The Stock Market Has Officially Entered Crazytown Territory

It is time to crank up the Looney Tunes theme song because Wall Street has officially entered crazytown territory.  Stocks just keep going higher and higher, and at this point what is happening in the stock market does not bear any resemblance to what is going on in the overall economy whatsoever.  So how long can this irrational state of affairs possibly continue?  Stocks seem to go up no matter what happens.  If there is good news, stocks go up.  If there is bad news, stocks go up.  If there is no news, stocks go up.  On Thursday, the day after Christmas, the Dow was up another 122 points to another new all-time record high.  In fact, the Dow has had an astonishing 50 record high closes this year.  This reminds me of the kind of euphoria that we witnessed during the peak of the housing bubble.  At the time, housing prices just kept going higher and higher and everyone rushed to buy before they were “priced out of the market”.  But we all know how that ended, and this stock market bubble is headed for a similar ending.

It is almost as if Wall Street has not learned any lessons from the last two major stock market crashes at all.  Just look at Twitter.  At the current price, Twitter is supposedly worth 40.7 BILLION dollars.  But Twitter is not profitable.  It is a seven-year-old company that has never made a single dollar of profit.

Not one single dollar.

In fact, Twitter actually lost 64.6 million dollars last quarter alone.  And Twitter is expected to continue losing money for all of 2015 as well.

But Twitter stock is up 82 percent over the last 30 days, and nobody can really give a rational reason for why this is happening.

Overall, the Dow is up more than 25 percent so far this year.  Unless something really weird happens over the next few days, it will be the best year for the Dow since 1996.

It has been a wonderful run for Wall Street.  Unfortunately, there are a whole host of signs that we have entered very dangerous territory.

The medianprice-to-earnings ratio on the S&P 500 has reached an all-time record high, and margin debt at the New York Stock Exchange has reached a level that we have never seen before.  In other words, stocks are massively overpriced and people have been borrowing huge amounts of money to buy stocks.  These are behaviors that we also saw just before the last two stock market bubbles burst.

And of course the most troubling sign is that even as the stock market soars to unprecedented heights, the state of the overall U.S. economy is actually getting worse…

-During the last full week before Christmas, U.S. store visits were 21 percent lower than a year earlier and retail sales were 3.1 percent lower than a year earlier.

-The number of mortgage applications just hit a new 13 year low.

-The yield on 10 year U.S. Treasuries just hit 3 percent.

For many more signs like this, please see my previous article entitled “37 Reasons Why ‘The Economic Recovery Of 2013′ Is A Giant Lie“.

And most Americans don’t realize this, but the U.S. financial system and the overall U.S. economy are now in much weaker condition than they were the last time we had a major financial crash back in 2008.  Employment is at a much lower level than it was back then and our banking system is much more vulnerable than it was back then.  Just before the last financial crash, the U.S. national debt was sitting at about 10 trillion dollars, but today it has risen to more than 17.2 trillion dollars.  The following excerpt from a recent article posted on thedailycrux.com contains even more facts and figures which show how our “balance sheet numbers” continue to get even worse…

Since the fourth quarter of 2009, the U.S. current account deficit has been more than $ 100 billion per quarter. As a result, foreigners now own $ 4.2 trillion more U.S. investment assets than we own abroad. That’s $ 1.7 trillion more than when Buffett first warned about this huge problem in 2003. Said another way, the problem is 68% bigger now.

And here’s a number no one else will tell you – not even Buffett. Foreigners now own $ 25 trillion in U.S. assets. And yet… we continue to consume far more than we produce, and we borrow massively to finance our deficits.

Since 2007, the total government debt in the U.S. (federal, state, and local) has doubled from around $ 10 trillion to $ 20 trillion.

Meanwhile, the size of Fannie and Freddie’s mortgage book declined slightly since 2007, falling from $ 4.9 trillion to $ 4.6 trillion. That’s some good news, right?

Nope. The excesses just moved to a new agency. The “other” federal mortgage bank, the Federal Housing Administration, now is originating 20% of all mortgages in the U.S., up from less than 5% in 2007.

Student debt, also spurred on by government guarantees, has also boomed, doubling since 2007 to more than $ 1 trillion. Altogether, total debt in our economy has grown from around $ 50 trillion to more than $ 60 trillion since 2007.

So don’t be fooled by this irrational stock market bubble.

Just because a bunch of half-crazed investors are going into massive amounts of debt in a desperate attempt to make a quick buck does not mean that the overall economy is in good shape.

