Tag Archives: Stock market crashes

Coming Market Madness Could Take 70 Years To Recover From, by Egon von Greyerz

The time it takes to get back to even from a market crash can be staggering, especially when adjusted for monetary debasement. From Egon von Greyerz at goldswitzerland.com:

Cervantes famous classic novel Don Quixote can in simple terms be described as a fight for liberty and freedom against oppression and against the state. This book is from 1605 and considered to be one of the best books ever written.

In the midst of market madness, risk doesn’t exist because lunatics neither see, nor worry about risk. And still, 2022 will be more about risk and survival than anything else. So I will obviously talk more about The Triumph of Survivalwhich I discussed in a recent piece.

“When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies.” – Don Quixote

The year 2022 will most likely be the culmination of risk. An epic risk moment in history  that very few investors will see until it is too late as they expect to be saved yet another time by the Fed and other central banks.

And why should anyone believe that 2022 will be different from any year since 2009 when this bull market started? Few investors are superstitious and therefore won’t see that 13 spectacular years in stocks and other asset markets might signify an end to the epic super bubble.

The Great Financial Crisis (GFC) in 2006-9 was never repaired. Central bankers and governments patched Humpty up with glue and tape in the form of printed trillions of dollars, euro, yen etc. But poor Humpty Dumpty was fatally injured and the intensive care he received would only give him a temporary reprieve.

When the GFC started in 2006, global debt was $120 trillion. Today we are at $300t, rising to potentially $3 quadrillion when the debt and derivative bubble finally first explodes and then implodes as I explained in my previous article.

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The Upside of a Stock Market Crash, by Charles Hugh Smith

Stock market crashes aren’t all bad, especially if you’re short. From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:

A drought-stricken forest choked with dry brush and deadfall is an apt analogy.

While a stock market crash that stairsteps lower for months or years is generally about as welcome as a trip to the guillotine in Revolutionary France, there is some major upside to a crash. Let’s start by noting how drawn-out crashes reset the dominant ethos of the era from wild debt-funded speculation to long-term investing in productive assets.

(Whatever that means….nobody seems to know what a “productive asset” even is… presumably a call option on a Momentum Stock that expires in two days qualifies….)

In an era where punters expect to turn $4,000 into $400,000 in a few months via a frenzied speculative churn, there is no role or incentive for long-term investing. A 10% return is barely acceptable on a single trade on a single day, so the idea that one invests one’s nestegg in stocks that might (if all goes well) return a total gain of 10% annually… you must be joking, right? Ten percent a year?

An incentive structure that no longer rewards speculation would be a positive for the nation. A market that drifts lower, impoverishing every buy the dipper and draining the capital from every speculator, large and small, would be extremely beneficial as it would lower expectations and re-establish measures of value that have lost all meaning.

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