Base Jumping off the Stock Market’s Peak
According to Bank of America, there is no time to leap into the stock market like the moment before its cataclysmic fall. BofA’s Michael Hartnett has no doubt that the stock market stands on the edge of catastrophic collapse, but the euphoric rise before it takes the plunge could be the greatest financial rush you’ll ever know:
As Hartnett explains, the catalyst for bull in equity and credit markets since 2009 was the “revolutionary monetary policy of central banks” who, since Lehman, “have cut rates 679 times and bought $14.2tn of financial assets.” And, once again, he warns that this central bank “liquidity supernova†is coming to an end, as is “the period of excess returns in equities and corporate bonds, as is the period of suppressed volatility.” (Zero Hedge)
The tail-end risk of this trade
What happens to the Fed’s economic recovery when the Fed ends its money boom just as irrational exuberance in the stock market is retreating? Unless Trump pulls a magic rabbit out of his hat that looks far better than his “great” health-care plan, the Trump Rally will quickly turn this year into the Trump Dump.
Consider what the Trump Dump could turn into: The Fed plans 3-4 rate increases into the unwind of the irrational Trump Rally. It also hinted this week at money-supply reduction. This unwind of Fed and folly will fall into an economy where earnings are far from justifying inflated stock prices, where jobs pay about the same as they did thirty years ago (adjusted for inflation) and where benefits are far below what they were thirty years ago, while the peak of retiring baby boomers dives into a pool retirement funds that have evaporated out from under them because of the Fed’s decade of near-zero interest. (That just names a few of the hazards that lie ahead on this trajectory.)
What could possibly go wrong?
Harnett writes that “risk markets continue to climb a wall of worry, defying bearish structural trends in the financial industry….” Demonstrating how insane just the past year has been in markets, Hartnett reminds us that just eight months ago belief in debt deflation & secular stagnation induced lowest interest rates in 5000 years!
Hartnett believes the market will supernova before it collapses into itself as we exit the Fed’s masterplan of economic re-inflation. He thinks the blow-up of the Fed’s hyper-expansion will sail us through the first half of this year. He could be right. I’ve been saying it will take about that long before everything collapses, too. However, Hartness also believes this supernova is the prime time to trade because the top will blow off the market, and you can ride that explosion.
We’ve gone from “buy the dip” to “buy the blow-off.”
I, on the other hand, am more the type who is afraid I won’t get out before everyone else falls on top of me. No one has ever seen anything like the coming collapse, or “the Great Unwind,” in action. So, how can you be sure you’re timing your exit right? It’s hard even to time the right moment to exit before a normal market correction. So, I’m already fully out. (Staying in, if you are aware of the size of the coming collapse, is a question of whether you thrive on high-risk/high-reward.)
Even Hartnett says,
We believe we are closer to the highs than lows in risk markets. But tops are a process; lows are a moment.
Indeed, we are now at a point near the Great Unwind where you are timing the moment if you intend to experience the maximum rush. Those who try to time the moment are often wiped out in a moment, too.
Hartnett warns that what follows the final, Q2 “Icarus” rally will be far less enjoyable, because that’s when the infamous “great fall” is set to take place. “Great Fall†potentially order zolpidem from mexican pharmacy comes in H2 as hubris, synchronized monetary tightening, EPS peak coincide; buy long-dated puts in anticipation; we believe best time to sell would likely be after a pop induced by a US tax reform bill (March Fund Managers Survey showed only 10% of institutions expect US tax reform passed before summer recess).
It’s an “Icarus Rally” all right — flying exuberantly into the sun until your wings melt off. Right after the final pop from the promised tax reform would certainly be the best time to sell in order to reap the highest rewards; but that “certainly” contains a big if because it is predicated on tax reform going as promised. If it does, there will be one more boom before the Big Bust.
However, that means tax reform has to go far better than healthcare reform went. Since President Trump was certain healthcare reform would be a quick slam-dunk until he got his first learning experience with congress, can we be certain that tax reform, already somewhat priced into the market as the Trump Rally, is coming — especially since most of it will require Democrat support?
What happens if you’re holding stock, waiting for tax reform to push prices for one last romp and then the tax push does the Healthcare Crush? The “Great Fall” or “Great Unwind” I am certain of; the final tax push I am not, though I’m not saying it won’t happen.
Even BofA’s Hartnett says the risk that follows will be hideous:
Our Longest Pictures argue for a treacherous period of potential manias, panics or crashes as policy makers try to normalize policy.
