Alternative Visions – US Stock Bubble-Causes and Consequences + Italy Banks – 12.09

Jack focuses on the bubble growing in US stock markets, as money capital surges out of bonds and from Europe and emerging markets into US stocks. All US markets are at record levels, with the DOW having tripled since 2009 in value. Jack discusses the various causes and origins of the current bubble, including the global rotation from bonds, anticipated Trump infrastructure spending and massive corporate tax cuts, multi-industry deregulations coming, and devaluing foreign currencies. The recent Saez report on income inequality trends is reviewed in contrast. Why capitalists are switching from monetary, central bank policy now to fiscal policy to continue massive gains for the 1%. Other negative data for the US is reviewed, including productivity trends and public debt. The show concludes with a discussion of the recent Italian referendum and Italian banks and China’s pending currency devaluation and bank problems.

yler Durden – A Stunning Admission From Deutsche Bank Why A Shock Is Needed To Collapse The Market, And Force A Real Panic

In what may be some of the best, and most lucid, writing on everyone’s favorite topic, namely “what happens next” in the evolution of the financial system, Deutsche Bank’s Dominic Konstam, takes a look at the current dead-end monetary situation, and concludes that in order for the system to transition from the current state of financial repression, which has made a …

Alternative Visions – Japan’s Perpetual Recession Economy: QEs, Negative Rates, and Helicopters – 08.12.16

Jack reviews the current condition of Japan’s economy, after 8 years of virtual perpetual recession despite record QE central bank injections, negative interest rates, and talk of helicopter money. The Central Bank of Japan as harbinger of global capitalist central banks policy direction and innovation. How central banks-bank of japan free money policies are not only no longer working, but are now having contrary negative effects on the global economy. Japan’s history of monetary policy first, plus austerity, since 1991 has doomed it to perpetual recessions—8 since 1991 and 5 since 2008. Japan as innovator of QE and negative rate policies. The results in creating trillions of non-performing bank loans (NPLs) and more than $13 trillion in negative bond rates since 2014 are reviewed. Growing NPLs and negative rates as indicators of failing capitalist monetary policies as investment slows, productivity declines, wages stagnate and real consumption falters worldwide. Why global economies are about to shift in 2017 to more fiscal infrastructure spending—but will do so ‘too little and too late’ to prevent recessions in 2017.

Gerald Friedmand – Why Liberal Economists Dish Out Dispair

The ferocious reaction to my assessment that Senator Bernie Sanders’ economic and health care proposals could create long-term economic growth shows how mainstream economists who view themselves as politically liberal in America have abandoned progressive politics to embrace a political economy of despair.  Rationalizing personal disappointment and embracing market-centric economic theories according to which government can do little more than fuss around the edges, …

MIKE WHITNEY – Wall Street’s Savage Reckoning: Clouds Gather Over G-20 Summit

Finance ministers and central bankers from the world’s biggest economies met in Shanghai, China over the weekend to discuss many of the problems for which they alone are responsible. Leading the list of issues, was the steady deceleration in global growth which, to great extent, is the result of experimental monetary policies central banks implemented following the recession in 2009. …