By Breitbart. Nearly all of the Trump stock market boom has now fallen victim to the coronavirus pandemic.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1,338.46 points, around 6.3 percent, to 19,898.92. That is the first close below 20,000 since February 2017. The Dow was even lower earlier in the day, at one point falling to levels unseen since December 2016.
The S&P 500 fell 5.2 percent. The Nasdaq Composite dropped 4.7 percent. The small cap Russell 2000 was smashed with a 10.42 percent decline, highlighting just how devastating investors think the coronavirus and social distancing will be to smaller businesses. (Read more from “Stocks Hammered, Dow Drops to Lowest Since February 2017” HERE)
White House Expresses Support for Immediate Cash Payments to Americans as Part of Coronavirus Stimulus Package
By Washington Post. The Trump administration wants to send direct cash payments to Americans in the coming weeks to help them cope with the economic ravages of the coronavirus, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Tuesday, part of a massive economic stimulus package taking shape between the White House and Capitol Hill.
The overall price tag of the package could be around $1 trillion, Mnuchin told reporters on Capitol Hill after meeting with GOP senators, making it one of the largest federal emergency fiscal packages ever assembled.
He also gave lawmakers a dire warning if they failed to act, saying the unemployment rate could spike to nearly 20 percent from the roughly 3.5 percent level it notched in February, according to three people familiar with his comments, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal internal deliberations. (Read more from “White House Expresses Support for Immediate Cash Payments to Americans as Part of Coronavirus Stimulus Package” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/stocks-graph-abstract-accounting-analysis-banking-royalty-free-thumbnail.jpg233350Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2020-03-18 21:28:332020-03-18 21:26:15Stocks Hammered, Dow Drops to Lowest Since February 2017
Just in time for Christmas, American stock markets have plummeted. Amid debate over whether it was Trump’s trade wars or the Obama-era dovish monetary policy that paved the way to our unstable markets, everyone can agree that our markets in free fall gravely damage the country. . .
wow in a christmas present to all of us, rich people are losing a shitload of money today https://t.co/zEXsEwkcQa
Regardless of the moral inferiority of such unabashed envy of wealthy Americans and evil of wishing them all ill, McElwee’s just dead wrong from a factual perspective. Collapsing markets hurt average people more than anyone. The public stock market tends to have regressive effects, insulating the wealthy more than anyone.
As of 2016, outstanding corporate American stock was valued at nearly $23 trillion. Retirement plans, such as IRAs and 401(k) plans, account for more than one-third of that value. A quarter of the stock market is owned by foreign investors, and another quarter is owned by individual investors or other taxable funds. . .
McElwee’s take is the kind that could only be spewed by a trust-fund baby who can rely on parents wealthy enough to qualify as private investors or someone with open disdain for economic or financial literacy. But in fact, this sort of ignorance characterizes the modern socialist, who has to ignore all history up to this point in order to embrace his discredited ideology. (Read more from “Stock Market Crashes Hit Average Americans Hardest, Not the Wealthy” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/stock-market-1.jpg7991200Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2018-12-25 22:19:062018-12-25 15:24:03Stock Market Crashes Hit Average Americans Hardest, Not the Wealthy
There is a lot of excitement over the record-breaking performance of the stock market this week, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average broke the 20,000-point threshold for the first time ever Wednesday.
Acolytes of President Trump are naturally hailing the historic mark as major validation for the president’s economic agenda and influence. As Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway tweeted, this is the so-called “Trump effect.”
But the hard truth is, if you are going to directly attribute performance of the benchmark index to national optimism in President Trump, you must be intellectually honest and consistent.
I'm happy about the stock market, but if you're going to attribute it to Trump, you have to also attribute its 8K to 19K growth to Obama. https://t.co/DmXt9dA0J7
Indeed, the reality is that, as the Bespoke Investment Group noted in June, the stock market had done “exceptionally well under President Obama”:
“The Dow Jones Industrial Average’s performance [under Obama] of 120.6% ranks as the sixth best of any US President since 1900, just behind Reagan and comfortably ahead of Truman, who at 74.4% is far behind.”
Now, an objective analysis of the past administration will tell you that the Obama economy only led to the worst recovery from an economic recession since World War II, at least.
So, how do you reconcile that with the soaring Dow of years past? What you need to understand is that stock markets are merely reflective of the investors’ whims and expectations. Investors speculate and put their money where they think they will make a good return.
And the president can have some influence over stock prices by affecting expectations. For example, President Trump has promised to repeal “out-of-control” regulations that are inhibiting entrepreneurs and manufacturers from building in America. That sends a certain signal to investors.