“Manias, panics and crashes” is how he describes the end of 2017. So, that’s what you are investing into if you’re still in stocks. You can aim for the fantasized run-up that precedes all that and try to time your parachute for the last second, and have the ride of your life. There are also people who jump from mountains wearing flying-squirrel suits, but there is not a lot of margin for error:
Try it if you want to. Some people love that kind of “extremely close” thrill ride.
What could possibly go wrong with this investment strategy?
They all laugh until it goes like this:
As one failed cliff-leaper said, “There’s a euphoric feeling as you start to die.” Take the ride if you want, but bear in mind that the guy in the first video — rated one of the world’s best base-jumpers — died at his sport: (If you can’t watch the videos, you’re probably not made for staying in this year’s stock market either.)
Enjoy the euphoria while it lasts, I guess. Base jumping is the deadliest sport in the world. About one in 500 jumps ends in death. About 25% of those deaths happen to people jumping in wing suits. Since wing-suit jumpers constitute only a tiny percentage of all base jumpers, their odds are something more like 1:100. Some people master the sport, but only for a very short time. (There are no old wing suit jumpers, unless they began old.) The trick to successful wing-suit jumping, then, is to stop jumping after your 99th leap. Investing for the final rush in this market could prove to be the same equation. (It doesn’t always go as planned, but what a thrill if you make it, huh? Just stop doing it before your number is up.)
WARNING:
Jump into the market (or stay in) at your own risk.  Some people thrive on risk, but “this time is different” doesn’t always mean this time will be good. Without a doubt, though, it will be different, and it will be thrilling. Just think of what you might miss if you don’t take the plunge:
Well, that was fun.
Friday, April 7th 2017 at 6:06 am |
Dave,
I just read a post of yours where you were strongly implying that the market would crash last year. Rounded tops and broken dives were a couple of indicators you pointed to in comparing the trends to 1929 and 2008.
We had massive stock market gains with under two percent growth of the economy. Now that there is legitimate optimism for growth (for good reason), why wouldn’t the market continue to rise? More jobs are being created. A trillion dollar stimilus will pass. People will have more discretionary spending that doesn’t come from welfare.
I don’t believe the crash will happen until after less business friendly people are back in charge, or their takeover is imminent.
Friday, April 7th 2017 at 9:29 am |
Hi Brendan,
Without a doubt, I was wrong about last year. Did better in previous years. As I’ve pointed out, though, it was an election year when both the Fed and the Obama administration seemed very intent on doing anything they could to prevent a Trump win. With a few emergency Fed board meetings and an emergency meeting with the president, we may never know what the emergency meetings were about. The Pres simply said, “We met to compare notes.” Uh huh. I don’t think you schedule a closed-door emergency meeting with both the president and vice president immediately following two back-to-back emergency meetings of the Federal Reserve board just to “compare notes.”
As for this year, let me tell you in one graph why the market wouldn’t continue to rise:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ff54b54fb00a432bab15c6decddeb0354f344be5512eff9fe2a11069d316a21f.jpg
The market has not continued to rise for over a month now. It has flat-lined completely and even jogged downhill. Why? For the reasons I’ve given in some of my recent articles — everything depends on Trump accomplishing what he said, and he faces numerous road blocks, which he has been sometimes bouncing off of quite badly. The market has priced in his success with taxes and infrastructure already; so, if he doesn’t start to deliver soon, the market will become edgier and edgier about the likelihood of that success; and if it becomes clear he is not going to overcome many of those roadblocks, the market may suddenly eliminate all the euphoric gains it made since the election, which could even create enough momentum to take it down further.
Some of those roadblocks: total Democrat obstructionism (to match the total obstructionism Repubs gave to Obama) at every turn; his own party divided; the debt ceiling that we just hit becoming a battleground; Trump’s own erratic or brash nature going too far (as it did when he froze refugees out of the country who helped the US military); growing social unrest about his actions with accompanying violence; the likelihood that Trump’s Goldman Sachs department heads are there to steer him to the establishment’s goals (as GS has always done from these positions); the very fact that he chose such total establishment people to run his government; the appearance that Bannon is losing ground in an internecine battle between the anti-globalists in the Trump Admin and the GS globalists and that the globalists are backed by someone who has the family advantage (Kushner) who doesn’t seem to like Bannon; the freeze on federal spending that will hit this month if there is a budget impasse, as there likely will be; relentless expansion of war around the world, which Trump has just shown he is prone to continue; major bank failures in Europe that could spill over here.