In fact, much of the country is in such rough shape that “reverse shopping” has become a huge trend.  Even big corporations such as McDonald’s are urging their employees to return their Christmas gifts in order to bring in some much needed money…

In a stark reminder of how tough things still are for low-income families in America, McDonalds has advised workers to dig themselves “out of holiday debt” by cashing in their Christmas haul.

“You may want to consider returning some of your unopened purchases that may not seem as appealing as they did,” said a website set up for employees.

“Selling some of your unwanted possessions on eBay or Craigslist could bring in some quick cash.”

This irrational stock market bubble is not going to last for too much longer.  And a lot of top financial experts are now warning their clients to prepare for the worst.  For example, David John Marotta of Marotta Wealth Management recently told his clients that they should all have a that contains food, a gun and some ammunition…

A top financial advisor, worried that Obamacare, the NSA spying scandal and spiraling national debt is increasing the chances for a fiscal and social disaster, is recommending that Americans prepare a “bug-out bag” that includes food, a gun and ammo to help them stay alive.

David John Marotta, a Wall Street expert and financial advisor and Forbes contributor, said in a note to investors, “Firearms are the last item on the list, but they are on the list. There are some terrible people in this world. And you are safer when your trusted neighbors have firearms.”

His memo is part of a series addressing the potential for a “financial apocalypse.” His view, however, is that the problems plaguing the country won’t result in armageddon. “There is the possibility of a precipitous decline, although a long and drawn out malaise is much more likely,” said the Charlottesville, Va.-based president of Marotta Wealth Management.

So what do you think is coming in 2014?

Please feel free to share your thoughts by posting a comment below…

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The Economic Collapse

The Stock Market Has Officially Entered Crazytown Territory

16 Signs That “Global Warming” Was A Lie And That We Have Now Entered A Period Of Global Cooling

Back in 2009, Al Gore boldly declared that “the entire north polar ice cap during some of the summer months could be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years.”  Well, it turns out that was a lie along with almost everything else that Al Gore has been peddling.  The truth is that the polar ice cap is actually growing.  It is about 50 percent larger than it was at this time last year.  And as you will read about below, a shocking UN report that was recently leaked shows that the planet has actually not been warming for the past 15 years.  So if you are breathlessly anticipating that “global warming” will soon bring on the apocalypse, you can stop waiting.  On the other hand, there is rising concern about what “global cooling” will soon do to the planet as we suffer through the beginning of the coldest winter in decades.  Thanks to an unusually quiet solar cycle and an unusually high number of volcano eruptions, global temperatures have been falling.  And if this cold weather persists, that could lead to massive global problems.  Periods of very low temperatures throughout history have resulted in mass crop failures and widespread famines.  Could that soon happen to us?  The following are 16 signs that “global warming” was a lie and that we have now entered a period of global cooling…

1. According to a leaked UN report that absolutely rocked the “global warming” believers, the earth has not gotten any warmer for the past 15 years.

2. The amount of ice covering the Arctic is up by 50 percent compared to this time in 2012.

3. In just one week in late November, a combined total of more than 1000 new cold temperature and snowfall records were set in the United States.

4. In just one week in December, a combined total of more than 2000 new cold temperature and snowfall records were set in the United States.

5. On December 15th, 53 percent of the United States was covered in snow.  That was the highest level on this date in 11 years.

6. A snowstorm that spanned more than 1,000 miles slammed into New England on Sunday.

7. Some areas of upstate New York were hit with about six feet of snow a few days ago.

8. Chicago just experienced that coldest temperatures that it has seen in December in nearly 20 years.

9. On December 7th, Eugene, Oregon recorded the lowest temperature that it has seen since December 11th, 1972.

10. A few days ago, three feet of snow closed roads in Jerusalem.  It was the worst snow storm in Israel since 1953.

11. Heavy snow also fell on parts of Saudi Arabia.  That was considered to be extremely unusual.

12. The recent snowfall in Turkey was so bad that it closed 900 roads.

13. Temperatures have dropped so low that some Syrian war refugees are actually dying from the cold.

14. Cairo, Egypt just had the first snowfall that it has experienced in 100 years.

15. It was so cold in Canada recently that the Arctic Winter Games biathlon trials were forced indoors.

16. According to NASA satellite data, a temperature of minus 135 degrees Fahrenheit was recorded in Antarctica back in July.

So why is all of this happening?

Well, the number one factor affecting our climate is the giant ball of fire called the Sun that our planet revolves around.  As I detailed in a previous article, solar activity has dropped to a 100 year low.  The following is how a Space.com article recently described what we are currently experiencing…

The sun’s current space-weather cycle is the most anemic in 100 years, scientists say.