But the president does not have unilateral control over the economy. The Federal Reserve’s manipulation of interest rates, for example, likely had a tremendous role in the soaring of stocks during the Obama administration. But, in the end, the stock market is a very poor measure in trying to gauge the health of the economy, because investors can misinterpret signals. Such was the case in 1929, as the stock market soared on the precipice of the Great Depression.
Again, the stock market is merely an economic indicator for investment. It is not an indicator of economic health as a whole, nor does it signal the success, or lack thereof, of the president. Be careful not to treat it as such. (For more from the author of “Why Neither Trump nor Obama Deserve Credit for a Record Stock Market” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/stock-market.jpg351600Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2017-01-26 00:11:582017-01-26 00:11:58Why Neither Trump nor Obama Deserve Credit for a Record Stock Market
We witnessed something truly historic happen on Friday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted 530 points, and that followed a 358 point crash on Thursday. When you add those two days together, the total two day stock market crash that we just witnessed comes to a grand total of 888 points, which is larger than any one day stock market crash in U.S. history. It is also interesting to note that this 888 point crash comes in the 8th month of our calendar. Perhaps that is just a coincidence, and perhaps it is not. It just struck me as being noteworthy. This is the first time that the Dow has dropped by more than 300 points on two consecutive days since November 2008, and we all remember what was happening back then. Overall, this was the worst week for the Dow in four years, and there have only been five other months throughout history when the Dow has fallen by more than a thousand points (the most recent being October 2008). Of course we still have six more trading days left in August, so there is plenty of time remaining for even more carnage.
By itself, the 530 point plunge on Friday was the ninth worst stock market crash in all of U.S. history. The following list of the top eight comes from Wikipedia…
#1 2008-09-29 −777.68
#2 2008-10-15 −733.08
#3 2001-09-17 −684.81
#4 2008-12-01 −679.95
#5 2008-10-09 −678.91
#6 2011-08-08 −634.76
#7 2000-04-14 −617.77
#8 1997-10-27 −554.26
Another very interesting thing to note is that the largest stock market crash in U.S. history took place on the very last day of the Shemitah year of 2008, and now we are less than a month away from the end of this current Shemitah year.
It is funny how these strange “coincidences” keep happening.
The financial carnage that we witnessed on Friday was truly global in scope. On a percentage basis, Chinese stocks crashed even more than U.S. stocks did. Japanese stocks also crashed, so did stock markets all over Europe, and emerging market currencies all over the planet got absolutely destroyed.
The following is how Zero Hedge summarized what went down…
China’s worst week since July – closes at 5 month lows
Global Stocks’ worst week since May 2012
US Stocks’ worst week in 4 years
VIX’s biggest weekly rise ever
Crude’s longest losing streak in 29 years
Gold’s best week since January
5Y TSY Yield’s biggest absolute drop in 2 years
Even though I specifically warned that this would happen, and have been explaining why it would happen on my website in excruciating detail for months, the truth is that I didn’t expect stocks to start crashing this quickly or this ferociously.
Normally, August is a fairly slow month in the financial world. As I have discussed previously, most of the really noteworthy stock market crashes throughout history have taken place during the months of September and October. So I thought that things wouldn’t start getting really crazy for another few weeks at least.
Financial markets tend to fall much faster than they go up, and I believe that we are moving into a time of extraordinary volatility. There will be huge down days, and there will also be huge up days. In fact, the three largest single day rallies in Dow history happened right in the middle of the financial crisis of 2008. So don’t let what happens on any one particular day fool you.
An absolutely gigantic global financial bubble is beginning to burst, and stocks could potentially fall a very, very long way. For instance, just consider what MarketWatch columnist Brett Arends has just written…
I don’t mean to be alarmist or to induce panic, but someone needs to tell the public that there is a plausible scenario in which the U.S. stock market now collapses by another 70% until the Dow Jones Industrial Average falls to about 5,000.
It is important to keep in mind that Arends is not a “bear” at all. He is a very level-headed analyst that tries to objectively look at all sides of things.
I sincerely hope that global financial markets will stabilize for at least a couple of weeks. But there is absolutely no guarantee that will happen.
So many of the things that I have been warning about on this website and on End of the American Dream are starting to unfold right in front of our eyes. If I am right, this is just the beginning. I believe that we are moving into a time of unprecedented chaos, and our nation is about to be shaken to the core.
Hopefully you have been preparing for the storm that is coming for quite a while and you will not be surprised by what is about to happen.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the vast majority of Americans. Most of them are totally unprepared for what is coming, and they are going to be completely blindsided by the events that will unfold in the months ahead.
The relative calm of the past few years has lulled millions into a false sense of complacency.
If you are one of those that have dozed off, I have a word of warning for you…
Wake up and get ready.
