All Posts Tagged With: "debt"

We’ve made this point before, but we’ll make it again. Today’s modern financial system depends critically on continued debt growth to stop asset prices from collapsing. In modern economies dominated by governments and their agents, central banks, money is debt and debt is money.

Zombies join government because it’s a good place to work if you’re brain dead and all you can do is slouch and shuffle. The feds can earn a living without actually doing very much. Well, no one knows whether they are doing anything or not. That’s the beauty of government.

Did anyone watch the live coverage of the independent’s decision to back Labor? We caught the last few minutes. They were remarkable enough. It went something like this: “Why do you think that the coalition would be more likely to go to [back to] the polls?” a reported asked.

Remember back in the good old days? Back when there was no government in Canberra and stocks rallied because investors knew there wouldn’t be any moron law makers to pass moron laws? Ah yes…the good old days. Sigh. If there’s a deal that puts a Labor/Greens/Independent government in place, you might expect that to be a negative for shares, inasmuch as it could mean mining tax and, down the track, some kind of carbon tax.

The Aussie market is up 2.77% since the Federal election on August 2nd, if you’re using the ASX/200 as your proxy. This whole “not having a government thing” is working out well for investors. It turns on the uncertainty of having no-one in charge is better than the certainty of having someone in charge. Maybe that will all change this week, though. To begin with, the jobs data from the U.S. gave the market a positive lead. We’re not sure this matters one little bit.

Eventually, investors are going to realize that the discussion of a “recovery” is nonsense. The economy can never recover the pace and frenzy of the bubble years – and so much the better. It has to move on to something new. The big question is: What will this new economy look like?

By 2008, consumer debt increased seven times, while the savings rate was seven times lower than in 1980.Now consumers are paying down their debt – or defaulting on it – at a rate of about 6% per year. We don’t know where this process will go, but if consumer debt is to be cut in half.

You will recall that during the bottom of the previous bear-market, most of the pundits were shunning ‘risky assets’ (stocks and commodities) and they were advocating a heavy exposure to cash and fixed income assets. Back then, the vast majority of strategists and their devotees were erroneously fretting about deflation.