That’s just a partial list.
Will all of that happen? No. Will a lot of it? Probably? Will some of it? Definitely. Could ANY of it take the stock market down before Trump even gets his tax plans enacted (something the Admin seems to be telegraphing they hope to accomplish by August)? Probably.
Friday, April 7th 2017 at 4:32 pm |
For example from today’s news:
“Many former Donald Trump supporters have turned on the President after his decision to retaliate against the Assad regime for its chemical weapons attack.
“Nigel Farage, Milo Yiannopoulos Katie Hopkins, right-wing vlogger Paul Joseph Watson, Ukip leader Paul Nuttall and Ukip donor Arron Banks are among the Trump supporters who have been disappointed by their hero.
“Mr Farage said: “I am very surprised by this. I think a lot of Trump voters will be waking up this morning and scratching their heads and saying ‘where will it all end?'”
Today, Putin placed his war ship between ours and Assad in order to shoot down any more missiles launched by the US. Regime change with Assad seems as misguided as George Bush’s regime change with Hussein. Bad as both characters are, neither ever did much of anything against the US. Is it endlessly worth our diminishing treasure and burgeoning debt to keep ridding the world of its despots? Not sure we need war games in a proxy war with Russia right now, and I’m not sure Trump isn’t responding to a false-flag operation, as it is hard to see how Assad would think that using chemical weapons would do anything but make his situation worse. According to Russia, Trump was too readily duped on this one, having taken ISSIS’s bait.
Moreover, ousting Assad was planned by Hillary Clinton, according to Wikileaks documents I covered in an earlier article here. So, how is Trump’s game turning out and better than Hillary’s wars, and how is Trump not playing exactly into the hands of the Necons? It’s starting to look like more and more of the same old thing, except with a brasher tone to appease the anti-globalists at a superficial level.
(See: http://thegreatrecession.info/blog/wikileaks-syria-about-iran-israel/ )
This is the kind of black swan event that can also trouble the markets.
–David
Saturday, April 8th 2017 at 7:53 am |
I lack your finess so please excuse me.
The former president and vp pressured the feds on interest rates to help hold up perception of the economy. He had jobs numbers and the market. Jobs were clearly a sham to anyone with a brain but the “real” barometer was the market. There was no way in shits creek that they were ever going to let that drop over a long period, let alone crash. Now that they are raising them it’s at a snails pace. They are already hedging against Trump’s goals.
The roadblocks: Pres O got his stimulus and there’s no reason Trump won’t get his. Congress is drooling for it. You will have the rich districts that can’t be bought but what elected Dem will turn down Repub backed money? It’s no lose for them. People will remember them in Nov if it works and Trump will be blamed (crucified) if somehow it doesn’t. Taxes should be easier than health care, which no one denies was a total failure. But it was good experience and we will see if Trump learned from it. I will bet he has. The infrastructure bill will likely be a strong bargaining chip during tax negotiation. Trump has moved from 15% to 18% last I heard him say regarding the corp tax, so it seems he’s trying to find the sweet spot. Either way both will probably happen regardless of the perceived support-related roadblocks.
I will not touch on the ban but to say that you chose a very small and specific group, unless you are talking about the entire Iraqi army, to whom we owe no open-door or invitation. It is their country. There is a more paramount justification for the ban: it will keep our families safer and as more attacks occur overseas more American’s will support it.
There are some politicians in his Cabinet but the Sec of State among others is far from establishment. Did you want him to use Apprentice all-stars to stock it? He put successful people in positions that can truly help our country. Even Ben Carson said he has already uncovered massive waste. There is going to be a lot less of that everywhere.
To your next comment, those names you listed are not Trump’s base. They are the elite who share some of the same views as the common man. Have you seen Milo speak? He does not represent the common man and woman. Farage does not represent the American worker. You did not list Savage but he needs something to scream about. Americans can get behind leveling an airport as payback for the intentional slaughter of children. The base already want ISIS destroyed as he has pledged over and over. That missle strike was by far the best move he has made. The Russian collusion conspiracy holds even less water now and he has demonstrated the strength his predecessor did not.
Your argument that it was a false-flag or that ISIS somehow pulled a fast-one are a little out of bounds. They know that the chemicals wede released from fixed wing aircraft. ISIS does not have that capability, Russia would probably not do that, so that leaves Assad. He got away with it for years, why not continue on, especially if Trump ddi not have it out for him as you allege Hillary did.