It’s starting. (Re-posted with permission, “This 2 Day Stock Market Crash Was Larger Than Any 1 Day Stock Market Crash in U.S. History” originally appeared HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-08-22 03:16:402015-08-22 03:16:40This 2 Day Stock Market Crash Was Larger Than Any 1 Day Stock Market Crash in U.S. History
When I started making that claim years ago — and provided solid evidence — people scoffed. Some called it a conspiracy theory, tinfoil hats and that sort of stuff. Most people just ignored me . . .
With stock prices rushing far ahead of economic reality over the last six or so years, more experts in the financial markets are coming to the same conclusion — even if they don’t fully understand how it’s being rigged or the consequences.
Ed Yardeni, a longtime Wall Street guru who isn’t one of the clowns of the bunch, said flat out last week that the market was being propped up. “These markets are all rigged, and I don’t say that critically. I just say that factually,” he asserted on CNBC.
Yardeni’s claim is the most basic one: that the Federal Reserve won’t do anything that will upset Wall Street and, in fact, is doing all it can to help the stock market. (Read more from “Stock Market Rigging Is No Longer a ‘Conspiracy Theory'” HERE)
By Jonathan Spicer. The New York Federal Reserve officials tasked with prying interest rates off the floor have been meeting with bankers and traders to plot how best to do it, amid deep uncertainty over how much control they will really have over short-term lending markets.
With the U.S. central bank expected to raise rates later this year, Simon Potter and his team of market technicians have the tricky job of implementing higher rates using some new and lightly tested tools as well as some that may not work as well as in the past. They’ll be operating under intense global scrutiny that’s centered on the prospects for the world’s biggest economy.
Even while testing new methods meant to sweep up trillions of dollars of reserves from financial markets, Potter’s team is preparing for volatility and to make on-the-fly adjustments when the time comes, according to interviews with Fed officials and market participants.
The trouble is that the federal funds market, the intra-bank trading pool traditionally used by the Fed to meet its policy goals, has shrunk to about a quarter of its pre-crisis size after more than six years of unprecedented monetary stimulus.
“There is a lot more uncertainty in the mechanical features of the outlook than people admit to,” said Joseph Abate, a money-market strategist at Barclays Capital. (Read more from this story HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-03-27 03:37:452015-03-27 03:37:45Stock Market Rigging Is No Longer a ‘Conspiracy Theory’
Photo Credit: Reuters/Brendan McDermidAn American who won this year’s Nobel Prize for economics believes sharp rises in equity and property prices could lead to a dangerous financial bubble and may end badly, he told a German magazine.
Robert Shiller, who won the esteemed award with two other Americans for research into market prices and asset bubbles, pinpointed the U.S. stock market and Brazilian property market as areas of concern.
“I am not yet sounding the alarm. But in many countries stock exchanges are at a high level and prices have risen sharply in some property markets,” Shiller told Sunday’s Der Spiegel magazine. “That could end badly,” he said.
“I am most worried about the boom in the U.S. stock market. Also because our economy is still weak and vulnerable,” he said, describing the financial and technology sectors as overvalued.
Fears about the federal government shutting down appear not to have reached Wall Street.
Stock markets opened higher Tuesday morning after Congress failed to authorize spending overnight. The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average gained over the first half of the day, and the Nasdaq composite index also increased by over a percentage point.
To some extent, those gains reflected the fact that markets had already priced in the impact of a shutdown, which was viewed as likely by Monday afternoon when Republicans and Democrats remained far from a deal, if not by the close of business Friday before Congress’ weekend deliberations.
Nevertheless, said Craig Alexander, the chief economist for TD Bank Group, the morning showed “very sanguine movement, so clearly no deep fear in the markets.”
Private-sector economists have said the lapse in government spending could modestly reduce economic output for the quarter, and that a shutdown of longer than a month could start to disrupt the broader economy more significantly as government services were missed.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-10-02 00:55:572013-10-02 00:55:57No Signs of Government Shutdown Worries in Stock Markets (+video)
Photo Credit: DannelsThe S&P has rallied 19 percent in 2013, which is impressive by any measure. But the market did far better in 1987, when stocks added more than 30 percent from the beginning of the year to Aug. 8. The problem?
The market ended up tanking in the second half of that year—dropping 36 percent from the Aug. 25 peak to the October low, before closing out 1987 nearly exactly where it began.
And Marc Faber, publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report, predicts that the very same thing will happen in the back half of 2013.
“In 1987, we had a very powerful rally, but also earnings were no longer rising substantially, and the market became very overbought,” Faber said on Thursday’s “Futures Now.” “The final rally into Aug. 25 occurred with a diminishing number of stocks hitting 52-week highs. In other words, the new-high list was contracting, and we have several breaks in different stocks.”
Faber says that’s exactly where we find ourselves this August.
