Clueless As The Day Is Long

These comments from Albert Safdie from Bank Hapoalim makes me want to drown puppies. I am so furious that nothing has really changed with the Financial Services Spin Machine. This morning we have the following comments which are in no doubt in full rinse cycle mode.

"We have growth without inflation. That's what you're looking for. Banks are not lending, banks are deleveraging, we're going to have much smaller financial institutions going forward. The days of excesses and leverage are over.... Lending is going to be a lot more disciplined and therefore the growth is going to be a lot more restrained. That's why you're seeing the numbers today. There's still big unemployment. We're still looking to see upticks in employment... I expect interest rates will remain low for a long time."

You just can't make up these things. Nothing truly has changed since the economy was on the edge of a cliff. Can someone tell me where the growth is? There is no growth in the US Economy! There was never any real growth throughout the 2000's. It was all Wall Street/Financial Services structured finance growth. The fake growth rates were driven by leverage and borrowing money that would never be repaid. We have even worse fraudulent growth currently. They have printed and printed money, tax breaks and credits up the wazoo, QE, TARP, TLGP, Cash-For-Clunkers, amongst others all in a desperate attempt to keep alive a rotten to the core financial system. What have we gotten for all of the drunken spending that currently equals $23 Trillion? Minimal growth! 3.5%! Even that keeps being nudged down month after month. I forgot, Wall Street is back to paying hundreds of billions in bonus money.

It is downright criminal to state there is growth in this economy. Its just fraud. Its willful disregard for the facts and the truth, all in an attempt to revive a rotten system. Its ludicrous to say that financial firms are deleveraging. The only ones that are deleveraging are consumers, because they are forced to. The banks have never been forced to take proper write downs and take proper marks on their crappy loans. Why would they need to reduce borrowing and debt when the government makes it so easy for them to borrow at zero and invest with Treasury for 4%? Wake up! The days of excess leverage are not over because it never stopped! Wall Street firms have grown obese to the point of exploding. There is zero lending going on to the real economy, while repo markets are back to the same nutty lending behavior of the great moderation. The reason the real economy and employment are struggling is because our nitwit moronic economy is based on credit expansion. The banks do not want to lend because its the prudent thing to do when real unemployment is pushing 17%! Interest rates are going up. Why? Because when the Fed raised short rates, it automatically lets people know that the cost of borrowing is going up.

All I see saw far is every Wall Street Analyst/Strategist letting everyone know that they have everything under control. That the Fed raising rates is very good for the banks and the market. This is just another attempt to keep the morons fully invested so that the banker and traders on Wall Street can hit their bids. This is how a Ponzy System works. You have to keep the uninformed interested so that the informed can get out and leave the masses holding the bag.

I am not shocked to see stock index futures steadily move higher this morning, anything else would shock me. If I came in and noticed that the futures were down 20 handle? I would actually buy knowing fully that the spin machine needs to create a buying crescendo.

This is what our markets have become. Wait! It never changed Dummy! It never will until there is no more market left. Isn't that what happened to housing?

Today is all about putting more lipstick on the pig that is the US Economy. This will continue until there is no more lipstick.

The people on Wall Street and the ones in Government are in a desperate race to the bottom. Americans are going in for the ride.

I have a title for my novel - Mutual & Willful Destruction.