But back to the root: Yourself and others here are fully out based on… what really? Some roadblocks that will be overcome? And when they are overcome and the bull pins its ears back again will you continue telling people to keep out? To keep it under the mattress or they’ll be sorry! At some point even a correction’s floor isn’t that low.
Saturday, April 8th 2017 at 4:41 pm |
Tillerson isn’t establishment? When I talk “establishment,” and I think when most people do, I mean the corporatocracy that runs America through their owned politicians (Dems and Repubs). Tillerson (Exxon) is as establishment as you can possibly get. Exxon has been buying and owning politicians in order to serve solely its own good for decades. He is as establishment as all the Goldman Sachs people Trump has put in charge of the United States.
So, no I don’t see at all how that group is going to help the middle class; nor do I see how Larry Kudlow’s trickle-down economic plan (round three) is going to help the middle class any more than rounds one and two did. After every round, the top ten percent wind up far stronger, and the middle class winds up weaker in benefits, weaker in pay (once adjusted for inflation), and weaker in the number of jobs (because those corporate leaders of Tillerson’s ilk) use their tax savings to build new factories overseas so they can shut down more expensive operations here.
But there are a lot of people like you, Brendan, who will readily make the rich richer in the belief that this time will be different, and it will help you. (Or maybe you’re not among the average laborers who have seen absolutely NO improvement in their situation for thirty years while corporate VIPs have become fabulously more wealthy than ever before).
For me, I’m done with it entirely. Don’t believe in it at all since the end of the Reagan days when it became obvious to me that the real reason we enjoyed growth in GDP and other areas was simply that we didn’t pay for any of it. We bought it all with our grand-children’s money. It’s so easy to have a huge party when you’re buying every bit of it on the company credit card. By the end of Bush’s second round TD economics, John Boehner had to deplorably tell the entire world, “We’re broke.”
Didn’t stop him from spending, though.
And, of course, a huge part of what broke us (took us to the breaking point where debt our national debt is greater than our GDP — the point above which no countries appear to do well for long) was spending on needless and enormously expensive war, and now Trump is starting another needless war with the Assad government and potentially the Russians.
We’re always too smart for our own good, saying, “Oh, the Russians won’t actually intervene,” or “the Iraqis will welcome us as liberators with open arms after just a hundred days.” Here we are, a decade and a half later, still fighting the war in Iraq, just as people warned Bush would happen — that it would be a “quagmire” just like Viet Nam.
The longer we arrogantly pretend we are infinite in power and can afford any and all wars no matter how little they gain for us, the more we can be sure we’ll watch the end of our imperial days by expanding until we can not longer maintain the imperial expansion.
Saddam did almost nothing to hurt the US, so what have we gained? I don’t feel more secure with the present mess in Iraq than I did when Saddam was in power. As much as I hated him, I had the presence of mind to recognize that he was a strongman that we put in power to hold other uglier powers at bay, which he was still doing remarkably well and that, as soon as we deposed him, those other powers would rise in strength to fill the vacuum, which they are still trying to do.
Removing Assad, even if Trumps is effective (now that this is has become his agenda) will go no better. ISIS or Al Qaeda will try to move into the vacuum. Keeping them out will prove no easier than it has in Iraq or in Afghanistan where the battles still continue with no end in sight.
But it will make the military-industrial complex and all their stock holders wealthier. That’s the establishment, and that is clearly who Trump is serving. Tillerson/Exxon love a good oil war. It not only gains us access to oil, but it burns up a lot of it, creating good product demand.
I’m not against wars that actually protect us where we need protecting, but I had no fear of Assad whatsoever. He was a threat to Israel, but I’m not willing to pay the price to take him out just to assuage Israel. So, here we go with another escalating war, this time with Russians involved. Not my cup of teas.
–David
Wednesday, April 5th 2017 at 12:24 pm |
Great article, Dave. Thank you again for your always illuminating insight. I never actually recovered from the ‘Epocolypse’-teaser known generally as The Great Recession, so pulling my less-than-zero savings out of the stock market is easy. That being said, for those still with a portfolio and a stomach for base-jumping, my less-than-two-cents-worth of advice is keep an eye trained onto the price of oil. Despite OPEC musings about maintaining/not-maintaining their possibly already fictional production cuts, there remains no real reason for oil to be above the $26-per-barrel in went to in early 2016. In fact, production volumes seem to be higher now then they were then. However, as crude oil generates such massive capital flows, it’s price appears to be held at or above $50 per barrel, as if by magic. At some point, I believe the spell will break and prices will plunge and this will induce the global liquidity crunch that will set all the other balls in motion. Of course, what do I know?
