May you live in truly bizarre times. From Jeff Thomas at internationalman.com:
“Imagine if you will, a situation in which the economy of a nation is overdue to experience an economic collapse of epic proportions, but remains endlessly at the brink. Every day, a collapse is more likely, yet the economic house of cards remains in a state of suspended animation. Some people become increasingly edgy, while others become more complacent. Only a few choose to actually prepare for what’s coming.
“An impossible situation? Yes. But we’d be well-advised to recognise that it couldn’t only occur… in the Twilight Zone.”
For those old enough to remember The Twilight Zone, the quirky “what if” American television programme, this episode introduction by host Rod Serling would seem to fit right into the show’s format.
The programme ran from 1959 to 1964, presenting somewhat unreal twists on the normal world we live in. Each episode would examine how people would deal with the episode’s situation and generally end with a moral lesson from Mister Serling as to the nature of mankind.
Strangely, the above episode, as unlikely as it might have seemed a mere decade ago, is playing out in real life.
Stocks are climbing in price, whilst dividends are in decline or, for some of the fastest-growing companies, non-existent. Bonds are a worse bet, yet a bond bubble of epic proportion exists. The world’s governments are dumping US debt, yet the Fed is buying billions of dollars of debt each month.
Indeed, debt is now growing at least twice as fast as the economy that must pay for it.