Our star is now at “solar maximum,” the peak phase of its 11-year activity cycle. But this solar max is weak, and the overall current cycle, known as Solar Cycle 24, conjures up comparisons to the famously feeble Solar Cycle 14 in the early 1900s, researchers said.

“None of us alive have ever seen such a weak cycle. So we will learn something,” Leif Svalgaard of Stanford University told reporters here today (Dec. 11) at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

Another factor that is causing all of this cold weather is a dramatic rise in volcanic activity.  Throughout human history, volcanic eruptions have produced some of the coldest winters ever recorded, and in 2013 we have witnessed a record number of volcanic eruptions.  Something appears to be happening to the crust of the earth, and that is one of the reasons why I included the future eruption of Mt. Rainier in my new novel.  The mainstream media does not talk about this much, but right now we are seeing a stunning rise in volcanic activity all over the planet.

The truth is that volcanoes can influence our climate far more than normal human activity ever possibly could.  When a tremendous amount of volcanic debris gets ejected into the atmosphere, it can have a huge impact on global temperatures and the consequences can be quite dramatic.  The following historic examples come from Wikipedia…

The effects of volcanic eruptions on recent winters are modest in scale, but historically have been significant.

Most recently, the 1991 explosion of Mount Pinatubo, a stratovolcano in the Philippines, cooled global temperatures for about 2–3 years.

In 1883, the explosion of Krakatoa (Krakatau) created volcanic winter-like conditions. The four years following the explosion were unusually cold, and the winter of 1887-1888 included powerful blizzards.  Record snowfalls were recorded worldwide.

The 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora, a stratovolcano in Indonesia, occasioned mid-summer frosts in New York State and June snowfalls in New England and Newfoundland and Labrador in what came to be known as the “Year Without a Summer” of 1816.

A paper written by Benjamin Franklin in 1783 blamed the unusually cool summer of 1783 on volcanic dust coming from Iceland, where the eruption of Laki volcano had released enormous amounts of sulfur dioxide, resulting in the death of much of the island’s livestock and a catastrophic famine which killed a quarter of the Icelandic population. Northern hemisphere temperatures dropped by about 1 °C in the year following the Laki eruption.

In 1600, the Huaynaputina in Peru erupted. Tree ring studies show that 1601 was cold. Russia had its worst famine in 1601-1603. From 1600 to 1602, Switzerland, Latvia and Estonia had exceptionally cold winters. The wine harvest was late in 1601 in France, and in Peru and Germany, wine production collapsed. Peach trees bloomed late in China, and Lake Suwa in Japan froze early.

So are we now heading for a similar period of time?

Will lower temperatures lead to mass crop failures and widespread global famine?

Please feel free to share what you think by posting a comment below…

About the author: Michael T. Snyder is a former Washington D.C. attorney who now publishes The Truth.  His new thriller entitled “The Beginning Of The End” is now available on Amazon.com.

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The Truth

16 Signs That “Global Warming” Was A Lie And That We Have Now Entered A Period Of Global Cooling

16 Signs That “Global Warming” Was A Lie And That We Have Now Entered A Period Of Global Cooling

Back in 2009, Al Gore boldly declared that “the entire north polar ice cap during some of the summer months could be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years.”  Well, it turns out that was a lie along with almost everything else that Al Gore has been peddling.  The truth is that the polar ice cap is actually growing.  It is about 50 percent larger than it was at this time last year.  And as you will read about below, a shocking UN report that was recently leaked shows that the planet has actually not been warming for the past 15 years.  So if you are breathlessly anticipating that “global warming” will soon bring on the apocalypse, you can stop waiting.  On the other hand, there is rising concern about what “global cooling” will soon do to the planet as we suffer through the beginning of the coldest winter in decades.  Thanks to an unusually quiet solar cycle and an unusually high number of volcano eruptions, global temperatures have been falling.  And if this cold weather persists, that could lead to massive global problems.  Periods of very low temperatures throughout history have resulted in mass crop failures and widespread famines.  Could that soon happen to us?  The following are 16 signs that “global warming” was a lie and that we have now entered a period of global cooling…

1. According to a leaked UN report that absolutely rocked the “global warming” believers, the earth has not gotten any warmer for the past 15 years.

2. The amount of ice covering the Arctic is up by 50 percent compared to this time in 2012.

3. In just one week in late November, a combined total of more than 1000 new cold temperature and snowfall records were set in the United States.

4. In just one week in December, a combined total of more than 2000 new cold temperature and snowfall records were set in the United States.