Thursday, April 6th 2017 at 10:00 pm |
Thanks. Oil is a slippery one for sure. Like you, I kept expecting it stay in the high twenties (or maybe low thirties) last year, but it kept evading my predictions. Of course, as it is the dollar’s lynch pin, and is also a highly manipulated market (certainly with with well-known price collusion and probably with central bank purchases), it’s a hard one to nail down. So, now I’ve stopped trying to say what it will do, though I still think it has more apparent reasons to go down than up, and am just waiting to see what it does.
Sunday, April 2nd 2017 at 11:25 pm |
We appear to be living in the end times of a Western world that went on a rampage of, ‘More’. It sort of grew and grew, just like American TV channels until there are so many it’s impossible to flick through them all and even if you do it is endless mind candy. That isn’t enough, so people have shelves of mainly mind candy movies in DVD format. No one has time to read a book. Think of all the great writers of history and the Web giving us all the chance to read any of their works we choose without even getting out of our chair, but instead we go for mind candy (well, I am certainly guilty of filling my head with rubbish anyway, and I sure as heck know many of my fellow citizens are too). How many houses even have a single book in them any more? There is the ability to now, ‘instantly stream’ mind candy thanks to smart TVs (something I am glad to have resisted by choosing not to have a smart TV). The young and not so young obsess over Snap Chat, Twitter and Facebook. Meantime our lunatic banksters and their political puppets merrily continue to destroy our economies. We are too busy, running ever faster on our individual little hamster wheels as we try to keep up with our rising living costs against our stagnant incomes. We worry how we will buy the next generation of cyber toys, keep up those foreign trips, give our homes and ourselves those perpetual make overs. We are too busy in More World to notice the Himalayan sized debt mountains swamping us. We sort of know they are there blocking out the light, but we don’t need light to get our mind candy fixes. We don’t want light shed on anything, that is for someone else to worry about.
We find ourselves in this strange paradigm where we have too much time to waste and not enough time to think. We aren’t allowed to think. There is just more and more noise thanks to computer technology. The emails and texts flood in and alerts us with their emphatic ‘Ping’. If we don’t check them out we start to worry, if we do check them out we have to reply or feel guilty for not instantly responding. Our smart phones chirp, ping, whistle and can even play entire sound tracks to us (if we are dumb enough to allow them to), as, ‘alerts’ come in 24/7. That very word sums up the trap within a trap of modern living. We are, ‘alerted’ all the time so we are on, ‘alert’ constantly to be, ‘alerted’. Bit by bit, more and more of us are going bat shit crazy as we become further and further removed from the natural world. We are turning into laboratory, rhesus monkeys; we are obese due to chemically laden, high fat, high sugar, high refined food stuffs that propel us later in life to depend on daily trays of medical chemicals to combat the diseases caused by our diets. Our brains gorge on endless mind candy, dumbing us down, making us want more, and in the wanting of things we don’t need, making us shallow and pointless. No wonder some become so bat shit crazy that they put on bat suits and jump off mountains. The rest of us just stay clinging to the mountain itself, weighed down with all our bits of endless ‘More’ junk, knowing we’re all going to fall but not when.
The Kabuki theatre of Brexit continues in my part of the world, with the Spanish trying to use Brexit to lay claim to Gibraltar while the SNP (Scottish Independence Party who have governed Scotland for a decade and achieved nothing other than to lower education attainment levels), are using Brexit as an excuse to demand an Independence Referendum (less than three years after the last one!). Never mind that Scotland receives huge UK subsidies and its biggest trading partner by far is the rest of the UK. Never mind that the Union has three hundred years of shared history and development as well as a shared language. Never mind that the North Sea oil price has been cut in half and Scotland’s fishing industry was long ago decimated by the EU (the 4th Reich running the show in Brussels handing most of British fishing waters over to France and Spain). The SNP are determined, in the face of all logic and common sense, to lead Scotland out of the British Union and straight in the European one. If they get Scotland out of the UK and signed up to the EU, the SNP will hold out their begging bowl to receive EU subsidies and like Greece they will learn there is no such thing as a free meal. Scotland will turn into one gigantic dumping ground for all Merkel’s Muslim immigrant quotas that the Balkan nations are refusing to accept.
