after the Presidential election. Won’t stop it, and probably won’t change the election results, but will leave Bush with a nicer place in the history books, while the winner will just have to cope (and if the winner’s a Dem, a decent percentage of the clueless masses will “blame the Democrats” for something that appears to them to have happened after the Democrats took office and thus must be their fault.
Is THAT what’s being set up? Hold the house of cards together for one more year, let the Dems have the White House that they’re probably going to get anyway, and then let them get the blame from the clueless masses, who can then easily be steered to provide a solidly Republican Congress two years later, to preside over the inevitable beginnings of the recovery, and set the stage for the election of a Republican President two more years later, to preside over the inevitable triumph of the recovery?