5. On December 15th, 53 percent of the United States was covered in snow.  That was the highest level on this date in 11 years.

6. A snowstorm that spanned more than 1,000 miles slammed into New England on Sunday.

7. Some areas of upstate New York were hit with about six feet of snow a few days ago.

8. Chicago just experienced that coldest temperatures that it has seen in December in nearly 20 years.

9. On December 7th, Eugene, Oregon recorded the lowest temperature that it has seen since December 11th, 1972.

10. A few days ago, three feet of snow closed roads in Jerusalem.  It was the worst snow storm in Israel since 1953.

11. Heavy snow also fell on parts of Saudi Arabia.  That was considered to be extremely unusual.

12. The recent snowfall in Turkey was so bad that it closed 900 roads.

13. Temperatures have dropped so low that some Syrian war refugees are actually dying from the cold.

14. Cairo, Egypt just had the first snowfall that it has experienced in 100 years.

15. It was so cold in Canada recently that the Arctic Winter Games biathlon trials were forced indoors.

16. According to NASA satellite data, a temperature of minus 135 degrees Fahrenheit was recorded in Antarctica back in July.

So why is all of this happening?

Well, the number one factor affecting our climate is the giant ball of fire called the Sun that our planet revolves around.  As I detailed in a previous article, solar activity has dropped to a 100 year low.  The following is how a Space.com article recently described what we are currently experiencing…

The sun’s current space-weather cycle is the most anemic in 100 years, scientists say.

Our star is now at “solar maximum,” the peak phase of its 11-year activity cycle. But this solar max is weak, and the overall current cycle, known as Solar Cycle 24, conjures up comparisons to the famously feeble Solar Cycle 14 in the early 1900s, researchers said.

“None of us alive have ever seen such a weak cycle. So we will learn something,” Leif Svalgaard of Stanford University told reporters here today (Dec. 11) at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

Another factor that is causing all of this cold weather is a dramatic rise in volcanic activity.  Throughout human history, volcanic eruptions have produced some of the coldest winters ever recorded, and in 2013 we have witnessed a record number of volcanic eruptions.  Something appears to be happening to the crust of the earth, and that is one of the reasons why I included the future eruption of Mt. Rainier in my new novel.  The mainstream media does not talk about this much, but right now we are seeing a stunning rise in volcanic activity all over the planet.

The truth is that volcanoes can influence our climate far more than normal human activity ever possibly could.  When a tremendous amount of volcanic debris gets ejected into the atmosphere, it can have a huge impact on global temperatures and the consequences can be quite dramatic.  The following historic examples come from Wikipedia…

The effects of volcanic eruptions on recent winters are modest in scale, but historically have been significant.

Most recently, the 1991 explosion of Mount Pinatubo, a stratovolcano in the Philippines, cooled global temperatures for about 2–3 years.

In 1883, the explosion of Krakatoa (Krakatau) created volcanic winter-like conditions. The four years following the explosion were unusually cold, and the winter of 1887-1888 included powerful blizzards.  Record snowfalls were recorded worldwide.

The 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora, a stratovolcano in Indonesia, occasioned mid-summer frosts in New York State and June snowfalls in New England and Newfoundland and Labrador in what came to be known as the “Year Without a Summer” of 1816.

A paper written by Benjamin Franklin in 1783 blamed the unusually cool summer of 1783 on volcanic dust coming from Iceland, where the eruption of Laki volcano had released enormous amounts of sulfur dioxide, resulting in the death of much of the island’s livestock and a catastrophic famine which killed a quarter of the Icelandic population. Northern hemisphere temperatures dropped by about 1 °C in the year following the Laki eruption.

In 1600, the Huaynaputina in Peru erupted. Tree ring studies show that 1601 was cold. Russia had its worst famine in 1601-1603. From 1600 to 1602, Switzerland, Latvia and Estonia had exceptionally cold winters. The wine harvest was late in 1601 in France, and in Peru and Germany, wine production collapsed. Peach trees bloomed late in China, and Lake Suwa in Japan froze early.

So are we now heading for a similar period of time?

Will lower temperatures lead to mass crop failures and widespread global famine?

Please feel free to share what you think by posting a comment below…

About the author: Michael T. Snyder is a former Washington D.C. attorney who now publishes The Truth.  His new thriller entitled “The Beginning Of The End” is now available on Amazon.com.

Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feed | RFID | Amazon Affiliate
The Truth

16 Signs That “Global Warming” Was A Lie And That We Have Now Entered A Period Of Global Cooling