It is strange to me that the SNP are so completely obsessed with Independence when in reality, if they get it, they will then sign this tiny country and its tiny economy over to a ruthless bureaucratic dictatorship on another continent. As my lost soul mate, a Scot, used to say, ‘No race is more obtuse than the Scots’. So here I am, English by birth but having lived in Scotland half a life time. I have always thought of myself as British before being English. It looks like I might well find myself suddenly living in another country, and I won’t be British anymore. If that happens then it will be yet another example of the huge damage the EU has wrought all across Europe. If Germany and France succeed in creating their end goal of a vast, borderless superstate ruled by one federal government and awash with mainly male, Muslim migrants from Africa, the Middle East and Asia then Europe will be finally and completely ruined. It will be ruined primarily due to the same nation who only in the space of a life time ago, came close to destroying all of Europe. It would appear that Germany is developing a habit of distinguishing itself by being one way or another, hell bent on ruling Europe. This time round it has taken on the form of the largest shared guilt trip in history, with Merkel seemingly well supported by her fellow sausage and cabbage lovers in deciding Germany can only ever be truly purged of its Nazi past by committing social genocide on not only the population of Germany but all of Europe. Merkel and her fellow EU lunatics are being aided on that front by a French parasitical elite who agree with her. The likes of George Soros, along with UK and USA Neo Liberal lunatics have aided and abetted with this decision to allow an embryonic Muslim caliphate to take hold in every single European country. As the birth rates in all major EU nations continue to decline and fast breeding Muslims replace them, Merkel’s European superstate will eventually turn into an Islamic one, run by a religious dictator under Sharia Law. That is, quite literally, the future of Europe unless this madness is stopped.
Merkel and her like minded EU lunatics insist that, ‘nationalism’ must be removed. Countries must become, ‘regions’ and all must come under the same, centralised laws. Even if the EU can kill all sense of national identity in every EU nation, Merkel appears to not understand that immigrants bring their national identities with them and writ large in those identities happens to be a Stone Age, woman hating religion that by its very structure cannot ever be democratic (which is why no majority Muslim nations are democratic!). In other words all the Neo Liberal garbage spouted by the EU and which they believe gives them a mandate to rule Europe, is in fact giving succour to a religion that espouses the exact opposite of the so called, ‘Neo Liberal values’ the EU keeps forcing down the throat of European citizens.
The West has been living a version of a Woody Allen film that is gradually turning into one made by Ingmar Bergmen.
Multum In Parvo
Monday, April 3rd 2017 at 10:38 am |
Oh, you mean “Midnight in Olso,” where an aspiring young writer, traveling through Norway, is pulled into a get-away car as a hostage by some terrorists who are fleeing a bohemian bar in the back streets of Oslo. Point of View inside the car looking at the back seat where the blond writer is squeezed between two Middle-Eastern men: Through the back window, we see the bar rapidly becoming more distant, and suddenly the windows of the bar are blown out by a bomb. The car travels around the block and apparently forward in time to the same Oslo bar, which has been rebuilt. The writer and his captors get out of the car and re-enter the bar, which is now an opium den, strewn with poppy blossoms and decorated with naked pole dancers, run by the Taliban. There the young writer meets such past cultural luminaries as Ingmar Bergmen, who is lamenting the end of Western Civilization. Yeah, I know the movie.
Sunday, April 2nd 2017 at 7:15 am |
Great Article
Thanks for some frightening laughs.
Yes it is getting close – I pray more people are prepared – We certainty have been warned by folks like Dave
Kids and grand kids are my only worry
Sunday, April 2nd 2017 at 11:33 am |
Indeed, the very people our nation has hurt most with its profligate spending — being generous with the money of people not even born (or recently born) and being strong with THEIR future sweat and blood. We buy welfare and military strength, and think we are magnanimous for caring for the poor and are strong; but we do it all on the backs of our children, and have been doing so for decades. In the end, who inherits the bill for all of it but them?
Better it fall now on those who created the mess, than that we should skate through and then, after we die, an even greater pile of debt (if such were possible) crumbles on top of our children or grandchildren. That way we will have to use OUR energy (likely our retirement) to be part of the rebuilding, and we will be the ones to soak up the initial impact; and we’ll finally have to learn to live within our means. We’re the ones who collectively allowed our leaders to create this monstrosity of debt.
(I don’t blame anyone individually because, throughout it all, some individuals have been opposed to both the welfare and military spending with simultaneous tax breaks that assure we don’t have to pay for any of it. I’ve argued against it my entire adult life, but to little effect, and I know others have, too; but those who don’t conveniently deny the problem has been building for a long time are the minority.)