What Sequester? Washington Booms as a New Gilded Age Takes Root
By Elizabeth Williamson. On a bright spring morning, Debbie Driesman and her interior decorator surveyed progress on Norton Manor, the 40,000 square-foot house she’s building with her husband, information-technology entrepreneur Frank Islam. To make way for the French chateau-style manse, the family bought two houses on adjacent 4-acre lots and invited the local fire department to destroy them. For practice.
The manor, in suburban Washington, features a reflecting pool (just as the Capitol does), east and west wings (like the White House) and is configured for easy Secret Service coverage when VIP guests attend the couple’s Democratic Party fundraisers. Decorator Skip Sroka scoured the globe for Norton Manor’s marble fireplaces, hand-loomed carpets and several tons of gilded and Venetian chandeliers. The gardens are modeled, in part, after those of Henry VIII’s Hampton Court palace.
“If there’s something he can’t have that he wants, you have to find a way,” Ms. Driesman says of her exacting husband. “You can’t just tell him ‘no.’ ”
The sprawling compound is a product of Washington’s Gilded Age—a time of lush business profits initially fueled by government outsourcing and war. Some demographers predicted the boom here would ebb as federal spending shrank amid troop withdrawals from the Middle East and efforts to trim the deficit.
Instead, the region has shown surprising resilience, thanks to an economy that has steadily broadened beyond the government. More than a generation of heavy federal spending, it turns out, has provided the seed money for a Washington economy that now operates globally—less tied to the vicissitudes of the capital’s political rhythms. Read more from this story HERE.
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Wealth of most Americans down 55% since recession
By Constantine Von Hoffman. Increasing housing prices and the stock market’s posting all-time highs haven’t helped the plight most Americans. The average U.S. household has recovered only 45 percent of the wealth they lost during the recession, according to a report released yesterday from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
This finding is a very different picture than one painted in a report earlier this year by the Fed that calculated Americans as a whole had regained 91 percent of their losses. The writers of the report released yesterday point out that the earlier number is based on aggregate household-net-worth data. However, this isn’t adjusted for inflation, population growth or the nature of the wealth. Further, they say much of recovery in net worth is because of the stock market, which means most of the improvement has been a boon only to wealthy families.
“Clearly, the 91 percent recovery of wealth losses portrayed by the aggregate nominal measure paints a different picture than the 45 percent recovery of wealth losses indicated by the average inflation-adjusted household measure,” the report said. “Considering the uneven recovery of wealth across households, a conclusion that the financial damage of the crisis and recession largely has been repaired is not justified,” the researchers said.
Household wealth plunged $16 trillion from the top of the real estate bubble in the third quarter of 2007 to the bottom of the bust in the first quarter of 2009. By the last three months of 2012, American households as a group had regained $14.7 trillion.
The report says almost two-thirds of the increase in aggregate household wealth is due to rising stock prices. This has disproportionately benefited the richest households: About 80 percent of stocks are held by the wealthiest 10 percent of the population. Read more from this story HERE.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-02 23:53:562013-06-02 23:53:56As Average Americans Lose 55% of their Wealth, the DC-Connected Enter the Gilded Age
Photo Credit: Wikipedia With market participants cheering a new all-time high in the Dow Jones, one man is predicting this “misplaced optimism” will lead to a “worse collapse than in 2008.”
Peter Schiff, the eternal provocateur, suggests the Fed’s extraordinary support of bond and housing markets will lead to a market crash as interest rates rise, leaving banks, mortgage originators, and lenders stuck with homes and low yielding loans as the economy slows, exacerbating the decline and throwing the economy into a deeper crisis.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke endured some hostile questioning in Congress last week. At one point, responding to a question about QE by Republican Congressman Lynn Westmoreland, Bernanke was explaining “[quantitative easing] doesn’t involve any new spending or revenue,” when he was cut off by Westmoreland, who said “oh, I got you, just money printing, right?” The Fed Chairman’s demeanor froze for a second, after which he continued “it’s acquiring securities in order to reduce interest rates and ease financial conditions in the economy,” tacitly accepting the “money printing” comment.
Precisely those purchases of assets to further ease monetary policy are cooking a bigger financial crash than in 2008, Peter Schiff of Euro Pacific Capital argues, and that collapse will start with the housing and bond markets.
Paradoxically, the housing market is firing on all cylinders, with homebuilders like KB Home and Lennar trading close to their 52-week highs. This is irrational exuberance, according to Schiff, as the market is fully subsidized by the Fed. “The U.S. government is guaranteeing all mortgages, and then buying them up,” explained Schiff, “it’s an artificial market, but the Fed, rather than Lehman Brothers, owns it.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-03-07 01:34:572016-04-11 11:23:14Peter Schiff And The Coming Housing Collapse: The Fed, Instead Of Lehman, Owns The Mortgage Market
